Emergent Bilinguals with Dyslexia

Teachers of Emergent Bilinguals! October is Dyslexia Awareness Month! Many of you, with or without realizing it, may have emergent bilinguals with dyslexia in your classroom. We’re focused on equity through evidence-based instruction this year, so let’s talk about how we can help emergent bilinguals who have this learning disability.

What is dyslexia?

The International Dyslexia Association defines dyslexia as … “a specific learning disability that is neurobiological …. characterized by difficulties with … word recognition … poor spelling and decoding abilities. These difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language ….”

It’s important to remember that dyslexia is a language-based learning impairment. A person with dyslexia has trouble connecting the sounds in their oral language to symbols in written language.

What are the signs of dyslexia?

Usually, in English proficient children, this difficulty presents itself in Grades PreK-2 when they (hopefully) receive phonics instruction in school. Teachers will notice that the student is behind their peers in decoding – recognizing letters, connecting sounds to letters, and blending sounds to make words.

As other students gain more and more skill in decoding and consequently, begin learning more content and vocabulary through reading, students with dyslexia tend to get stuck at decoding letters.

Dyslexia also tends to affect spelling, handwriting and written expression. As a result, students may have difficulty spelling words, forming letters, and using punctuation correctly. They might also have trouble expressing what they know in writing grammatically. They may lack the stamina to write at length.

In older students, additional signs of dyslexia could be a reluctant reader or writer, limited vocabulary, and poor reading comprehension.

In 2022, the NYC Department of Education piloted a new initiative that screened elementary and middle school students for dyslexia. The assessment tool is called Acadience. The city also provided resources and training to implement appropriate instruction for those students at risk. The screener is still expanding as part of the broader NYC Reads initiative, which has introduced new Language Arts curricula aligned to the Science of Reading.(More on SOR later!)

Is dyslexia an intellectual disability? 

Dyslexia is not an intellectual disability. Historically, people with dyslexia have been stigmatized as having less intelligence because they have difficulty learning to read. In fact, people with dyslexia often have above-average intelligence. Dyslexia, like many conditions, is on a continuum from slight to severe. Students with only a slight impairment may easily get overlooked and judged as “lazy.” And students with severe dyslexia may mistakenly be placed in self-contained classes with students with intellectual disabilities.

What about emergent bilinguals with dyslexia? 

Now that you are up to speed on what dyslexia is and what signs to look out for, let’s talk about emergent bilinguals with dyslexia!

Since dyslexia is a language-based learning disability, our first question is:

What is my student’s level of oral English proficiency?

Students who are brand new to English have not yet acquired the sounds of the language, so we can’t expect them to be able to decode letters and words right away. Both younger and older emergent bilinguals should have at least a few months of oral language development before receiving phonics instruction.

The next question is: if the student is already communicating in English orally, what is their level of decoding skill? 

Students with intermediate or advanced oral English proficiency can and should be assessed on their knowledge of decoding (the city is currently using i-Ready to assess beginning-of-year decoding skills).

Another very helpful measure is the student’s level of decoding skill in the Home Language. i-Ready has a component that assesses reading skills including decoding in Spanish.

In older students, NY state’s Multilingual SIFE Screener can help educators determine if a newly arrived student is two or more grade levels below in Home Language literacy. This would  classify them as a Student with Inconsistent/Interrupted Formal Education (SIFE).

It’s difficult to screen for dyslexia using a Home Language assessment, but there are a few out there: Amira Learning, mClass Lectura, and Multitudes at the University of California San Francisco all have created  dyslexia screeners in Spanish. Notably, Multitudes is also available in Mandarin!

The rule of thumb is:

IF the student has had enough time to develop oral proficiency, and has received explicit, systematic instruction in decoding skills and is still behind their multilingual peers in reading, THEN we may reasonably suspect this student has a learning issue that needs more attention. 

The final question, after you’ve determined the first two is: what kind of instruction does my student need to advance in decoding (and ultimately reading overall)? 

The simple answer is explicit, systematic instruction in five pillars of reading: the sounds of English (phonemic awareness), the symbols that represent those sounds (phonics instruction), vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension.

But emergent bilinguals also require instruction that includes cross-linguistic awareness of sounds, spellings, and vocabulary. 

Unfortunately at this time, most schools including the NYC Department of Education do not have a plan for teaching emergent bilinguals phonics outside of standard K-2 phonics curricula.  Phonics for Reading is good for students in grades 3-12 more than two grade levels below in reading, but it’s not designed for MLLs, and especially not newcomers.  PowerUp Literacy by Lexia is another good program available to NYC schools.

One amazing free resource is the University of Florida Literacy Institute’s Foundations Toolbox, which offers a ready-to-go phonics curriculum including a scope and sequence, phonics lessons with classroom slides, decodable readers, and much more.

Certainly, any ENL, Special Ed, or Literacy teacher could use these resources to work with students suspected of having dyslexia. 

Importantly, phonics instruction should be part of any Stand-alone English as a New Language program once newcomer students have acquired a few months of oral language proficiency. Decoding instruction is not just for students with dyslexia! All emergent bilinguals require explicit, systematic phonics instruction!

Teachers! Let me know in the comments section what other questions you have and how I can help you with your emergent bilingual students!

 

 

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