Program Overview

Introduction to the Dyslexia Success Series

The Dyslexia Success Series is a professional learning series designed for special educators who teach middle and high school students with intensive literacy needs. This series aims to build both knowledge and practical skills for participants, enabling them to provide effective support for students with characteristics of dyslexia.

About the Series

Dyslexia is a Specific Learning Disability (SLD) in Basic Reading Skills and/or Reading Fluency. Students with an SLD in Reading Comprehension may also have word-level weaknesses contributing to their reading difficulty. The series focuses on providing multi-component literacy intervention for middle and high school students, including instructional resources and tools derived from evidence-based practices.

Session Details

The series consists of several sessions, each with a distinct yet interconnected focus. The sessions are held one Saturday per month from 9:00 am 12:00 pm Central. The dates and brief descriptions of each session are as follows:

• September 21, 2024: Dyslexia as a Learning Disability: Discusses terms like dyslexia and characteristics of dyslexia, their relationship to specific learning disabilities, and conditions that can co-occur with learning disabilities.
• October 19, 2024: Improving Multisyllable Word Reading Using Authentic Texts: Builds knowledge about how the increasing complexity and integration of phonemes, graphemes, syllables, and morphemes impact reading and writing development.
• November 23, 2024: Spelling Multisyllable Words: Continues to build and apply knowledge about syllable patterns, high-utility spelling rules, and vocabulary knowledge as contributors to accurate spelling.
• December 14, 2024: Text Reading Fluency in Support of Comprehension: Focuses on planning purposeful repeated reading activities that use academic text while integrating word reading practice, vocabulary knowledge, and text comprehension.
• January 25, 2025: Improving Reading Comprehension: Vocabulary and Academic Knowledge: Emphasizes a multicomponent approach to reading intervention, including instruction that supports the development of oral language comprehension, vocabulary development, self-monitoring, and reading comprehension.
• February 22, 2025: Written Expression: Focuses on sentence-level intervention, featuring evidence-based strategies such as sentence combining, sentence structures, semantic features, and self-regulation skills.

Target Audience

This series is geared toward special educators in the middle and high school setting. However, interventionists, administrators, school psychologists, speech-language pathologists, and other educators who work with intensive reading intervention are also encouraged to attend.

Cost and Attendance

The cost for the series is $299 for up to 25 hours of attendance credit. Each participant must complete a brief knowledge check after engaging with the online material, and an hour of attendance will be certified for each online session based on engagement analytics. Attendance at the in-person sessions is required to benefit from the application of the information and to earn a certificate of attendance.

Course Instructors

The series is led by two experienced instructors:

• Melinda Hirschmann, Ed.D., CALT: Assistant Director for Educational Services and School Outreach at the Tennessee Center for the Study and Treatment of Dyslexia.
• Erin Alexander, Ed.S., NCSP, CALT: Assistant Director for Clinical Services at the Tennessee Center for the Study and Treatment of Dyslexia.