Effectiveness of Instructional Activities for Improving Reading Skills of Dyslexic Students

This study aims to identify the effectiveness of instructional activities in order to improve the reading skills of the students with dyslexia. The study focuses on using graphic video or presentation in order to facilitate the reading skill of dyslexic students.

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Introduction:
Dyslexia is defined as the learning disability which is associated with difficulties in
recognizing words and speech sounds that creates difficulties in reading. Dyslexia mainly affects
the brain areas that are responsible for processing language. It has been found that people with
dyslexia contains normal vision and intelligence (Frith, 2017). The most common symptoms
include late talking, difficulties in learning new words or slow learning, difficulties in forming
words appropriately, remembering letters, colors and numbers and confusion with the words that
sounds alike. The signs and symptoms of dyslexia is more apparent with in the school aged
children (Ellis, 2016). Research has indicated that people with the family history of dyslexia or
other disabilities related to learning are more susceptible to the consequence of the disorder. In
addition premature birth or other complications during the birth of a child is also associated with
dyslexia. Furthermore, individual difference in the brain areas that facilitates learning is also
responsible for the circumstances (van der Leij et al., 2013).
People with dyslexia have been found to face problems in the school in order to keeping
up with the peers. The lack of ability to read and learn could restrict a person to reach the
potential. People with dyslexia have been found to experience the consequence of behavior
change, anxiety, depression, aggression and detachment with parents, friends and wider
community due to their inability. Thus, it can be said that, situation could lead to prolong social,
educational and economical sufferings as well (Frith, 2017). The causes associated with such
consequence may be the family history of dyslexia, exposure to harmful substances such as
alcohol, drugs or tobacco premature birth or difference in the parts of brain that facilitate
reading. 70 to 80% people with poor skills of reading or learning have been found to be dyslexic
and 1/5 students have been identified to have different learning disabilities and dyslexia is one of

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the most common disability among them (Ellis, 2016). Statistics has reported that 43.5 million
children and adults have been found to suffer from dyslexia in United States (Youman & Mather,
2013). Thus, it has become one of the major concern of the population. Dyslexia cannot be
cured, however, with early diagnosis and intervention it could be managed. Thus, most of the
people with dyslexia have been found to be succeeded in school or learning with the help of
effective learning approaches and specialized educational programs. Hence, it is important to
identify effective learning programs and approaches to facilitate the learning of dyslexic people
(van der Leij et al., 2013). In this regards this study aims to identify the effectiveness of
instructional activities in order to improve the reading skills of the students with dyslexia.
It has been found that reading comprehension does not gathered attention as other
learning skills. The ultimate goal of developing reading skill is to develop the ability to derive
meaning from a text and improve the skill of decoding. Student with dyslexia have been found to
experience difficulties in reading comprehensions and derive the meaning due to their lack of
ability to decode texts. Such student have been found to access or gather information from
textual material. Thus, there is a need for applying effective strategies to help such student to
improve their decoding skills to enhance reading skills (Pearson, 2014). Previous studies have
indicated that instructional strategies in classroom are one of the effective approaches that could
help to improve reading skills significantly. Lundberg & Reichenberg, (2013) has reported that
instructional strategies are more effective than the remediation programs as well. Different
instructional activities such as using graphics videos, providing art work, encouraging to read
articles and puzzle solving have been used for improving the reading skill of dyslexic students
(Wanzek et al., 2013). Small group activity such as providing task cards and introducing relevant
objects in the learning session are also used as instructional activity. In addition, interviewing the

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student have been identified as the effective tool in order to recognize the strengths and
weaknesses of the students and utilize them in the instructional activities to facilitate their
improvement (Berninger et al., 203). Furthermore, group learning strategies and different reading
comprehension activities are also utilized in instructional activities. Study has reported about
effectiveness of instructional strategies in improving reading skills of dyslexic students.
However, some previous studies has reported about lack of generalized improvements. It has
been informed that the reading test is carried out on the materials that are used during
instructional activities, thus, the effectiveness of instructional activities could not be generalized
beyond the learning session (Lundberg & Reichenberg, 2013). Such findings have made it
difficult to understand the impact of instructional activities on reading skill. There are different
instructional activities as mentioned before, however, the study will focus on using graphic video
or presentation in order to facilitate the reading skill of dyslexic students. Thus, this study
focuses to prove the hypothesis that instructional activities such as graphic video or presentation
is associated with the improvement in reading skill of the students with dyslexia.
Research question:
 Is there a functional relation between the types of instructional activities such as graphic
video or presentation and increased level of scores on reading test of a student with
dyslexia?
Relevant testable hypothesis:
Using the independent variable graphic or presentation related instructional activities and
dependent variable curriculum based measurement the students will be evaluated for their
reading comprehension acquisition. The formative assessment model, a CBM-Maze test, will be

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compared to the standardized summative assessment of the Gates– MacGinitie test. Therefore,
the relevant testable hypotheses for this study will be:
H1: Students with dyslexia will respond more effectively to the CBM- Maze test than to Gates-
MacGinitie test.
H2: Using instructional activity such as graphics or presentation would increase the ability of
decoding and enhance fluency, hence improve reading skill of dyslexic student.

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References:
Berninger, V. W., Lee, Y. L., Abbott, R. D., & Breznitz, Z. (2013). Teaching children with
dyslexia to spell in a reading-writers’ workshop. Annals of Dyslexia, 63(1), 1-24. doi:
10.1007/s11881-011-0054-0
Ellis, A. W. (2016). Reading, writing and dyslexia (classic edition): a cognitive analysis.
Psychology Press. Retrieved from https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781317365785
Frith, U. (2017). Beneath the surface of developmental dyslexia. In Surface dyslexia (pp. 301-
330). Routledge. Retrieved from
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Lundberg, I., & Reichenberg, M. (2013). Developing reading comprehension among students
with mild intellectual disabilities: An intervention study. Scandinavian Journal of
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Pearson, P. D. (2014). The roots of reading comprehension instruction. In Handbook of research
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van der Leij, A., Van Bergen, E., van Zuijen, T., De Jong, P., Maurits, N., & Maassen, B. (2013).
Precursors of developmental dyslexia: an overview of the longitudinal Dutch dyslexia
programme study. Dyslexia, 19(4), 191-213. https://doi.org/10.1002/dys.1463

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Wanzek, J., Vaughn, S., Scammacca, N. K., Metz, K., Murray, C. S., Roberts, G., & Danielson,
L. (2013). Extensive reading interventions for students with reading difficulties after
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Youman, M., & Mather, N. (2013). Dyslexia laws in the USA. Annals of dyslexia, 63(2), 133-
153. doi: 10.1007/s11881-012-0076-2