Dyslexia
Dyslexia Curriculum
Take Flight
A Comprehensive Intervention for Students with Dyslexia was written by the education staff of the Luke Waites Center for Dyslexia and Learning Disorders at the Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children. Take Flight builds on the success of previous dyslexia intervention programs developed at Scottish Rite Hospital. Recent reading intervention studies, including data collected at the hospital, were the impetus for writing Take Flight and have contributed to its design. Teaching trials in Scottish Rite Hospital’s Dyslexia Laboratory and with therapists in public schools also influenced curriculum development.
Take Flight contains the five components of effective reading instruction supported by the National Reading Panel research meta-analysis and mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act:
- Phonemic awareness in Take Flight includes a systematic exploration of the articulation of phonemes and is fully integrated within decoding and spelling instruction.
- The phonics instruction of Take Flight was derived from the decoding component of the DTP. This instruction is now introduced at a faster pace in the lesson sequence, allowing more time for practice toward accuracy and automaticity and for more guided reading practice. An expanded use of etymology is also added to the lesson for teaching word analysis strategies.
- Vocabulary is expanded and enriched by developing morphological knowledge, word relationships, figurative language, syntax and semantics by direct instruction and in the context of reading.
- Fluency instruction incorporates guided and timed repeated reading of decodable words, phrases and connected text. Incentives, concrete measures of progress and daily home practice are also important elements of fluency training.
- A combination of scientifically-supported techniques is used for instruction in reading comprehension. These strategies include cooperative learning, comprehension monitoring, question generation, story structure, summarizing and inferencing. Students also learn how to utilize graphic and semantic organizers when reading narrative and expository texts.
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