National Reading Month and What It Means for Dyslexics
March has many things to celebrate, including National Reading Month, a nationwide initiative designed to motivate people of all ages to read everyday, promoting literacy, education and the joy of reading. People can read in all sorts of ways: an actual book, an audiobook, or a braille book. There are millions of types of books for all sorts of reading appetites. But for people, especially children who struggle to read, the thought of sitting down to read a book is so upsetting and scary when the words on the page don’t mean anything. If dyslexia or language-based learning differences are remediated, as discussed in last week’s Substack, then that dyslexic reader will be able to read as well as a “normal” reader. But for someone who is not remediated, what does the task of reading look like?
Dyslexia is a phonological processing disorder, not a vision problem, as some people think. Yes, some dyslexic letters can look backward, but that’s not the issue. Dyslexics do not lack intelligence, far from it. Most have above-average IQs, but just need to learn differently. Brain imaging shows underactivity in the left temporo-parietal reading circuit, meaning that dyslexic brains don’t see the written word the way “normal” readers see the word, and so therefore they need to be taught differently so that they do not have to use this left temporal-parietal lobe in the brain.
This is achieved through a multi-sensory approach. And this is best taught through the Orton-Gillingham method. Dr. Sally Shaywitz, as discussed in my article last week, has spent decades understanding the dyslexic brain and how best to educate those who have this learning difference. While many think that autism is the largest category of people with learning disabilities, 80 to 90% of such differences are with people who have dyslexia. The Orton-Gillingham method and its multisensory approach occur in five evidence-based components:
Phonemic awareness
Phonics
Fluency
Vocabulary
Comprehension
When people learn through this multi-sensory approach, they can learn by repeatedly writing letters on paper, skywriting them, writing them in shaving cream, and in other creative ways, until this repetition begins to train a new part of the brain and reading fluency begins to take hold. And while most people learn to read through repetition and being read to, children with dyslexia must be taught specifically so they can learn to read.
Because there is so much miscommunication and misunderstanding about what dyslexia is and how it can be remediated, Jon, who is a very remediated dyslexic, and I, wanted to write books that would reach children who did not see themselves in stories or reach people who were trying to understand what dyslexia was, whether they were other students, parents, or teachers. Since writing Robby the Dyslexic Taxi and the Airport Adventure, so many people have come up to us and told us how important it was to them for all of these reasons. And we should not forget that dyslexia is not just an English-speaking difference. There are dyslexics in every country, speaking every language. And because of that, we have started by writing Robby and all of our books about neurodivergent issues in Spanish. You can find Robby, el taxi dislexico y su aventura al aeropuerto, and all the places you buy your books, as well as the English version. We hope every child feels seen, and that those around them begin to understand more what it means to be dyslexic.