Never Too Late Will be Published in April 2025
Never Too Late: Leveraging Technology to Support High School Readers with Dyslexia (2025), by Yvonna Graham and Victoria Francis, will be published by Solution Tree in April 2025. It’s available for pre-order now. This excites me, since I’m a co-author. More importantly, Vicki and I spent years collecting data in real high school classrooms. We think our work will make a huge difference for both students and teachers. Here’s what we’ve learned and finally organized into a book for other teachers.
Every Teacher has Students with Dyslexia
Around 20% ofthe population exhibits dyslexic traits. (Shaywitz, n.d.) So, this is a challenge every teacher faces at every grade level. In a class of 30 there would statistically be six students with dyslexia. Unfortunately, if reading intervention in the early grades didn’t provide students with adequate tools, students find themselves facing impossible assignments and falling further and further behind their peers in reading level, vocabulary, and general knowledge gained by reading.
High school students who can’t read well enough to comprehend their textbooks try to hide this fact. They eventually give up and drop out. We found ways to interrupt this downward spiral, and we are excited to share the tools we used that made a real difference. Best of all, these tools save teacher time rather than adding to an overloaded workday!
Dyslexia Doesn’t Disappear in High School, it Just Goes Underground
Dyslexia refers to a pattern of brain wiring that brings both advantages and disadvantages. It doesn’t go away as people age. However, coping strategies can be learned and people with dyslexia do learn to read.
Even when students with dyslexia manage to learn how to sound out words, this slow and painful process does not yield comprehension. That’s because by the time a long complex sentence such as this one is sounded out, the meaning is lost and the student must start over. The sentences in high school level material are too long to fit into short term memory if each word must be sounded out.
Support for Dyslexia has Been Hard to Find and Use
In the past, people with dyslexia had to find someone to read aloud to them in order to pursue high school and college studies. In fact, The “Library for the Blind” officially became the “Library for the Blind and Print Disabled” (which encompasses dyslexia as a print disability) when the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped updated its name to reflect a wider range of disabilities.
Availability of audiobooks presents a problem as well. Often, the book or article needed is unavailable in the audio library. Additionally, using this library of audio materials requires showing proof of a dyslexia diagnosis. Since 80% of people with dyslexia leave high school without a diagnosis, (Griggs, 2024) this help is barely touching the tip of the iceberg.
As Vicki and I followed our separate careers, as a high school teacher and as a reading tutor, we realized that students with huge potential were dropping out or flunking out at alarming rates. Many of these students struggled with dyslexia. This became personal when I tried to help my daughter with dyslexia. Vicki recognized dyslexia in her three younger brothers. Elementary school pull-outs only frustrated. We went on a mission to find something that made a difference for students facing a world of text they couldn’t read.
Access to Computers, Tablets, and Phones Changes the Game
As we were searching for solutions, those solutions were being built by computer programmers. Answers that didn’t exist when we started our quest began popping up at a dizzying rate. At the same time, computers, phones, and tablets became commonplace in schools. But we lacked research telling teachers how to use these new tools to support student learning and save teacher time. That became our goal and the subject of extensive trial and error in Vicki’s classrooms.
She and I adapted successful dyslexia tutoring techniques for high school and then found ways technology could take the place of a reader and scribe.
Free Technology that Changes Outcomes for Students with Dyslexia
When Vicki and I retired we knew what we needed to do. We had to put what we had learned into a book for teachers. We cheered when Solution Tree accepted our manuscript! The editors there saw our vision even more clearly than we did! We loved working with them.
We chose the six most important tools from our research. In the book, we detail the education research that’s been done so far relating to each tool. We then show how to use it in a high school classroom to allow full inclusion of readers with dyslexia. Along the way we share our experiences and those of other teachers to give a more personal peek into classrooms using the tools.
Six Tools You Really Do Want in Your High School Classroom
• Chapter 1: Using Text-to-Speech Tools: Complex sentences cannot be understood by slowly sounding out one word at a time. Thankfully, there’s a solution. Students can use text-to-speech apps to listen to reading assignments. This can help students with dyslexia fully participate in the classroom.
• Chapter 2: Using Speech-to-Text Tools: Students with dyslexia may be highly skilled in verbal language but can find putting words on paper nearly impossible. Furthermore, the poor quality of their own written work may make them avoid handing it in. Speech-to-text technology allows students with dyslexia to produce high-quality writing more easily.
• Chapter 3: Tracking Using Audio-Assisted Reading: You can’t teach struggling students how to read while teaching mathematics, biology, or even English literature. But you can provide tools students need to improve their reading and succeed in school. Tracking with a finger or eyes while listening to the text read aloud is the most powerful tool in this book. It may also be the most overlooked tool in high school professional development. Using audiobooks and text together involves active student participation. It allows students with dyslexia to build reading vocabulary while learning the same material as the rest of the class. Best of all, practicing this tool can benefit every student in your class.
• Chapter 4: Using Headphones as an Educational Support: Our world feels crowded. Noise and over-stimulation constantly distract some students while, ironically, some need sound (such as specific types of music or white noise) to concentrate. Either way, school classrooms can make focus challenging. Headphones make it bearable. A basic tool should not require an IEP or 504. Many professionals routinely use headphones to concentrate. Students with dyslexia benefit when allowed headphones during independent work.
• Chapter 5: Implementing Recorded Lessons: Recordings allow students with dyslexia to replay lessons to clarify understanding. Since multiple students may benefit from having a recorded lesson, it makes sense for the teacher to record rather than for several students to record from their desks.
• Chapter 6: Understanding the Impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI): Teachers may feel concerned that students can easily use AI programs such as ChatGPT and its competitors to write papers or do homework. AI in the classroom certainly presents challenges. However, AI may also prove the most powerful ed-tech tool ever invented. We discuss embracing AI programs instead of banning them. Happily, teachers can use AI to further empower students with dyslexia while easing the paperwork load for teachers.
What are You Waiting For?
We hope you alert your school administration about this book so your high school can become far more successful in retaining and graduating students who would otherwise leave in frustration and anger at a system that has failed them. You can find Never Too Late at Amazon or at Solution Tree Publishing.
References
Griggs, K. (2024). Intelligence 5.0: A new school of thought rethinking the intelligence needed in Industry 5.0. MadeByDyslexia. https://www.madebydyslexia.org/MBD-Intelligence-5.0-Report.pdf
Shaywitz, S. (n.d.). What is Dyslexia? See What Learners Are Saying About Overcoming Dyslexia on Coursera! Retrieved February 10, 2025, from http://dyslexia.yale.edu/learner-reviews/
By Yvonna Graham, www.dyslexiakit.net