Instructional activities for students with Dyslexia:

For students with dyslexia, it’s important to use instructional activities and games that build phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, and comprehension skills while keeping learning fun and engaging. Here are some effective activities and games:

1. Phonemic Awareness Activities

• Sound Manipulation Games: Practice isolating, blending, and segmenting sounds in words. For example, say a word like “cat” and ask the student to change the first sound to make a new word (e.g., “bat”).

• Rhyming Games: Encourage students to identify and generate rhymes to recognize sound patterns. Use cards or apps where they match pictures that rhyme.

2. Phonics-Based Games

• Letter-Sound Bingo: Create bingo cards with letters or letter combinations (e.g., “sh,” “ch”). Call out words, and the student marks the letter or sound that starts or ends the word.

• Word Building Puzzles: Use letter tiles or magnets for students to build words. Start with simple CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words and move to more complex words.

3. Multisensory Activities

• Sand or Salt Writing: Have students trace letters and words in a tray of sand or salt to reinforce letter shapes and sounds through tactile learning.

• Air Writing: Ask students to write words in the air while saying the letters and sounds out loud to incorporate movement and auditory feedback.

4. Sight Word Practice

• Memory Match: Create a memory game using sight words where students flip over cards and try to find matches (Dolch or Fry lists).

• Sight Word Hopscotch: Draw a hopscotch grid and write a sight word in each box. Students hop and read each word aloud.

5. Vocabulary and Comprehension

• Story Cubes: Use story dice so students roll and create stories. This supports creativity, vocabulary development, and sequencing.

• Graphic Organizers: Use mind maps or Venn diagrams to break down stories into manageable parts (main idea, supporting details, characters).

6. Digital Learning Tools and Apps

• Nessy Learning: Interactive phonics, reading, and spelling games designed for dyslexia.

• ABCmouse: Phonics-based reading games helpful for struggling readers, especially younger students.

• Reading Rockets: Games and activities focused on vocabulary and comprehension development.

7. Board and Card Games

• Bananagrams: A fast-paced word-building game where students create a crossword-like structure using letter tiles.

• Scrabble Junior: A simpler version of Scrabble that supports spelling and vocabulary.

• Zingo Sight Words: A bingo-style game where students match sight words to their cards to support fluency and word recognition.

8. Timed Reading Practice

• 1-Minute Reads: Have students read a short passage for one minute, then ask comprehension questions. Track progress over time to build fluency.

• Echo Reading: Read a sentence aloud and have the student repeat it back, emphasizing decoding and comprehension.

9. Decodable Books and Reading Practice

• Decodable Book Series: Use books with controlled vocabulary and phonetic structure, such as Bob Books or Flyleaf Publishing.

• Paired Reading: Read aloud with a partner or teacher for confidence, fluency, and immediate support with challenging words.

10. Spelling Practice

• Word Hunts: Give a target pattern (e.g., words with “ch” or “ck”) and have the student find those words in reading materials or their environment.

• Spelling Games with Flashcards: Use flashcards with words and have students spell them out loud to reinforce letter-sound connections.

These activities strengthen reading skills while providing a multisensory, enjoyable learning experience that supports the unique needs of dyslexic students.

Lori Wilkinson, M.Ed., NCED