After A Pandemic Delay, Kansas Is Changing How It Teaches Reading With Dyslexic Students In Mind

WICHITA, Kansas — The way kids in Kansas learn to read is in for a major rewrite.

Teachers will soon ditch their time-worn old memorize-and-context-clues methods. In their place, they’ll work with state teacher colleges on new styles meant to accommodate dyslexic students and other children who struggle with books. For instance, they’ll train kids to break down words and to methodically drill through English’s tricky rules.

Screening will be key to the new approach. Schools will put more effort to identify children with the poorest reading skills and give them special help — before that weakness snowballs and sinks them on other subjects.

But the effort gets a late start, delayed by the pandemic and the setbacks it made in efforts to train teachers in a fresh, determined approach. Dreams of state money to fund those changes got trashed by a battered economy and the damage that left to the state’s budget.

Read more: https://www.kmuw.org/post/after-pandemic-delay-kansas-changing-how-it-teaches-reading-dyslexic-students-mind