Use these strategies to help build on strengths:

• Use visual cues - pictures, diagrams, graphs to reinforce concepts
• Provide written instruction to look back on
• Talk at a slower pace
• Give one task at a time
• Repeat the instruction if needed

If the learner:

• Can sound out words
• Can blend sounds
• Can substitute letters
• Can work with word families/rhyming words
• Is very verbal and chatty
• Can't recognize words that he/she "knows"
• Has trouble with oral reading, stumbles, hesitates
• Gets lost and uses finger to find spot
• Spells based on the sounds
• Has problems with irregular sounds (ough, eigh)

Use these strategies to help build on strengths:

• Read directions aloud and provide oral instruction
• Use colour coding and colour transparencies
• Enlarge text
• Allow learner to use tape recorder to listen to text on tape
• Provide the learner with speech synthesis software like Kurzweil reader so he/she can scan and listen to text