Why Guessing Fails Dyslexic Readers
Bad reading habits like guessing can derail dyslexic learners. This story shows why explicit morphology and decoding—not guessing—build real reading skill, confidence, and long-term success.
As much as I try, it still feels like an impossible task to overcome the bad habits instilled by my student’s former teachers.
Eliza, a fourth grader, has been learning about morphology in Barton Level 5. Giving students explicit and intensive practice with affixes and the necessary spelling conventions is a high-value activity that pays long-term dividends.
During yesterday’s session, she struggled to read an adverb phrase. I was a bit surprised, so I asked her—without saying anything—to first write the word on her whiteboard and then box the suffix. I wrongly assumed she’d have no difficulty accurately decoding this two-syllable base word. As soon as she misread the word as security, I knew something else was going on.
Morphology is essential for all students, but there’s one aspect of morphology instruction that’s unique to dyslexic learners. Do you know what it is?
Since I wanted to understand why Eliza had gotten off track with this common word, I asked her. That’s when she told me her first-grade teacher said to simply look at the letters and then take various guesses about the word.
I see this student at 8 a.m.—not my favorite time of day—and the frustration I felt knowing she’d been given this information in 2022 made me want to scream. Of course, I refrained, but I did tell her it upsets me that her teacher taught her something that’s wrong and doesn’t work. And that her teacher should have known better.
Yes, teachers may not have learned how to teach reading in college—but there’s no excuse, in my view, for telling students to guess.
I started watching the recording of Eyes on Reading: A Neuroscientist, a Teacher, and the Science of Reading, which Emily Hanford moderated. Reid Lyon, who previously worked at NIH and helped create Reading First—a massive federal effort from the early 2000s to improve how children are taught to read—had this to say: “Understanding what it takes to learn to read requires a very nimble brain. It requires good critical thinking.”
There is no critical thinking taking place if teachers tell students to guess.