{"course":{"slug":"ai-for-teachers","title":"AI for Teachers","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/ai-for-teachers","level":"beginner","track":"work"},"lesson":{"slug":"for-students-who-struggle-to-read","title":"For students who struggle to read","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/ai-for-teachers/for-students-who-struggle-to-read","position":52,"of":57,"minutes":9,"answer":"The same text can be made reachable for a struggling reader by chunking, spacing, a glossary and an audio version (all free.","keyIdea":"The same text can be made reachable for a struggling reader by chunking, spacing, a glossary and an audio version (all free, all in minutes) and the trap is simplifying the ideas when the barrier was the format."},"body":{"format":"markdown","text":"## Two different problems with one word\n\n\"Struggles to read\" covers two things that need opposite responses.\n\nSome students struggle to decode: dyslexia, a visual difficulty, an unfamiliar script, a low reading age from missed schooling. Their thinking is fine. The barrier is getting the words off the page.\n\nSome students struggle with the ideas: the content assumes knowledge they do not have. The barrier is conceptual.\n\nThe word \"simplify\" is what teachers reach for, and the model resolves it, as the check question shows, to the second problem: shorter, fewer ideas, key events removed. For the first group, that is the wrong fix. It makes the text readable and empty. What they needed was the same ideas in a format they can decode.\n\n## Format changes that keep the content\n\nAsk for these by name, not for \"simpler\":\n\n> Figure: Two different problems behind one phrase. A two by two grid, rows Barrier is decoding: dyslexia, unfamiliar script, low reading age and Barrier is the ideas: the content assumes knowledge she lacks, columns \"Simplify this\" and Reformat, keep every fact: Barrier is decoding: dyslexia, unfamiliar script, low reading age and \"Simplify this\": Readable and empty. The history has been removed, not delivered.; Barrier is decoding: dyslexia, unfamiliar script, low reading age and Reformat, keep every fact: The same history in a shape she can get through. The questions still work.; Barrier is the ideas: the content assumes knowledge she lacks and \"Simplify this\": Sometimes right, by accident, and it hides which problem you had.; Barrier is the ideas: the content assumes knowledge she lacks and Reformat, keep every fact: Still unreachable. She needs the idea explained another way, not respaced.. \"Simplify\" is resolved by the model to the conceptual problem: shorter, fewer ideas, events removed. For the student whose thinking is fine and whose barrier is decoding, that produces a text that is readable and empty. The diagnostic is cheap: give her the audio version, and if she follows it, the barrier was decoding.\n\n- **Chunking.** \"Break this into sections of no more than four sentences, each with a plain heading.\" A wall of text is the first barrier for a struggling reader; the same words in short blocks with signposts are reachable.\n- **Sentence length.** \"No sentence over 15 words. Keep every fact.\" The voice lesson covered why the number matters.\n- **A glossary at the top.** \"List the eight hardest words with a one-line meaning before the text.\" Pre-teaching vocabulary is one of the best-evidenced supports for weak readers and the model produces the list in seconds.\n- **Signposting.** \"Start each paragraph with the sentence that says what it is about.\" Struggling readers cannot afford to hunt for the point.\n- **Explicit sequence words.** \"Use 'first', 'then', 'after that' for events.\" Chronology carried by tense alone is invisible to a reader working hard on each word.\n- **Keep every fact.** Say it explicitly. \"Do not remove any event, name or date.\" Then check that it did not.\n\nThe result is the same history, in a shape a student with dyslexia can get through. The questions still work.\n\n## Layout is yours, not the model's\n\nFont, spacing and colour matter for dyslexic readers, and the model cannot see the page. In your document tool: a sans-serif font, 12 to 14 point, line spacing 1.5, left-aligned with a ragged right edge, wider margins, and for some students a cream or pale background rather than white. All of that is a minute in Google Docs, Word or LibreOffice. Some students find a coloured overlay or a reading ruler helps; a strip of coloured plastic is cheaper than any software.\n\nPrint one version. The chunked, spaced, glossaried version is easier for everyone, and handing it to the whole class removes the stigma of the \"special\" sheet.\n\n## Audio, for free\n\nEvery phone can read text aloud. On Android, Select to Speak in accessibility settings; on iPhone, Speak Selection. Microsoft Edge has Read Aloud on any web page or PDF, free, with reasonable voices in many languages. Google Docs and Word both read aloud. The model's own voice mode can read what it just wrote.\n\nFor a student who decodes slowly, hearing the text while following it on the page changes what they can access, and this is listening to the history, not being excused from it. Put the text where the student can play it: a shared document, a PDF on the phone, a recording you make once with the phone's own reader. The next lesson is the detail.\n\n## The other group: the ideas\n\nWhere the barrier is conceptual, the fix is different and the earlier blocks covered it: the four-explanations lesson, the concrete-before-abstract order, the misconception-first explanation. Do not chunk a text a student cannot understand; explain the idea another way. Knowing which group a student is in is the diagnostic skill, and it is yours: give them the audio version, and if they follow it, the barrier was decoding.\n\n## Summaries as a scaffold, not a replacement\n\nA useful pattern: the model writes a five-line summary of the text, the student reads that first, then the full text. The summary gives them the shape, so the full text is filling in rather than discovering. It also gives a weak reader an honest exit (they know the main points even if they only get halfway through the detail) without the detail having been deleted from what they were offered.\n\n## The honest limit\n\nA format change makes a text reachable. It does not teach reading. A student who reads the chunked version this week still needs the phonics, the fluency practice, the specialist support that builds decoding, and the model is not that. What it does is stop the content of history, science and geography being withheld from a child while the reading is being taught, which is what \"simplified\" texts, and a generation of thin worksheets, used to do."},"check":{"question":"A teacher asks for a \"simplified version\" of a history text for students with dyslexia and gets a shorter passage with the key events removed. Students can now read it and can no longer answer the questions. What went wrong?","options":[{"text":"It removed content when the barrier was format; ask for chunking, spacing and a glossary instead.","correct":true},{"text":"Dyslexic students cannot handle the original content at that level, so the questions should have been simplified to match the text.","correct":false,"tempting":"Dyslexia is a difficulty with decoding, not with ideas; the content was reachable with the right format and was removed unnecessarily."},{"text":"The text was simplified correctly for the students, and the problem is that the questions were left too hard for the simplified version.","correct":false,"tempting":"The questions were the assessment of the content; the fault is in a \"simplification\" that deleted what the questions assessed."},{"text":"The teacher should have simplified the text by hand, since a model cannot make a text accessible without losing its meaning.","correct":false,"tempting":"The model does format changes well when asked for format changes; the instruction asked for something vaguer and got the default meaning of \"simpler\"."}]},"prev":{"slug":"explaining-in-the-language-students-speak","title":"Explaining in the language students actually speak","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/ai-for-teachers/explaining-in-the-language-students-speak"},"next":{"slug":"speech-to-text-and-text-to-speech-for-free","title":"Speech-to-text and text-to-speech, for free","url":"https://addaly.com/learn/ai-for-teachers/speech-to-text-and-text-to-speech-for-free"},"authorship":"Founder and series editor: Dr Mustafa Mun. Written by AI models to a written standard. Exam keys checked blind by a second model: 3,665 of 3,666 agreed. Academic review invited.","review":{"status":"Draft, open for academic review"},"cite":"Addaly (2026) 'For students who struggle to read', in AI for Teachers. Edited by M. Mun. Addaly. Available at: https://addaly.com/learn/ai-for-teachers/for-students-who-struggle-to-read (Accessed: 13 October 2026).","licence":{"name":"CC BY-NC-SA 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/"},"reader":{"schema":1,"title":"For students who struggle to read","courseTitle":"AI for Teachers","module":{"index":7,"slug":"the-multilingual-mixed-ability-classroom","title":"The multilingual, mixed-ability classroom"},"answer":null,"keyIdea":"The same text can be made reachable for a struggling reader by chunking, spacing, a glossary and an audio version (all free, all in minutes) and the trap is simplifying the ideas when the barrier was the format.","hero":{"kind":"figure","figure":{"t":"figure","label":"Figure","figure":{"cols":["“Simplify this”","Reformat, keep every fact"],"rows":["Barrier is decoding: dyslexia, unfamiliar script, low reading age","Barrier is the ideas: the content assumes knowledge she lacks"],"type":"matrix","cells":[["Readable and empty. The history has been removed, not delivered.","The same history in a shape she can get through. The questions still work."],["Sometimes right, by accident, and it hides which problem you had.","Still unreachable. She needs the idea explained another way, not respaced."]],"title":"Two different problems behind one phrase","caption":"“Simplify” is resolved by the model to the conceptual problem: shorter, fewer ideas, events removed. For the student whose thinking is fine and whose barrier is decoding, that produces a text that is readable and empty. The diagnostic is cheap: give her the audio version, and if she follows it, the barrier was decoding.","cellLabels":[["the common mistake","the fix"],["accidental","wrong tool"]]},"alt":"Figure: Two different problems behind one phrase. A two by two grid, rows Barrier is decoding: dyslexia, unfamiliar script, low reading age and Barrier is the ideas: the content assumes knowledge she lacks, columns “Simplify this” and Reformat, keep every fact: Barrier is decoding: dyslexia, unfamiliar script, low reading age and “Simplify this”: Readable and empty. The history has been removed, not delivered.; Barrier is decoding: dyslexia, unfamiliar script, low reading age and Reformat, keep every fact: The same history in a shape she can get through. The questions still work.; Barrier is the ideas: the content assumes knowledge she lacks and “Simplify this”: Sometimes right, by accident, and it hides which problem you had.; Barrier is the ideas: the content assumes knowledge she lacks and Reformat, keep every fact: Still unreachable. She needs the idea explained another way, not respaced.. “Simplify” is resolved by the model to the conceptual problem: shorter, fewer ideas, events removed. For the student whose thinking is fine and whose barrier is decoding, that produces a text that is readable and empty. The diagnostic is cheap: give her the audio version, and if she follows it, the barrier was decoding."}},"blocks":[{"t":"h2","id":"two-different-problems-with-one-word","runs":[{"text":"Two different problems with one word"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"“Struggles to read” covers two things that need opposite responses."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Some students struggle to decode: dyslexia, a visual difficulty, an unfamiliar script, a low reading age from missed schooling. Their thinking is fine. The barrier is getting the words off the page."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Some students struggle with the ideas: the content assumes knowledge they do not have. The barrier is conceptual."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"The word “simplify” is what teachers reach for, and the model resolves it, as the check question shows, to the second problem: shorter, fewer ideas, key events removed. For the first group, that is the wrong fix. It makes the text readable and empty. What they needed was the same ideas in a format they can decode."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"format-changes-that-keep-the-content","runs":[{"text":"Format changes that keep the content"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Ask for these by name, not for “simpler”:"}]},{"t":"ul","items":[[{"text":"Chunking.","b":true},{"text":" “Break this into sections of no more than four sentences, each with a plain heading.” A wall of text is the first barrier for a struggling reader; the same words in short blocks with signposts are reachable."}],[{"text":"Sentence length.","b":true},{"text":" “No sentence over 15 words. Keep every fact.” The voice lesson covered why the number matters."}],[{"text":"A glossary at the top.","b":true},{"text":" “List the eight hardest words with a one-line meaning before the text.” Pre-teaching vocabulary is one of the best-evidenced supports for weak readers and the model produces the list in seconds."}],[{"text":"Signposting.","b":true},{"text":" “Start each paragraph with the sentence that says what it is about.” Struggling readers cannot afford to hunt for the point."}],[{"text":"Explicit sequence words.","b":true},{"text":" “Use ‘first’, ‘then’, ‘after that’ for events.” Chronology carried by tense alone is invisible to a reader working hard on each word."}],[{"text":"Keep every fact.","b":true},{"text":" Say it explicitly. “Do not remove any event, name or date.” Then check that it did not."}]]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"The result is the same history, in a shape a student with dyslexia can get through. The questions still work."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"layout-is-yours-not-the-model-s","runs":[{"text":"Layout is yours, not the model’s"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Font, spacing and colour matter for dyslexic readers, and the model cannot see the page. In your document tool: a sans-serif font, 12 to 14 point, line spacing 1.5, left-aligned with a ragged right edge, wider margins, and for some students a cream or pale background rather than white. All of that is a minute in Google Docs, Word or LibreOffice. Some students find a coloured overlay or a reading ruler helps; a strip of coloured plastic is cheaper than any software."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Print one version. The chunked, spaced, glossaried version is easier for everyone, and handing it to the whole class removes the stigma of the “special” sheet."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"audio-for-free","runs":[{"text":"Audio, for free"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Every phone can read text aloud. On Android, Select to Speak in accessibility settings; on iPhone, Speak Selection. Microsoft Edge has Read Aloud on any web page or PDF, free, with reasonable voices in many languages. Google Docs and Word both read aloud. The model’s own voice mode can read what it just wrote."}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"For a student who decodes slowly, hearing the text while following it on the page changes what they can access, and this is listening to the history, not being excused from it. Put the text where the student can play it: a shared document, a PDF on the phone, a recording you make once with the phone’s own reader. The next lesson is the detail."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"the-other-group-the-ideas","runs":[{"text":"The other group: the ideas"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"Where the barrier is conceptual, the fix is different and the earlier blocks covered it: the four-explanations lesson, the concrete-before-abstract order, the misconception-first explanation. Do not chunk a text a student cannot understand; explain the idea another way. Knowing which group a student is in is the diagnostic skill, and it is yours: give them the audio version, and if they follow it, the barrier was decoding."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"summaries-as-a-scaffold-not-a-replacement","runs":[{"text":"Summaries as a scaffold, not a replacement"}]},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"A useful pattern: the model writes a five-line summary of the text, the student reads that first, then the full text. The summary gives them the shape, so the full text is filling in rather than discovering. It also gives a weak reader an honest exit (they know the main points even if they only get halfway through the detail) without the detail having been deleted from what they were offered."}]},{"t":"h2","id":"the-honest-limit","runs":[{"text":"The honest limit"}],"role":"limit"},{"t":"p","runs":[{"text":"A format change makes a text reachable. It does not teach reading. A student who reads the chunked version this week still needs the phonics, the fluency practice, the specialist support that builds decoding, and the model is not that. What it does is stop the content of history, science and geography being withheld from a child while the reading is being taught, which is what “simplified” texts, and a generation of thin worksheets, used to do."}]}],"check":{"question":[{"text":"A teacher asks for a “simplified version” of a history text for students with dyslexia and gets a shorter passage with the key events removed. Students can now read it and can no longer answer the questions. What went wrong?"}],"options":[{"text":[{"text":"It removed content when the barrier was format; ask for chunking, spacing and a glossary instead."}],"correct":true,"tempting":null},{"text":[{"text":"Dyslexic students cannot handle the original content at that level, so the questions should have been simplified to match the text."}],"correct":false,"tempting":[{"text":"Dyslexia is a difficulty with decoding, not with ideas; the content was reachable with the right format and was removed unnecessarily."}]},{"text":[{"text":"The text was simplified correctly for the students, and the problem is that the questions were left too hard for the simplified version."}],"correct":false,"tempting":[{"text":"The questions were the assessment of the content; the fault is in a “simplification” that deleted what the questions assessed."}]},{"text":[{"text":"The teacher should have simplified the text by hand, since a model cannot make a text accessible without losing its meaning."}],"correct":false,"tempting":[{"text":"The model does format changes well when asked for format changes; the instruction asked for something vaguer and got the default meaning of “simpler”."}]}],"order":[1,3,0,2],"why":null},"prev":{"slug":"explaining-in-the-language-students-speak","title":"Explaining in the language students actually speak","minutes":8},"next":{"slug":"speech-to-text-and-text-to-speech-for-free","title":"Speech-to-text and text-to-speech, for free","minutes":8}}}