9. Strategies that work with students with dyslexia help all students. Try universal strategies to help all students pay attention to the structure of words, sounds and patterns, which Dr. Nelson says can also be especially useful to students with dyslexia. In early grades, ask the class to say a word slowly and pay attention to how the individual sounds feel in their mouths and sound in their ears and brains, so they can write the letters that make those sounds. Then go backwards by starting with a series of letters and then saying the sounds they make. As students get better, swap out letters and remove those sounds and substitute others. Use nonsense words at first to teach the code. Make it a game. Then use real words, suggests Nelson. In later grades, help the class focus on the structure of complex words related to math and science, such as Greek and Latin morphemes in words like geology. You can model how to break words into parts (syllables and morphemes) and spell one part at a time with words such as trigonometry and geometry, or hypertension and hypotension.