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Student Support

Dyslexia Handbook → Student Support

It is difficult to navigate school with Dyslexia. Most parts of the school day are rooted in text. Students with Dyslexia often can not yet interact with text with the same proficiency as their peers. It is very important that students with Dyslexia understand their disability, that it is specific to reading and writing, and that they can excel in all parts of school. When Dyslexia is not explained to students who have it, they are made to feel inferior as they watch their fluent peers reading and spelling seemingly effortlessly. They see their peers do what they can not do and that can lead to social-emotional harm. When students with Dyslexia understand their disability, they can better accept their challenges as part of who they are, work to overcome those challenges, advocate for themselves, and recognize that their struggles are a product of neurodiversity. Most people struggle with something. Dyslexia causes a struggle with learning to read and spell.

Parents and educators should talk to students about Dyslexia. Fluent reading peers need to understand it as well so that teasing in the classroom is avoided and not tolerated. Talk to students about the common strengths of Dyslexia. While it causes weakness in understanding and interpreting printed language, it also commonly elevates creativity, problem-solving skills, oral language development, imagination, reasoning skills, and strengths in math, science, the arts, computers, and technology. Ask students what is most helpful to them in class which accommodations are needed and when. Help students learn about their IEP goals and accommodations and encourage them to participate in meetings as appropriate. Encourage students to celebrate their progress, perseverance, and resilience while recognizing and validating that it is hard to do school with Dyslexia.

Dyslexia Student Support

Social-Emotional Health of Students with Dyslexia

Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for students with Dyslexia to have feelings of failure and frustration. This is often exacerbated by comparing themselves to other students and feeling less than their peers. Once students with Dyslexia become aware of how they may stand out in class, they may feel anxious, embarrassed or ashamed. This leads to stress and anxiety that can eventually lead to depression. Students with Dyslexia may try to hide their struggles with reading and writing and then that begins to feel like dishonesty which can lead to feelings of guilt. Parents and educators can mitigate these social-emotional consequences by offering support in the following ways.

  • Establish a strong teacher/parent relationship. Research has shown that a supportive and collaborative relationship between teachers and families results in greater outcomes for students.
  • Praise effort and persistence rather than outcomes. Students need to develop resilience and know that their persistence is valued and will eventually lead to success.
  • Help students understand their Dyslexia. Allow students to talk about it and explain what helps them and what they need.
  • Mitigate interactions with peers to increase peer acceptance and reduce loneliness and social isolation. Teaching peers to accept and celebrate differences in themselves and others is essential for creating a positive community.
  • Identify strengths and talents and use those to increase confidence and self-esteem
  • Encourage self-advocacy
  • Allow for choice whenever possible. Students with Dyslexia need to feel like they have some control over their day.
Social-Emotional Health of Students with Dyslexia

Student Support Specific to Schools

  • Provide high-quality core instruction
  • Identify risk early to provide intervention instruction when most effective
  • Avoid asking students with Dyslexia to read aloud in front of the whole class or hanging their work on display without their permission
  • Create a safe environment where failure is viewed as evidence of effort and an essential component of learning
  • Eliminate the anxiety or embarrassment of asking for help
  • Encourage students to use their accommodations when appropriate and educate classmates about how they are tools, much like glasses are tools for poor eyesight
MCPS Dyslexia Student Support Specific to Schools

Student Support Specific to Families

  • Provide engaging and nurturing practice time for reading and spelling. Learn your child’s frustration tolerance and avoid exceeding it
  • Read aloud often, for homework support and pleasure
  • Protect time for sleep. Fatigue can make navigating and tolerating school much harder.
  • Protect time for relaxation and joy
  • Help them find an activity they love and thrive in
  • Listen. For many students with Dyslexia, school is exhausting and emotional. Allowing students to open up at home can be a needed release.
Student Support Specific to Families

Multi-Tiered System of Support: Responsive Instruction

MTSS is a framework designed to ensure that all students receive instruction that is responsive to the learning needs that they have demonstrated. It is meant to address all content areas and social-emotional and behavioral needs. It begins with high-quality core instruction in the general education classroom. For literacy, this is Structured Literacy instruction that includes explicit and systematic instruction in word recognition while concurrently developing the many facets of language and reading strategies that lead to comprehension and writing instruction that begins with foundational skills for composition that lead to instruction in writing craft. This is called Tier 1 instruction. For most students, this will be enough to develop into proficient readers and writers. For students on the mild end of the spectrum for Dyslexia, this may also be enough. For students with moderate to severe Dyslexia, more responsive instruction will be needed. Tier 2 instruction will be provided for students who are demonstrating difficulty with Tier 1 instruction. Teachers use assessments to identify student needs and provide additional targeted instruction in either a small or larger group. Student progress is carefully monitored and instruction is modified when students are not responding. Tier 3 instruction is only needed for students who require more individualized and intense instruction provided in a small homogeneous group. These students are also carefully monitored to ensure that students are responding positively to the instruction and making progress.

Intervention Programs

Students with Dyslexia have difficulty learning how to match letters to sounds, learning letter names, segmenting and blending sounds in words, decoding, spelling, and reading fluency. The Tier 2 and 3 intervention instruction they will receive will target these specific skills. MCPS uses evidence based intervention programs that explicitly and systematically teach phonemic awareness, phonics and spelling. Students in these programs will use DIBELS 8 to monitor progress as well as program-specific measurement tools.  These programs are implemented with integrity by trained professionals who will skillfully modify instruction in order to be responsive to the students. Students with Dyslexia often need intensive Tier 3 intervention that allows for more opportunities for practice and immediate feedback.

Dyslexia Screener

MSDE requires all students in Kindergarten and First Grade to be screened for risk for Dyslexia. MCPS uses DIBELS 8 for this purpose and also as a benchmarking assessment three times a school year. Students in Second and Third Grade are also screened if risk is a concern or if they are new entering MCPS. The purpose of screening for risk is not to identify Dyslexia. The purpose is to identify risk so that early intervention instruction can begin right away. Intervention instruction for Dyslexia is most effective in K-2.  It is critical that Tier 2 and 3 instruction begin during this optimal window. Students’ response to instruction will be carefully monitored over time. Students who are not responding or for whom the rate of progress is really slow will be considered for additional testing and will be screened for Dyslexia through Special Education.

Identification Process

MTSS ensures that all students, regardless of identification for Special Education Services, receive responsive instruction to their demonstrated needs.  Early screening ensures that intervention instruction begins as soon as risk is identified. These risk indicators include:

  • Minimal or slow progress in response to high-quality Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 Intervention instruction
  • Continued struggle with Phonemic Awareness, decoding, spelling, and fluency
  • Slow, laborious, inaccurate reading
  • Family history

Parents are an important part of the Educational Management Team.  When a student continues to demonstrate risk after a consistent dosage of intervention instruction, the EMT may decide to Screening for Special Education Services. Upon further evaluation, Dyslexia may be identified and an Individualized Education Plan (IEP) or Section 504 Plan  be created to best support the student.

Compliance Manual

Special Education Services

Not all students with Dyslexia require special education services. Dyslexia is a spectrum disorder and those on the mild side of the spectrum may not require an Individualized Education Plan (IEP).  Those students who are identified and for whom the EMT agrees that an IEP is needed will receive an additional layer of support through Special Education services. Dyslexia qualifies as a Specific Learning Disability. Dyslexia can be named on the IEP if identified as it is specific to a word-level reading and spelling impairment.

Section 504

Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Section 504) is a federal law that protects the civil rights of persons with disabilities. All elementary and secondary programs and activities are subject to the provisions of Section 504. Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) Regulation ACG-RB, Reasonable Accommodations and Modifications for Students Eligible Under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, describes MCPS procedures for implementing Section 504 for students.

When a student has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits a major life activity and they do not currently have an IEP, they may be eligible under Section 504.  In some cases, students eligible under Section 504 will require the provision of a Section 504 plan in order to receive a free and appropriate public education.  Dyslexia can be a qualifying impairment under Section 504 if it substantially limits a major life activity such as  reading, writing, spelling, and/or learning.   Students who qualify under Section 504 with the provision of a Section 504 plan will be provided with accommodations in order to have equal access to the curriculum, environment, and extracurricular activities as their non-disabled peers. 

Accommodations and Supplementary Aids to Consider

Students with Dyslexia can often excel in many or all content areas, but their reading and writing skill delays and deficits can be a barrier to accessing grade-level content and expressing what they understand. Accommodations are critical tools that remove those barriers. With accommodations, students with Dyslexia can participate fully, learn along with their peers, and communicate what they’ve learned with others. Accommodations are chosen carefully to be tailored to each student’s individual needs. Accommodations to consider for students with Dyslexia include:

  • Extra time.  It takes longer to read and write with Dyslexia. Extra time for tasks, tests, and long-range assignments is helpful.
  • Audio recordings of text and text-to-speech technology. While students with Dyslexia need to continue to strengthen their reading skills in Intervention instruction, they need access to the same complex text as their peers or they risk falling behind in other content areas, content knowledge, and vocabulary development.
  • Spelling and grammar check technology. This doesn’t work well for all students with Dyslexia as spelling approximations need to be close to the intended word.  Monitor the effectiveness of this accommodation. It might need to be replaced with Speech-to Print technology.
  • Speech to Text technology. Writing and spelling is often laborious and students with Dyslexia may struggle with expressing all that they know and want to say through writing.
  • Simplified Directions. Students with Dyslexia may not be able to read the multi-step directions for an assignment and hearing it read aloud once or twice is a lot to process and retain in working memory. Directions may need to be broken down one step at a time.
  • Repetition of Directions. Have students repeat the directions to be sure they heard and understood.
  • Notes provided. Copying notes from the board is not appropriate for students with Dyslexia. Spare them that task and provide the notes, preferably electronically so that they can use their text-to-speech app.
  • Frequent Breaks. Students with Dyslexia are working much harder than the rest of their peers if printed language is involved.
  • Scribe. Students will likely be able to express themselves better when the spelling demand is removed.
  • Oral responses. Allow students to respond orally to tests and assignments when possible.
  • Assignments and tests graded for content only.  (spelling and punctuation errors should be noted, but not reduce grade)
  • Avoid having to read or spell aloud in front of peers.
  • Calculator. Dyslexia can impact the ability to memorize math facts.

Frequent evaluation of the effectiveness of accommodations is important. Students should only have the accommodations that they need and that are helpful.  Accommodations that are employed and no longer needed can hinder a student’s growth and development.  Accommodations are intended to reduce or fully eliminate the barriers from a student’s disability.  They are not intended to reduce the learning expectations.  Students may be embarrassed to use accommodations in front of their peers. Educators need to be mindful of when students are refusing accommodations because they feel they don’t need them or if they are too embarrassed to use them. Dyslexia awareness among classmates is as important as it is for educators and parents. Educators can help remove the stigma around using accommodations by creating a safe and inclusive classroom environment.

Modifications

While accommodations address how students can access content and material and how they demonstrate their understanding, modifications change the content in which students are expected to engage. Since reading and writing tasks take students much longer to complete, it may be appropriate to modify the content so that completing tasks is reasonable and manageable.

Modifications to consider for students with Dyslexia include:

  • Reduced quantity of text assigned
  • Reduced quantity of writing required
  • Reduced number of test items
  • Allow for verbal presentations instead of written response