Designing Your Reading Instruction with Dyslexia in Mind with Rae Pritchett

Listen to the full episode to hear about designing your reading instruction with dyslexia in mind:

In this podcast, we talk a lot about how to best incorporate literacy into your classroom that will benefit all of your students. But as teachers, we know that every student is not on the same academic level and some of our students have learning disabilities that we need to take into consideration when giving our instruction. One of the learning disabilities impacting students is dyslexia. In today’s episode, I have guest Rae Pritchett who is providing us with an understanding of dyslexia through best tips and practices.

Rae Pritchett is a curriculum author and Special Education Facilitator specializing in the area of teaching reading to students with Learning Disabilities. Rae is a passionate educator with more than 20 years of teaching experience and she holds a master’s degree in education, a CAGS in Educational Leadership, and is a certified Dyslexia practitioner. Rae shares her knowledge of teaching reading to students with Learning Disabilities on her blog and by teaching education courses through The Learning Tree Professional Development Network, LLC, an online teaching college Rae co-owns with her teacher husband.

Throughout the episode, Rae provides a wealth of knowledge on understanding dyslexia in a way that teachers can easily translate that to the instruction they provide for their students. Since dyslexia is an unexpected difficulty in reading, particularly in relation to a student’s cognitive abilities, Rae breaks down what that can look like for each child.

Our conversation continues to circle back to two main points: the importance of early intervention and understanding the whole child. Rae discusses action steps you can take in your classroom if you notice potential warning signs of dyslexia in a student, while sharing tips on how teachers can design their reading instruction for students with learning disabilities in their classroom. These two ideas help contribute and are most effective when understanding the whole child and learning their areas of struggle when it comes to literacy. 

This episode is full of wonderful and useful information that can be easily transmitted to your own classroom and group of students. By the end of this episode, you’ll have a better understanding of dyslexia and the best tips and practices to reach all of your students’ academic needs!

In this episode on dyslexia, we discuss:

• A detailed definition of dyslexia with further explanation for what that can look like for students in your classroom 
• How the science of reading will help students with dyslexia, especially in the general education classroom
• A complete list of assessments you can give your students to assess all areas of reading
• Breakdown different subtypes of dyslexia 
• The importance of early intervention and understanding the whole child

Connect with Rae:

• Check out Rae’s blog  
• Take a course with Rae 
• Follow Rae on Social Media
• Read Rae’s Guide on Teaching Reading to Students with Disabilities

Connect with Megan:

• Check out my TpT Store
• Subscribe to my E-mail list
• Instagram Posts
• Blog Posts
• Facebook Posts
• Watch my YouTube channel 

About The Literacy Dive Podcast:

Do you find yourself seeking new ideas when it comes to literacy instruction in elementary classrooms? The Literacy Dive Podcast was created to offer actionable steps and to share information for teachers, like you, who are always looking to improve their craft! ELA is our jam and we are excited to dive into all things reading and writing with you!

Your host, Megan Polk, is the creator and owner behind The Literacy Dive and loves to support students and their teachers with curriculum, literacy instruction, best practices, and engaging literacy activities.

Dive in with us every Monday for a new episode from Megan! She, and her guests, will chat about various literacy topics and will bring you tips and tricks that can easily be implemented in your classrooms. You can tune in wherever you get your podcasts! Listen to The Literacy Dive Podcast on platforms like Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, Google, and more! If you find value from listening to this podcast, please rate this show, leave a review, and follow!