Phonetic approaches will enable a child to learn to read short, easily decodable words, but your child will need to learn additional strategies to recognize longer words and words with irregular spelling patterns. Such words become more common as a child progresses beyond primary level.

The older child with dyslexia needs to have workable strategies that are aimed at higher reading levels; otherwise, the child will tend to become bogged down, habitually reading in a slow, labored, and halting manner. Such strategies include the ability to segment words into component parts, to recognize roots and affixes as well as compound words, and to combine meaning-based, contextual strategies with decoding.

One school program for teaching these strategies is called REWARDS. REWARDS is an acronym for Reading Excellence: Word Attack and Rate Development Strategies. Geared to children in fourth through twelfth grades, it consists of twenty classroom lessons, usually given over the course of five weeks.

Students are taught to use and combine several alternative strategies to analyze word structure and segment words into parts, including phonetic blending strategies and recognizing affixes, helping them learn a flexible approach aimed at more efficient word recognition.

Dr. Virginia Berninger of the University of Washington has reported impressive gains with a program geared to fifth graders with dyslexia that uses high-interest materials to teach words using visual, auditory, and morphological strategies. Students focus on learning what the word looks like, what it sounds like, and what it means. According to Dr. Berninger, learning all three elements of the word together builds brain connections that foster a “jump-start” in reading.