Dyslexia and processing information – Classroom strategies to help
Pupils have a better chance of understanding and remembering information if they master note-taking, but for children with dyslexia, this challenge can feel insurmountable…
- by Angela Youngman
- Freelance journalist
For children with dyslexia, the key problem when trying to take notes concerns the way they structure and process information.
Project work, comprehension exercises, and writing about events form part of the everyday experience of a primary school child.
Learning to summarise information, identify points within a narrative, and make notes helps develop this type of writing activity. And of course, these are important transferable skills in and of themselves.
But how do you identify what the key points of the lesson are? What if you miss something important? How do you condense several sentences into just a few words?
Learning to do this is hard for any child – but for those with dyslexia, the problems are often magnified.
Dyslexic children struggle to read, write and concentrate all at the same time. It can be especially tiring for young children, thus causing lapses in concentration.
Pupils need to learn how to focus on key aspects of a subject, while also reading instructions and trying to write down information. Common abbreviations like e.g. and approx. can add to the confusion, likewise with letters that look similar to one another, such as b and d or g and q.
Write it down
Learning how to take notes at an early age ensures that pupils can:
- process and summarise information
- assess material from different sources
- develop better comprehension skills
Mastering this skillset can have long-term consequences, improving self-confidence and future academic performance.
This is a subject all too familiar to The Dyslexia Association, whose teachers help many young children cope with the problem.
“Our organisation works one-to-one with students with dyslexia on note-taking techniques and strategies such as mind mapping, flow charts, and using software that can help process and organise information and thoughts,” says director Kay Carter.
All teachers are aware that every minute in the classroom is precious, but making sure that dyslexic pupils have a chance to practise skills doesn’t have to take extra time.
Teaching note-taking techniques will actually benefit the whole class, simply because these are such essential skills.
Creating a summary on the whiteboard of what has been taught during a class helps show the value of these skills.
Highlighting key points also helps dyslexic pupils, because dyslexia can often affect working memory and processing speed.
The key is…
The first task is to show how to focus in on key aspects of a project or piece of work, such as identifying and explaining any new vocabulary.
Kay suggests that “teachers prepare word banks and visual information for new terminology or vocabulary”.
Encouraging children to approach a subject by asking basic questions highlighting the when, where, who, why, what and how immediately zeros in on key points.
Taking each in turn and identifying the answer allows pupils to create a basic informational structure. For example, when children are asked to create a story about animals, basic questions could cover:
- Where is the story based – in a zoo, the countryside, overseas?
- Who are the animal characters?
- Why are they important?
- What is the problem they have to solve?
- How do they solve the problem?
It’s also beneficial to use wide-lined paper to assist with writing, along with providing clear headings for information you’d like pupils to cover.
Once the child has become used to working with headings, they should learn to choose them for themselves.
Visual techniques
The next task is to find a way to outline this key information within a written document. There are a variety of ways to process and organise the information the child has identified as important, but since children with dyslexia often have strong visual memories, it is worth starting with some visual techniques.
Let’s take colour coding as an example. A different colour should be allotted to each specific theme or subject.
For example, pupils could highlight key vocabulary in red, information on location in blue, historical time periods in yellow, environment in green, etc.
Kay says, “This will help to reduce the cognitive load, because pupils are not writing long sentences, but are using key words, colours and images, which are quicker and less mentally taxing”.
Matching labels can be placed on resources, or pages within project materials, enabling children to quickly identify those sections.
As they create more work within those areas, they can file the material under the corresponding colours. Colour-coded cards or shapes containing very short notes can also help children organise their written work.
By manipulating and moving the cards around, they can create a list of notes organising their thoughts, which then just have to be copied out for later use.
Processing information with dyslexia
Kay believes that the biggest problem dyslexic children face relates to the way in which they process information. The written word is much harder for pupils with dyslexia to manage, and can affect overall comprehension.
They also find it hard to listen and write at the same time, often making it hard to concentrate and process and remember information.
“Children receiving specialist one-to-one tutoring at The Dyslexia Association, particularly those with working memory and processing difficulties, benefit greatly from targeted strategies such as mind mapping and flow charts,” Kay adds.
Teachers need to find ways to make connections on a step-by-step basis between what the child already knows and the new information.
To do this, it is essential to identify what the child already understands, say, about fire engines, and then identify what information they need to add in order to create a project exploring the work of fire crews.
Break it down
There are many teaching strategies that we can utilise when teaching note-taking and information processing to children with dyslexia.
Attempting to introduce dyslexic children to every technique in one lesson is likely to confuse rather than help, so it is better to deal with the subject over a period of weeks.
This enables a different technique to be tried in turn, and for you to encourage children to focus in on the strategy that they find most effective.
“There are lots of assistive technology programs available for younger children, and the market is forever changing,” says Kay.
“At The Dyslexia Association we try to maintain a catalogue of available interventions that are technology-based. They all depend on the type of intervention the class are concentrating on – for example, it might be spelling or phonological awareness.”
3 top resources for dyslexia
- Downloadable top tips leaflet from Bradford Council on assisting dyslexic pupils in the classroom
- An investigation into whether dyslexia overlays actually work, and how to use them for the best outcomes
- A five-minute film in which dyslexic children in KS2 and KS3 describe their troubles with writing. Plus, practical tips on how to support them
Angela Youngman is a freelance journalist.
