The difficulties which children who are dyslexic have relate to the processing of information.  All learners process and respond to information by utilising vision, hearing and touch/movement.   Another way of describing this is to talk about visual, auditory and tactile/kinaesthetic processing.  As we are all uniquely different in our profiles of strengths and difficulties, we have different preferences and strengths which enable us to process information, understand it, learn from it, store it in memory and then respond to it or recall it when necessary.

If children are dyslexic, there is normally a weakness in one or more of these processing routes so that if a child has difficulty with processing information visually then this has obvious implications for learning to read and spell because we have to be able to discriminate visually between the different letters and words in order to recognise, understand, memorise and recall them.  If a child has a strength in auditory processing then this will be the preferred mode for learning.  Such children will depend on the use of context for learning to read but will struggle with the decoding of reading.

When the auditory route is the area of difficulty, children will have poor *phonological awareness.  They will find it difficult to discriminate between letter sounds and will find it difficult to hear the rhymes in similar sounding words like ‘hat’ and ‘cat’.  This deficiency will also have implications for learning because the children will find it very difficult to build up their phonic skills particularly for encoding in spelling.

Tactile/kinaesthetic skills enable us to learn from carrying out tasks in a practical hands on way.  We can, for example, visualise the shape of letters if we feel their cut out shape on sandpaper.  We are more likely to remember the science lesson if we have taken part in the experiment by carrying out a series of actions and observing the reactions.

Those children who find literacy learning easy are likely to have strengths in both the visual and auditory processing routes.  Children who are dyslexic will have a difficulty with one or both of these routes.  It is therefore essential that all teaching particularly at the early stages, should be multi-sensory to enable children to utilise their areas of strength.  One multi-sensory strategy is the use of a sand tray to trace out the letters of their name while saying the sounds.  This engages all the senses within the process of learning.

It is essential that children who are dyslexic understand their own particular learning styles in order that they have ownership of the learning process.  Teachers and parents will have to help them understand what their learning styles, strengths and preferences are.  More importantly, teachers must ensure that teaching styles match learning styles to enable children to engage in the learning process.  This can be done best by ensuring that teaching involves multi-sensory methods to include visual, auditory and tactile/kinaesthetic elements.

Other factors also affect how children learn.  Such factors include time of day, light, sound, heat, social groupings, motivation, persistence etc.  These factors can also be mapped for individuals to help them to understand how they learn and under what conditions learning is likely to be most productive.  Dunn & Dunn (1994) and Given & Reid (1999) provide further information on learning styles and related factors.