Have a struggling reader? Try these tips

What makes learning to read difficult? And how does having dyslexia make it even more challenging?

In this episode of In It, hosts Gretchen Vierstra and Rachel Bozek welcome literacy expert Louise Baigelman. A former teacher, Louise is the co-founder and CEO of the literacy organization Storyshares. She explains why reading can be so challenging for kids who struggle with dyslexia, and shares tips and strategies to help.

Tune in to get Louise’s expert advice on how to help struggling readers.

We love hearing from our listeners. Email us at init@understood.org.

• 9 terms to know if your child has trouble with reading

• The difference between dyslexia and dyscalculia

• 9 free public library resources for your child (and you)

• What is explicit instruction?

• Listen: Dyslexia is more than mixing up letters

(1:08) Why reading is such a challenge for kids with dyslexia

(2:06) The meaning of explicit instruction

(2:37) Common reading struggles for kids with dyslexia

(4:18) Reasons learning to read gets harder as kids get older

(5:19) Ways to engage struggling readers

(8:14) How audiobooks can help

(12:16) The science of reading

(17:11) Activities to help support reading  

(22:53) Next steps and tips for parents of struggling readers

Gretchen: Hello and welcome to "In It," a podcast for families with kids who learn and think differently.

Rachel: Here you'll find advice, camaraderie, stories of successes and, yes, sometimes failures from experts and from parents and caregivers like you.

Gretchen: I'm Gretchen Vierstra, a former classroom teacher and an editor here at Understood.org.

Rachel: And I'm Rachel Bozek, a writer, editor, and mom who has definitely been in it.

Gretchen: Today on the show, we're talking about reading especially, but not only for kids who have dyslexia.

Rachel: How can parents and caregivers encourage kids to read? What's the latest thinking on the best way to teach reading? And why has the thinking on that changed so much in recent years?

Gretchen: To get into all of this, we're talking with Louise Baigelman.

Rachel: Louise is the co-founder and CEO of the literacy organization Storyshares. She's also a former teacher.

Gretchen: Well, hi, Louise. Welcome to "In It."

Louise: Hi. Thank you so much for having me.

Gretchen: We're so excited to have you here today. And we're excited to talk about reading, especially for kids with dyslexia.

But first, can you start us off by talking a bit about why reading can be so challenging for these kids?

Louise: Yeah, well, it is more of a challenge for various reasons. You know, reading is is actually not a very natural process for the brain in the way that's, you know, speaking and listening and processing oral language are. And so, there's a lot that needs to be done from an explicit instruction perspective to provide students with the tools to access text. And when students have dyslexia, there are extra layers in there that make it more difficult to read the printed word.

And so, it is an additional sort of layer of of processing that that can stand in the way of of students being able to decode text. And then, of course, from there, it's such a foundation to being able to comprehend and make meaning out of that text.

Gretchen: OK. Hold on one second. For those of you who aren't teachers, you might not know what the term explicit instruction means. So, the gist of it is it just means clear, direct instruction. So, for reading, for example, it would be teaching hard skills that kids need to know to learn to read, like phonics versus soft things like handing them a book and expecting them to look at pictures and figure out how to read.

Louise: Yeah.

Gretchen: OK. So moving on, what are some common struggles teachers or parents might see when it comes to reading for kids with dyslexia?

Louise: So, in the early grades, you know, when students are starting to learn the different sound patterns and how the printed text aligns with certain sounds, certain students start getting those patterns relatively quickly and then being able to apply them. And with students with dyslexia, you might notice that they totally understand what's going on when they're being read to and they can comprehend it and really high levels that when it comes time to actually decode the text themselves, that maybe there's challenges to interpret those individual words.

And so, the older grades, this creates additional challenges because if you're an older student and you're still working on decoding, you know, you don't want to be reading books that are really focused on specific sounds and your comprehension can be really high. And so there can be a mismatch there. And there's several strategies for addressing that as well.

Rachel: How do kids challenges with reading and dyslexia change as they get older? I think that that was a great example. But are there other ways that you've seen that experience kind of evolve for kids as they get older?

Louise: Yeah. So, one of the challenges is that reading is typically thought of as something that we teach in the early elementary grades K through two. That's where there's a focus on it. That's where teachers are trained in how to teach reading. There's time in the school day and the schedule for those instructional periods. The books are intended for a student who is learning to read at those earlier foundational levels.

And so, as students get older, there starts to become a mismatch because, A, there's not as much time in the day for really explicit literacy instruction, and B, the teachers, besides the interventionists or literacy specialists, don't have the background knowledge or training on how to explicitly teach reading. And then see there's this mismatch.

If you're in fifth grade, for example, or eighth grade, but you're still working on your decoding skills, the books don't interest you. They don't feel representative to you or relevant because they're still typically made for those earlier grades. And so, one of the key things with learning to read is engagement and that. It becomes a little bit more challenging the older students get if they're still working on those foundational skills.

Gretchen: Yeah. So, engagement is key. So, do you have any strategies for how families can find the right books for their kids, especially if their kids struggle with reading or have dyslexia?

Louise: So, I always say that if you start with their interests and what do they love already. There are books on absolutely every topic. If it's a student who loves cooking, find a cookbook and choose a recipe together to make something out of it as an activity, but provide a lens or a window into something that's inherently engaging for them. So that's one piece.

I think the second one is I always say any reading is good reading, especially for those students developing their literacy skills. So, sometimes as parents, we want to say, "You know, well you should be reading this" or "This has too many pictures" or maybe a comic book doesn't feel academic enough or even an audiobook, you know, you're not actually getting the quote-unquote right kind of practice. But I think all of those layers put a lot of pressure on the parent. And also they make sort of a detached experience from what the kid is drawn to and what they are allowed to practice with.

So, if we can be pretty open-minded as we're trying to help students get over that initial engagement barrier and let them choose and not judge those choices because they're not the end result, they're a scaffold to get to that point of of true proficiency.

Rachel: I wanted to just jump in and thank you for mentioning comic books. I just, I had this moment when you said that where I remember volunteering at a book fair years ago and helping kids like find a book that would be interesting to them and and hearing kids once in a while say like, well, I don't want to get a comic book because like, my parents won't think that's a book or they're not going to count, you know, like they're not going to feel like I bought a real book. And it would make me crazy because it's just like, it's a story and it's a book.

Gretchen: Yeah. And isn't there something kind of beautiful about letting kids just pick whatever they want versus, you know, when you're in class and you're told like, here's this finite set of books you have to choose from. A lot of times those books really appeal to kids, but when they get into something like a fair or the public library where there's just so many options, reading can become more exciting.

Louise: Exactly. Yeah, and that's a great point, too, as far as the power of choice, because with anything, when you are told what to do or you feel like you have a limited set of options, it's a totally different experience psychologically than when you feel like you have all these choices. And the book fair is a great example because we all remember the experience of going to book fairs. There was just inherent joy in that, and partly it was because you had to just go and pick the books you wanted. And that's a power that we can leverage and we're trying to inspire reading practice.

Gretchen: We've talked a little bit about this before on "In It," but it's always good to say it again. So, is listening to an audiobook reading?

Louise: Yes. So, there are all of these different strands of reading which have to interweave together to the ultimate goal of making meaning from text. And some of those are print based as far as decoding the letters and being able to interpret a word from the letters on a page. But most of the ones that come after that are all about making meaning from that text. And so audiobooks are a really powerful way for students to develop all of those other skills of interpretation and building background knowledge, vocabulary and then ultimately comprehending and making meaning from text.

And so, absolutely, you know, if I listen to an audiobook on a long drive, I say, I read that book, right? And so, it is a way to be able to fully access text. I think, you know, it is not getting at the initial piece of the actual word letter interpretation, but it doesn't mean it's either or. It actually provides a way often for students to hear the words. And if you're looking at them on a page, associate the sounds that the letters are making with the way they sound.

And so, it is absolutely a powerful scaffold for students learning to read and similar to what I mentioned earlier. For students with dyslexia, they can understand, you know, let's say you're a ninth grader and you have dyslexia, you can understand a huge amount. And so, it's discouraging and frustrating to have to read books that feel kind of, you know, below the level that you're able to really engage on intellectually. And so, audiobooks also provide a way to get around that.

Gretchen: So, if an older kid is struggling in, like, let's say, science in high school and they've got the science textbook they need to read all the time for homework. As a parent, if your child is not getting access to an audiobook and they do have dyslexia, should you ask that science teacher, Is there an audiobook version of this textbook my child can use at home?

Louise: Absolutely, yeah. That is an example of a way to provide a pathway to accessing the meaning. And I always think about what is the purpose or the intent, right? So here in science in high school, your goal for that activity is not actually to be learning to read letter by letter. It's about accessing the content, the knowledge-rich material. And so if you can do that through an audiobook, the intent is served. It's not about, you know, feeling like you somehow skipped over a piece that was super relevant to that activity or outcome.

Rachel: Yeah, this has come up a little bit when we've talked about 504s and accommodations and the idea that some kids who are maybe really sensitive to the idea that they're, you know, getting, you know, getting the lesson differently than from other kids, that they feel like they're in some way cheating, right? Or like going around the system. And it's, it is so important, I love that you explained it that way, that it's not about how they're getting the information. It's that they're learning this content.

Louise: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's one of the pieces where there is stigma from every level of feeling, you know, different and especially in those older grades when we're so aware of ourselves relative to our peers. But just like with anything, there are different access points. And so, being able to articulate that, you know, you get what you need in order to ultimately achieve the same goal and sort of normalizing that for both students and their parents.

Rachel: Yeah. So, let's pivot to something that I think will be useful for all parents, regardless of whether or not your child has dyslexia, and that is reading instruction. There's been a lot of debate around it. What works, what doesn't work. Can you help us make sense of that? Like what's considered the best way to help kids learn to read these days?

Louise: That's a great question. So, there's been a really big shift in the recent years around how do we teach reading effectively. And so whereas, you know, even five years ago and certainly for many years before that, we were using balanced literacy, which was more focused on sort of softer access when it came to or to the words. And that often would suggest that students looked at the picture and guessed the meaning.

Now, the science of reading has been widely adopted, and the important thing about the science of reading is it's not just one approach. It's really just about using strategies, instructional methods, programs that are science-based, that are backed by research. And that's everything from when students are working on phonics and decoding to fluency, making meaning from text, building background knowledge, vocabulary, and comprehension.

So, all of those, there are strategies that are supported by science of reading. And actually a lot of it takes into account what dyslexia programs have been doing for decades and just applies it to teaching reading more broadly because it's a little bit more of a structured and controlled approach to that instruction.

Gretchen: So, what is the role of phonics in all that?

Louise: Yeah. So, phonics are one of the earliest building blocks in learning to read. And I always say that the word decode I think is cool because it has code in it. And the idea is when you're learning phonics patterns and rules, you're getting a key to decode future words. So, you're not just learning that one word, you're learning it in a systematic way where you can then apply it to the next word and the next word. And in that way you're developing a much more comprehensive and applicable approach to encountering new words.

And so, phonics is one of those core pieces where we've learned that explicit instruction in those phonics patterns, the sounds that letters make or that pairs of letters make is a really strong initial piece of developing those foundational literacy skills.

Gretchen: And I ask that because I know for me, when I was a teacher in the classroom, I never taught elementary. I taught middle school, but I obviously knew about what was going on in the district in terms of teaching reading. And there was a while where families and teachers thought of phonics as, "Oh our kids don't need that. That's so basic. That's going to make reading boring. Instead, we're just going to surround them with books and read all the time, and that's how they'll learn to read." And we now know that that's not how that works, right?

Louise: Totally. Yeah. So, that is the balanced literacy era. I was also a teacher in the balanced literacy era, so I know exactly what you're describing. And, you know, phonics done poorly can be, can be boring. And so, I think there is some nuance to how it's approached. But we've also found that if you just surround kids with books, you know, surround them with books for sure either way, but you have to give them the tools to access those books.

And so, phonics instruction is not the end all, be all, because once you've mastered it, you get to go on to those more engaging pieces. But if you provide that up front, then it changes that pathway. And actually, if you think about writing, so I think I might have been, you know, I might have learned to read when I was a kid without phonics instruction. I'm not exactly sure what programs were being used, but, you know, a lot of us learned to read in spite of it. But I am actually a terrible speller.

And on the flip side of decoding is encoding, which is when you know those same keys to a code, you can spell words using those patterns. And so, I've wondered, as you know, in the recent years, if that had an impact on, you know, my sort of guess and check approach to spelling, because if students have strong decoding instruction, it enables them to write with those same rules and therefore spell better.

Gretchen: I kind of think of it a little bit like, well, in math you have to learn your math facts, right? Those are like basic concepts you need to have in order to move on to the more exciting math problems. Seems like a similar thing to me.

Louise: Exactly. Exactly. It is one of those strands that you have to intersect. And then, yeah, you can add complexity as you go, but if you skip over it, then we're just finding that huge numbers of students didn't develop those skills and that can continue to be a barrier at every level.

Gretchen: You know, besides school, there are other places and activities that can help kids become readers. So, for example, perhaps like activities at a public library. What are some places or things that families should be doing with kids, you know, places to take them or things to do that can help support their reading?

Louise: Yeah. So, the library or the bookstore, just to our point before where you can make an activity out of it, everyone gets to go pick out one book. It's always fun to go choose books. And then to your point, libraries often have really amazing programming where you can, you know, bring your kid and do something that's hands-on. But related to reading and to up the intrigue that way. I often talk about, you know, family reading time as an option because I think, and I have little kids and I'm aware of this, too.

It's not always easy to implement, but if you can have a little structure where you're fully participating as a family. So, it's not like you go read, you know, it's actually like we're all going to pick whatever we want and we're just going to take 30 minutes on Sunday morning and you find your favorite cozy chair or spot in the house and sort of, you know, practice what you preach so that your kids also see you reading and sort of feel like it's a shared experience even if you're not actively reading the same book. I think that is a powerful strategy as well.

Rache: I remember when my kids were in elementary school, they would have this 20 minutes a night requirement to read and sometimes it was really hard to make that happen because they definitely fall into the camp of like kids who are not just like, "Oh hey, there's a book I want to read." Like, that's just not what's happening here.

And I remember on the weekends, if we would go to like a children's museum or a zoo and they would have, you know, like along the exhibit, you know, like a paragraph about this animal in the paragraph about how they meet each other and what they eat. And I was like, "I will count that." I'm like, "If you spend 20 minutes while we're here reading these to me, I will totally count that as your 20 minutes for, you know, whatever day of the week." And that helped too. Like, just like you were saying, it's not necessarily like what the thing is that they're reading, but that they're getting that content and they're getting that experience.

Louise: Yeah, I love that. It goes back to the idea that any reading is good reading. And, you know, there's a lot of talk now about knowledge-rich texts and those are knowledge-rich, right? Those little blurbs, I still learn from them. If you go to a museum or an aquarium, and so that way it's about being able to access intriguing content about turtles or whales. And in a way, it actually adds another layer of showing the power of reading that you can see, you can look at the sign and you can read it to learn all about those creatures that you're looking at.

And I think even at those younger ages, if you think about signs, menus, their reading is everywhere. And I have a five-year-old and an eight-year-old. And so, my five-year-old is just starting to be able to read that for several years now, or at least a couple. She felt sort of like "It's so unfair that my brother could see those words and know what they mean." And so, you get to sort of play with that idea that it's a power.

Gretchen: I'm going to add one other tip for getting the 20 minutes done, because now I'm like, "Oh yeah, Rachel, I remember that." We used to play at breakfast. We would choose an audiobook that both kids could agree on and they would listen to the audiobook a little bit each morning as they ate their cereal.

Rachel: I love that.

Gretchen: It's another way to sneak in some reading.

Rachel: Yeah.

Louise: Yeah. And it's the same bedtime stories, too, right? I mean, I guess there are different levels of strictness of teachers, but there's a lot of research that shows that in those early years before we're even trying to teach them to access the text on their own, by reading to them every night, we're providing them with a lot of foundational experiences that will then serve their ability to interpret text independently. So, read-alouds for sure.

Gretchen: Yes. But I do want to add, too, because I know on the flipside, some parents freak out that they don't have enough time at night to read to their kids and then they worry, my gosh, am I the one that's making my kid have trouble with reading? And that's not true, right?

Louise: No, absolutely not. You know, we are everyone is doing what they can. I am a reading expert and this is what I talk about all the time. And I, my son's teacher only requires 15 minutes a night. And we don't manage it every single night. It is the challenge. And by no means, you know, are we able to fill all of the gaps, you know, along the reading journey. So, definitely go easy on yourselves, because it is a journey, for sure.

Gretchen: Nice.

Rachel: So, Louise, before we let you go, and this has all been super helpful, you mentioned, you've mentioned a couple of times that you used to be a reading teacher. Are there any other tips or advice for parents that you can share from that time that you spent in the classroom working with kids with dyslexia that may just kind of give them a little bit of peace of mind as they navigate this, if this is something that they're kind of in the early stages of working on and learning about?

Louise: Yeah. So, I think it's relatively common. And just knowing that and if you're starting to notice signs that maybe your child is struggling with reading or is frustrated accessing text, it never hurts to look into it more deeply because in that sense knowledge is power. And so, reaching out to your school, you know, being an advocate, just to see if you can have some assessment and some additional feedback around where they are. Because if your child is in fact, you know, struggling with reading because they have dyslexia, the sooner that you identify that, the sooner you can get some really targeted strategies and approaches and support.

And so, you know, I know I grew up in the era where my parents, my sister had ADHD and my parents were sort of like, it was more stigmatized then, and so, they didn't get her any support until she was in like high school. And I wondered now, as a part of this work, you know, if they had just been open to some of those approaches earlier, how that might have made a difference for her. So, I think you might be wrong, maybe they don't. They just need a little bit of extra practice in this way or that way. But it doesn't hurt to find that out. And then you have a whole different, you know, suite of options available from a support perspective.

And yeah, the other thing I would just say is it is difficult to identify an area where, you know, your child needs extra help, but you're not sure how to provide it. And reading is one of those areas because it is complex. It's not like math facts or I have to like remind myself a little bit what they were in elementary school. But then, you know, it's got all of these layers that can be challenging to tackle. So, just knowing that it's OK to feel overwhelmed and and to reach out for help, I think is, from a psychological perspective, important to keep in mind.

Gretchen: That's great advice because I feel like I have felt sometimes like, "Well, I know how to do something. I should be able to tell someone else how to do it, right? So, that does not apply to reading? No.

Louise: Exactly.

Rachel: Thank you so much for all of this. It's been really great talking with you.

Gretchen: Yes. Thank you so much, Louise.

Louise: Thank you so much.

Rachel: Thanks so much for listening today. If you have any thoughts about the episode, we'd love to hear from you. You can email us at init@understood.org.

Gretchen: And check out the show notes for this episode, where we have more resources and links to anything we mentioned.

Rachel: This show is brought to you by Understood.org. Understood is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences like ADHD and dyslexia. If you'd like to help us continue this work, donate at Understood.org/give.

Gretchen: "In It" is produced and edited by Julie Subrin, with additional production support from Cody Nelson and Ash Beecher. Justin D. Wright mixes the show and Mike Errico wrote our theme music. Briana Berry is our production director. Neil Drumming is our editorial director.

Rachel: From Understood.org, our executive directors are Laura Key, Scott Cocchiere, and Seth Melnick. Thanks for listening.

Gretchen: And thanks for always being "in it" with us.