Sound Sunday: Learning to Read at Age 15

Learning to Read with Dyslexia (Word list) on Soundcloud

Listen to the sound of a dyslexic student reading this list of words.

Every Saturday I tutor a 15-year-old Boston Public School student who can’t read. She is severely dyslexic, which means that she struggles to segment words into letter sounds, to rapidly retrieve information from long-term memory, and to juggle novel information in her working memory.

There are two important stories here. One is this student’s courage and commitment to learning how to read. Listen to how hard she works to read simple, phonetically regular three-letter words. After several months of work, she is on the cusp of a breakthrough. When she gets to the other side, I want her to hear how she used to struggle. The second story is a darker one, about our utter betrayal of dyslexic children in public schools. Although 20 percent of the student population will need some remediation to become fluent readers, schools often can’t or won’t give these kids what they need to be successful members of our literate world.

Learning to Read with Dyslexia (Sentences) on Soundcloud

Boston, Massachusetts.

Post by Nancy Bloom, a reading teacher.