Topic 5: Processing Areas and Reading

Learning Disabilities that impact reading are diverse and may take many forms. This section describes how challenges in different psychological processing areas may contribute to reading difficulties. It draws on information compiled from York Region District School Board’s resource Understanding How Processing Affects Learning:  A Guide to Supporting All Students, Particularly Students with Learning Disabilities. [6]

Phonological Processing:

Phonological processing includes both phonological awareness and phonemic awareness—skills that involve recognizing and manipulating sounds in spoken words.   

Students may experience difficulty with: 

• Identifying or making rhyming words
• Clapping the number of words in a sentence
• Breaking a word into chunks
• Separating sounds in words (e.g. /t-o-p/ for “top”)
• Blending sounds to make words
• Remembering sounds in spoken and written words
• Connecting their sound awareness to their sound-symbol knowledge
• Decoding new words 
• Decoding text which may affect extracting mean when reading independently

Instructional strategies:  

• Explicit Phonemic Awareness Instruction
  • Sound Blending: Say individual sounds and have students blend them together to form a word (e.g., /c/ /a/ /t/ = “cat”).
    
  • Sound Segmentation: Give a word and have students break it into individual sounds (e.g., “dog” = /d/ /o/ /g/).
    
  • Rhyming: Practice identifying words that rhyme to help with auditory discrimination.
    
  • Initial Sound Identification: Provide words and have students identify the first sound (e.g., “sun” = /s/).

• Scaffolded Phonics Instruction
  • Start with Simple Sounds: Begin with simpler, more frequent sounds (e.g., consonant-vowel-consonant words like “cat”) and gradually increase complexity.
    
  • Move from Concrete to Abstract: Start with hands-on activities (e.g., using letter tiles) and then gradually transition to more abstract tasks (e.g., reading or spelling words).
    
  • Introduce Word Families: Teach word families (e.g., “-at,” “-it,” “-og”) to help students recognize patterns and build new words with similar sounds.
    
  • Model and Provide Examples: Explicitly model how to decode and blend sounds in words, and then have students practice with a guided example.
  • Provide visual prompts:  covering chunks of words
  • Use multi-sensory methods to develop sound/symbol association: For example, visual auditory, kinesthetic and tactile senses
  • Co-create learning walls, anchor charts and word walls (including multilingual word walls) to be used during assessment and instruction 
  • Ensure texts are provided in a compatible format for speech-to-text software
  • Use multimodal methods to develop sound/symbol association 

Language Processing: Language can be divided into comprehension and expression across all domains.  This module focuses on language processing in reading.

Students may experience difficulty with: 

• Naming letters/numerals/symbols in the early years
• Print concepts
• Understanding and or expressing vocabulary
• Word order and grammar in sentences
• Reading fluency, comprehension and critical thinking
• Extracting important ideas in text
• Comprehending text 
• Factual and abstract information, humour, figurative language, and nuances

Instructional strategies:

• Teach new vocabulary in the context of information that the student already knows on the topic
• Notice and name new vocabulary as it emerges 
• Model new concepts
• Use intentional instruction to teach reading skills 
• Use a variety of instructional strategies to present information 
• Have students paraphrase what s/he has read
• Ensure necessary resources and all student work is available in accessible formats 

Visual Spatial Processing:  The ability to organize visual information into meaningful patterns.‘

Students may experience difficulty with: 

• Remembering letter formations and letter patterns
• Understanding how parts fit together to make a whole 
• Knowing how to use transitional words appropriately (e.g. first, then)
• Picking out important visual details
• Interpreting charts, maps, tables, graphs and pictures to extract the needed information
• Accessing excessive text and visual on a page or google slide 

Instructional strategies:

• Break texts into smaller, manageable chunks
• Highlight key words to emphasize important information
• Allow for the use of tablets or e-readers that can allow for adjustments in font, size, colour and spacing
• Ensure all relevant information is together (e.g., all parts of a question are on the same page)
• Label diagrams and provide written explanations of the labels
• Use pre-reading strategies such as discussing topics, showing related images, and looking at headings/subheadings 

Memory: The ability to retain information.  It includes short-term, working and long-term memory as well as the retrieval of information. 

Students may experience difficulty with:

• Remembering information they have just read
• Remembering information long enough to use it and understand it
• Sight word recognition and spelling
• Remembering information over time
• Remembering information without memory cues 

Instructional strategies:

• Teach the use of memory aids (e.g.,  mnemonic devices verbal mediation, rehearsal, lists, organizers) 
• Build repetition and review into each lesson
• Break tasks into chunks/segments 
• Check for understanding of what has been read, rather than rote recall

Processing Speed: The ability to perform tasks quickly and efficiently 

Students may experience difficulty with:  

• Recognizing simple visual patterns and scanning visual information quickly

• Rapidly naming letters and symbols
• Reading and writing fluently 
• Reading for comprehension in an efficient manner

Instructional strategies:

• Support reading fluency by teaching the ability to automatically recognize common letter sequences used in print and sight vocabulary 
• Teach the ability to recognize common letter sequences used in print automatically 
• Create word banks, anchor charts and learning walls to be used during instruction and assessment 

Executive Function: The ability to plan, organize and monitor learning, behaviour and emotions.   

Students may have difficulty with: 

• Setting reading goals
• Recognizing when a new strategy is necessary
• Keeping track of their place when reading
• Completing a reading task

Instructional strategies: 

• Provide outlines and organizers in advance
• Model and teach students how to break down reading assignments/projects into smaller steps
• Use minilessons to introduce new strategies
• Prompt students to use memory aids

Access the full resource:

Understanding How Processing Affects Learning – YRDSB Guide (2024).