Diverse Learners Top Hat Organizer

Article One: “Dyslexia: What Reading Teachers Need to
Know,” by Vickie Johnston
● Dyslexia is not a disability. It just means students’
brains are not processing the words they see
correctly.
● Students with dyslexia do need to be taught using
different methods, but do not necessarily need
additional funding and do not have any
intellectual delays.
● It is important for teachers to understand the way
we break down words when teaching students to
read, i.e. understanding phonology, morphology,
and syntax.
Article Two: “Neurodiversity: The Future of Special
Education?”
● Educators should shift from their negative
approach to special education (focusing on the
disability, trying to make up for some perceived
gap), to a more positive outlook of their students’
strengths.
● Educators should still recognize students’
diagnoses in order to get them services, but then
focus more on their individual traits and
characteristics when teaching them rather than
the diagnosis.

Similarities

● Teachers have misunderstandings about how the brain works both for dyslexic students and those who are
neurodiverse.
● For both neurodiverse and dyslexic students, we need to be more innovative in how we teach them literacy.
○ For example, we need to create better ways to teach dyslexic students phonics, that focuses more on
the sounds of parts of words than the individual letters.
○ For neurodiverse students, we should be teaching to the students’ strengths instead of focusing on
their disability. The way we teach special ed right now is stagnant.
● Both students with dyslexia and who are neurodiverse have brains that are wired differently and should be
educated on how the brain works and the benefits of their brains being different (for example, ADHD is
thought to be caused by our hunter-gatherer instincts). In other words, these students, and all students really,
should be literate in some basic brain science to understand and accept the differences between each other.
● Teachers and special educators should develop their own methods to see what works best to teach their
students literacy at a grassroots level and t=do their own research.

My Thoughts
As I’m reading through these articles, especially the one about dyslexia, I would love to see some videos of the
techniques being described to teach these students. I understand what the different parts of language are, but it is a
bit harder to visualize the techniques that the author describes. I am also recognizing how many of our classes talk
about the different types of students we’ll have and the need to accommodate them, but often neglect to give really
great strategies to make these accommodations. As I read the Special Education article, I am feeling this familiar
frustration, because it speaks broadly about the attitude that special education teachers should have when teaching
and about the need for change in how we teach special ed, but it does not give actual strategies. It is clear that
teaching these neurodiverse students requires us to adjust our teaching style, using many different types of
representations to teach our students, but the exact “how” to do this is a little lost. How can we ensure all students
are getting the best literacy training? How do we fix the false image that many students have about neurodiverse
students and how to teach them? Where can we find better strategies to teach these students? How do we use these
strategies and teach neurotypical students at the same time?