Blending is the ability to put individual sounds together to form a word.
It’s an essential phonemic awareness skill that supports decoding (sounding out words while reading).
Example: Hearing the sounds /s/ /u/ /n/ and putting them together to say “sun.”
Students with dyslexia often struggle with blending, which makes it harder to read unfamiliar words.
The ability to sound out words using knowledge of letters and their corresponding sounds.
Encoding is the process of spelling a word by hearing the sounds and writing the matching letters or letter patterns.
It’s the opposite of decoding, and both require strong sound-letter connections.
Example: A child hears the word “ship” and writes the letters s-h-i-p to represent the sounds.
Reading with accuracy, speed, and proper expression.
Dyslexia can make fluent reading difficult even when children are able to decode words.
The mental process our brains use to permanently store words so we can recognize them instantly and read them automatically. Orthographic mapping is the cognitive process where the brain connects the visual representation of a word (its spelling) with its pronunciation, meaning, and memory. Students with dyslexia often struggle connecting sounds to letters.
The ability to hear and manipulate the sounds in spoken language (phonemes). This foundational skill is often weak in children with dyslexia. t’s a critical early reading skill and a core weakness in students with dyslexia.
Example: Knowing that the word “cat” has three sounds: /k/ /a/ /t/, and being able to change the /k/ to /h/ to make “hat.”
Frequent checks of a student’s academic progress to make sure interventions are working. Data should guide decisions about next steps.
RAN is the ability to quickly name a series of familiar items—like letters, numbers, colors, or objects—out loud. It reflects how efficiently the brain can retrieve and say known information. Students with dyslexia may have slower RAN, which can affect how fluently they read. It may also make it harder to quickly retrieve facts or vocabulary in other subjects, like math, science, or social studies—especially when put on the spot.
This doesn’t mean they don’t know the material, but accessing it quickly can be more challenging.
Refers to how quickly a student is making progress over time in response to instruction or intervention.
It’s usually measured by tracking scores from regular assessments, such as weekly or biweekly reading fluency checks, and plotting them on a graph.
Educators use ROI to determine:
If a student is catching up to grade-level expectations
If the current intervention is working
If more intensive support or a special education evaluation may be needed
If a student is receiving appropriate, evidence-based instruction but their rate of improvement is slow or flat, it may be a sign of a deeper learning difficulty, like dyslexia. Ask to see the progress monitoring graph!
RTI is a part of the Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS) that helps schools identify students who need extra help. It involves providing targeted instruction and then checking how well the student responds to that support over time.
If a student doesn’t show enough progress, even with high-quality instruction and intervention, this may signal a specific learning disability, such as dyslexia.
Segmenting
The ability to break a word apart into its individual sounds (phonemes).
It’s a key part of phonemic awareness and helps children learn to spell (encode) and read (decode) words.
Example: Hearing the word “dog” and identifying the three sounds: /d/ /o/ /g/.
Students with dyslexia often struggle with segmenting, which makes both reading and spelling more difficult.
Specific Learning Disability (SLD)-DYSLEXIA
A Specific Learning Disability (SLD) is a term schools use when a student has difficulty learning certain academic skills.
Dyslexia is a type of SLD that affects a child’s ability to read words accurately and fluently. In school evaluations, it may be described as an SLD in basic reading skills and/or reading fluency. This means dyslexia.
Structured Literacy
A systematic, explicit approach to teaching reading, writing, and spelling. Structured literacy benefits all students, but is critical for students with dyslexia (who will often need more repetition and practice to become fluent readers and writers).