Reading Resources
Here at Wyoming Speech and Literacy, we are here to offer reading support in Cheyenne, Wyoming for struggling readers and children and adults with dyslexia. If your child is struggling, don’t hesitate to call and we’ll get your child the help they need. In the meantime, parents are often at a loss for how to help their struggling readers at home. After years of tears and frustration, it often feels like it’s not worth the battle. To combat this, I’ve compiled a list reading and dyslexia resources that I have found helpful as both a parent and clinician to help ease the stress.
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What is Dyslexia?
There has been so much misinformation spread about dyslexia in the past 30 years, it can be tough to sift through, so here’s as simple an answer as I can give. Dyslexia is a language-based reading disorder and can also be described as a core deficit in a person’s phonological system? Clear as mud, right? So what does that actually mean? The phonological system in the brain is the part of our brain that is responsible for producing (speaking) and perceiving (hearing) speech sounds. Individuals with dyslexia widely have deficits in their speech sound (phonological) processing systems. Individuals with dyslexia usually have good language comprehension and intelligence is average to above-average but reading is effortful and they are slow to progress.
So how does that phonological deficit impact reading development? When we permanently store words into our brain during reading we use a process called orthographic mapping. What happens is that the individual sound sequence in words is tied to the visual representation of that word and we store the word using that sound sequence. For a long time, people thought that dyslexia was a visual processing problem. While there may be some visual processing differences for individual’s with dyslexia, the true deficit often lies in their phonological system. Usually, we see deficits in a person’s perception of sounds (phonemic awareness) and their phonological working memory, where they can’t hold onto that sound sequence in a word long enough to store it in their long term memory. By 2nd grade, a strong reader can read a word two to three times and store it forever in their phonological inventory for instant retrieval. Some studies suggest that a struggling reader will need to read that same word 20-30 times to store it for future retrieval, which leads to painstakingly slow and laborious reading development. This situation is incredibly frustrating for both the child and their caregiver(s).
Additionally, there is a great deal of overlap between dyslexia and another little known disorder, developmental language disorder. Individuals with a developmental language disorder also have average to above-average nonverbal intelligence. However, they have deficits in more than just their phonological system. They also may have deficits in other language areas, such as vocabulary (semantics) word parts (morphology) and sentence formation (syntax). Some individuals who are identified as having dyslexia or a learning disability may actually have a developmental language disorder. Since reading is built on top of the existing language system in our brains, individuals with developmental language disorders will have significant difficulties with reading.
Help For Struggling Readers
If your child is falling behind in reading at school, it’s crucial not to let time slip away. Many children who struggle with reading early on can catch up with high-quality intervention but schools often lack the resources to make that difference early on. Due to issues such as large classroom sizes, lack of interventionists and intervention materials and appropriate curriculums, kids slip through the cracks every day. Many kids who are identified as dyslexic are very bright and as mentioned earlier, their intelligence is usually average to above-average. This may seem like an advantage, and it is! However, it does limit their access to school-based services. Many kids who are behind in reading but are otherwise very bright don’t meet cut off scores for special education to support reading. Additionally, many popular, commercially available interventions are minimally effective at best. Most highly effective interventions are researcher-designed and not available to the general public. Which is…not helpful. This leaves a lot of families left without any supports or interventions to help their child. The best armor for any parent in these situations is information, so get informed! While we are here to offer reading support, nobody knows your child better than you and you are their best advocate. The following websites offer a wealth of information:
Best Apps For Helping Young Children To Read
I’ve listed apps that I have personally found helpful for teaching young children to read. Love it or hate it, technology is here to stay. We may as well leverage it to our advantage when it’s possible. The following apps are either free, not cost prohibitive or have free computer versions and are legitimately helpful to teach reading skills. If you’re utilizing an app for learning, I highly recommend the guided access that comes on iPads to limit kids to the apps you’ve chosen
Teach Your Monster To Read is a wonderful app that’s available for a modest fee (the computer version is free) that teaches phonics and phonemic awareness with lots of opportunities to practice connected text. I love this app!
Teach Your Monster Reading Is Fun extends upon the skills taught in Teach Your Monster To Read and gives lots of opportunities to practice reading connected text. This app is also available for a minimal fee but the computer version is also free.
Khan Academy Kids is a great free app for reading and language development in young children. They seem to have really put a lot of time and effort into this app. It’s engaging for young kids. I know we spent a lot of hours on this program in my home during Covid.
Duck Duck Moose Reading is an app from the Duck Duck Moose suite of apps that provides phonics and phonemic awareness practice. Khan Academy purchased Duck Duck Moose, and provides these apps for free.
Best Apps and Websites For Older Reluctant Readers
The apps that are available for older students are unfortunately more costly. However, I do think there are some good options out there that won’t break the bank and will provide effective phonics and reading practice. These programs will never replace one-on-one interventions with a qualified professional, but they will certainly supplement and enhance progress.
Read, Write & Type (AKA Talking Fingers) is a web-based program that teaches spelling and decoding. Kids practice hearing and typing sounds and it has excellent results. Read, Write & Type is the K-2 Program and Wordy Qwerty is for grades 2-4. There is not an app version and it does require a computer with a keyboard, but the added benefit is kids learn typing skills, which is vital in today’s world. I do wish there was an app since so many students have iPads with keyboards nowadays. I like that it can be used with both younger and older children.
Touch-Type Read & Spell is a reading app that teaches phonics and phonemic awareness through typing. Encoding (spelling) practice is a powerful way to reach struggling readers because spelling (encoding) is a higher-level task than decoding (reading). Basically, if you can spell a word, you can definitely read it. Students practice hearing and typing sounds, words, and sentences to build phonics and phonemic awareness skills. It’s an Orton-Gillingham program, which is sought after by a lot of parents currently. It looks similar to a program with A LOT of research behind it called Read Write Type, but is app-based.
Even though the ultimate goal is independent reading, it is so important that kids develop their comprehension skills by listening to books at or above their grade level. Past fourth grade, we learn most new vocabulary through the texts we read, so if struggling readers don’t listen to books while they’re developing their decoding skills, their language skills can fall behind. Learning Ally has a wonderful app for listening to books that also allows kids to follow along with the highlighted written text. The voices are human readers, so it’s much better than most reading apps out there and it’s very user-friendly, which is probably why it’s so expensive. Audible is a decent option with good narration if you just want to listen to books, but Learning Ally allows learners to follow along with the text, which makes it even better for reluctant readers.
The last reading app that is worth mentioning is Speechify. This allows readers to take pictures of texts and it is read to them with human voices. This can be hugely helpful, especially for people who greatly struggle with reading, as it allows them to access texts across any situation as long as they have internet access. It is also costly, but may be greatly beneficial, especially for people with significant reading struggles who have difficulty accessing texts in everyday situations.
Decodable Books
One of the most challenging things for a parent of a child who struggles to read is finding books for them to read that don’t just leave them frustrated and in tears. As a parent, I’ve been there. Decodable books were a lifesaver for me and my kids and for a lot of other reluctant readers out there. Decodable books are usually controlled by what spelling patterns they introduce so that kids can read books and be successful (They’re ABLE to DECODE!). A caveat; don’t stay in decodable texts too long or limit your child to just decodable texts. We want to use these books for emerging readers to get proficient at sounding out and blending words during a real reading task (actually reading a book). However, kids need to read more complex texts to develop cognitive flexibility with the many spelling patterns of English and improve their language comprehension. Below I’ve listed some websites that offer free decodable books and some options available for purchase as well.
Flyleaf Publishing began offering decodable books for free online during Covid, and have kept a good portion of their web library since. I love these books. They’re beautifully illustrated and thoughtfully created. The best part is they can be read from a computer or tablet. The books are well worth the purchase if you want the full sets, but they are not cheap.
Half-Pint Kids has also kept a free online library of decodable books available since Covid. These books provide good practice for different vowel and consonant patterns and start at a very accessible level for young or struggling readers with a lot of books available at each level. The books available for purchase aren’t terribly expensive either, given how many books you get for each level.
The previous resources work just fine for younger, struggling readers but what if you have an older student? Older struggling readers don’t want to look different from their peers so they’re not going to want to read simple picture books. That’s where High Noon Books comes in. They offer decodable chapter books for older readers so they can practice their reading skills on their level. I highly recommend for students 3rd grade and beyond
Beyond Decodables is offered for free through a partnership with Boston Public Schools. These books are nice for older students because they are not too “kiddy” and they have photographs instead of cartoon drawings.
If you’re looking for paper materials, Learning Dynamics Texas offers a set of decodable books that you can purchase. The set comes with letter flashcards and a manual for teaching sounds and blending sounds into words in addition to the decodable books. Kids build on words and skills learned in previous books as they progress through. They used to offer free digital downloads of materials from their website as well but the links aren’t currently working but maybe that will be remedied in the future. Still, it’s a solid, inexpensive print material resource.
Whole Phonics: These are not available as web-based, but these are my personal favorite series of decodable books. I’m not making any assumptions about which type of phonics instruction is better. You will hear people claiming that their synthetic or whole phonics programs are the superior teaching of phonics. I’m not going there. What I will say is that these books are engaging to kids. I’ve even worked with later elementary-aged students who enjoyed reading these books. For some kids, these were the first books they had ever read independently and being sucessful really boosted their confidence. I’ve tried a lot of different decodable book series and this is my favorite so far for introducing reading whole texts.
Final Thoughts
To understand the critical role of a speech-language pathologist in reading disorders, we have to reframe the way we think about reading and writing. Our brains are designed to process and produce oral language, but we use that same language system to read and write. It’s simply (except not at all simple) a different way of inputting information into our brains. For oral language, language comes into our brains through our ears and we share our thoughts with our words verbally. For written language, language comes into our brains through our eyes when we read, and we share our thoughts with the words we write.
Oral language is generally simpler than written language. We use more basic vocabulary and sentence forms in conversational speech and even elementary students with language disorders have some basic mastery of conversational language. Language disorders can be difficult to identify by teachers or parents based on oral language skills alone if not assessed by a speech language pathologist. Written language, however, is much more complex. If there are any mild deficits in a person’s oral language systems, these can translate into much larger written language deficits. It’s absolutely imperative that the underlying language systems, especially the phonological system, are robust for reading and writing to develop. Speech language pathologists are the language experts who can help identify and support ANY language difficulties, including those found in written language. In fact, recent research suggests that most children with reading difficulties displayed some speech and language deficits at one point in their lives and are at risk for slower language development (Adlof & Hogan, 2018).
If you think your child might need reading support, a speech and language evaluation for your struggling reader isn’t just helpful, it’s often imperative to identify whether a person may have dyslexia and/or a developmental language disorder. If your child has other areas of need, such as executive functioning/attention needs, autism, or other learning disabilities, language and reading will also be impacted. Children with complex profiles’ reading development will be best supported by a speech-language pathologist who has training in multiple areas and can support complex needs. The bottom line is this: if your child is struggling to read, speech-language evaluation and intervention can identify underlying deficits in a child’s language system (including their phonological system) that may underlie their reading difficulties and is imperative for their future success. Get in touch with Wyoming Speech and Literacy. We offer unparalleled reading and dyslexia support in Cheyenne, Wyoming with teletherapy options available for those outside of our community.
