The Dyslexia Institute Literacy Programme (D.I.L.P)

The Dyslexia Institute Literacy Programme (D.I.L.P) is a structured, multi-sensory, cumulative phonics programme to support reading, spelling and writing skills. D.I.L.P not only aids with literacy skills including phonics, but strategies to reinforce a pupil's metacognition, autonomy and self-efficacy. The student corrects their own work by using a self-checking sheet to allow them to identify their mistakes. This will encourage them to proofread their work in the mainstream classroom when copying from the board or doing some free writing. 

D.I.L.P encourages discussion about language use through its 'Directed Discovery Learning' approach where the teacher invites the learner to discover what letter point or spelling rule is being introduced through the use of visual, kinaesthetic or auditory clues. The role of the teacher is to provide the scaffolding at the start of the lesson, allowing the student reflection time to discover language rules and patterns for themselves. 

Part of the learning difficulties faced by people with Dyslexia, involve weaknesses in phonological decoding and encoding (grapheme-phoneme correspondence and vice versa), including in both short term and working memory. Teaching will require structure, overlearning and sequencing to reinforce automaticity and reduce working memory overload through small, achievable steps. 

Teaching needs to take into account a student with Dyslexia's challenges with segmenting words, blending sounds and identifying rhymes. Learning to read and spell depends on our ability to form automatic and permanent associations between what we see, hear, say and write. A multi-sensory approach through the interaction of visual, auditory and kinaesthetic channels, allows the learner to utilise their strengths whilst reinforcing the weaker modality.