In 2004, I began teaching a bright young child to read. Like many educators at the time, I turned to the internet for guidance and encountered countless articles claiming that the primary cause of dyslexia was a phonological awareness deficit. This idea—that children with dyslexia struggle mainly because they can't properly perceive or manipulate the sounds in spoken language—dominated the conversation.
Not a single adult has ever openly discussed why many kids misbehave. Many who misbehave are intelligent kids.
This observation comes from years of working with struggling readers. The pattern is unmistakable: bright, capable children are often the ones who act out the most in class.
Early wrong input is hard to undo. Claude Bernard saw it in the 1800s. Thorndike proved it in 1913. Charlie Munger explained why the mind closes the door.
For years I have been warning about instructional videos that teach consonant sounds with extraneous “uh”. These videos don’t just confuse children — they cause many to disengage completely from learning to read.
A respected teacher recently posted:
“A dyslexic brain needs about 400 exposures to a word to anchor it in long-term memory.”
It sounds authoritative. It sounds scientific. But is it true?
Welcome to Part 7 of How to Teach Dyslexic Kids! By now your student has built strong foundations in phonics, multisensory techniques, and the finger-blocking method for spotting reliable patterns like ee, oo, and other vowel teams. This stage focuses on two powerful unlocks: R-controlled vowels (the “bossy r” sounds)
Syllable division rules — the key to cracking longer, multisyllabic words.
Now I understand why many parents and teachers of dyslexic kids have not bought my book, Teach Your Child to Read — which is a complete programme with a QR Code for each chapter.
A few days ago, I found myself in a thoughtful LinkedIn exchange with R. Janet Walraven, M.Ed., an international award-winning author and passionate educator. The topic? Helping children—especially those who struggle—learn to read confidently and correctly.
Welcome to Part 6 of How to Teach Dyslexic Kids! We’re building directly on the finger-blocking method from Part 5. Once your student has solid success with ee (the long /ē/ sound), it’s time to introduce more common vowel teams and digraphs. This keeps the momentum going while systematically expanding their ability to decode thousands of new words.
Vowel teams (two or more letters working together to make one sound) are a frequent sticking point for dyslexic learners because English spelling is inconsistent. Explicit practice with the blocking technique turns confusion into confidence.
I have written several articles explaining that many children shut down from learning to read because they have been taught letter sounds wrongly — that is, with extraneous “uh” or “huh” noises tacked on, which makes blending almost impossible.
So here is the obvious follow-up question that almost no one ever asks me: If your hypothesis is correct, then how is it that many children who attend schools where “correct” pure sounds are supposedly taught right from Grade One still leave school as functional illiterates? If wrong sounds are the main culprit, shouldn’t every child succeed?
The “Blocking” Technique & Digraph Mastery
One highly practical strategy is helping children confidently tackle unfamiliar words is by spotting reliable letter patterns. The book Teach Your Child to Read introduces a simple, tactile “finger-blocking” method starting around Chapter 20.
This technique builds directly on phonics knowledge and gives kids a concrete, hands-on way to isolate and recognize common digraphs (two letters that make one sound) like ee, oo, ea, ai, etc.
Here is my reply to Allie and Emma Hartnell-Baker
I hear you, but you're still missing the point.
You're describing a kid limping because there's a nail embedded in his heel — and instead of pulling out the nail, you're listing a dozen other possible reasons: wrong shoes, poor nutrition, weak muscles, bad posture, lack of motivation, etc. Sure, those things could matter in some cases. But when 20% of kids have been leaving school as functional illiterates for decades, year after year, with the failure rate barely budging, it's time to stop the excuses and remove the damn nail.
How I Spot the Real Problem in Under 5 Minutes (And Why I’m Confident They’ll Read Fluently in 3 Months)
In Part 3 we covered memorising the 220 Dolch high-frequency words. These words appear so often in print that knowing them by sight gives children an immediate boost in reading confidence and momentum.
Now let’s address the question parents ask me most often:
“How can you be so confident that you will get my child to read within three months of two-hour lessons per week — even when the psychology report says he has dyslexia or a specific learning disorder?” LINK
Some belief systems have become so deeply ingrained in educators and policymakers that no amount of real-world experience or evidence seems to shake them. One of the most persistent is the claim that kids don’t need to know letter names to learn to read — and that teaching them can even make reading harder.
This idea circulates widely on social media and in teacher training circles. Yet every state still lists naming letters as a kindergarten standard. The result? Generations of children, particularly those with dyslexia or other reading challenges, continue to fall through the cracks.
Different Perspectives on Teaching Reading: Dolch Word Memorisation (High-Frequency Words)
In my recent Facebook discussions with educators Kylie Hoey and Barbara Schubert, the topic of rote memorisation of Dolch words came up. They expressed concerns that memorising words is inefficient, hit-and-miss, or creates bad habits compared to pure decoding. Kylie emphasised teaching words like “with,” “there,” and “one” through explicit decoding and etymology, while Barbara noted that comprehension doesn’t simply follow decoding.
Recently, I came across a comment from Allie-Alejandra Joyner, M.Ed.:
Founder, CEO & Creative Director at Create Curiously | Advancing Literacy Through Curiosity, Creativity & Voice
Luqman Michel, I have had many students in my classrooms over the years who might have been described as “shut down” or identified as emerging readers. How I helped these students was by never stopping the development of rich language through stories while also teaching with evidence-based practices. Often, the shift came from reframing their relationship with reading and rebuilding their confidence alongside explicit instruction. Listening to stories is not separate from learning to read. It strengthens language, comprehension, and connection. For many students, that is exactly what helps them re-engage and begin to read.
Even consonants are not spared.
Almost all the consonants too represent more than one sound.
When we correctly teach the sounds of letters — that is, without any extraneous “uh” or “huh” noises tacked on — many children still shut down if they haven’t first been taught the letter names. This is because a huge number of everyday words are actually pronounced using the sounds of the letter names themselves, not the isolated phonemes we drill in phonics lessons.
