By: Lexi Walters Wright

While it might take some effort in the beginning, getting organized can make life easier for kids with learning differences. Here are tips to help your child improve organization skills at home, at school and beyond.

• Break tasks into chunks: Help your child break school projects or household chores into smaller, more manageable steps.

   

• Make checklists and to-do lists: Once your child knows all the steps involved with a particular task, help her add it to an overall to-do list in a place where she'll see it often.

   

• Teach calendar and time management skills: Encourage your child to write down important tasks in a digital or paper calendar and estimate how much time each task will take.

   

• Establish daily routines: Create a regular schedule so your child learns what to expect throughout the day.

   

• Introduce idea organizers: Show your child how to use outlines, graphic organizers or concept webs to organize ideas for school projects.

   

• Use color-coding: Assign colors to each school subject. Suggest that your child use different colored pens when writing and editing.

   

• Create fun memory aids: Show your child how to create her own silly sentences, songs, acronyms or cartoons to remember information.

   

• Create an organized workspace: Set aside a space at home where your child can work without interruption. Keep school supplies and technology nearby.

   

• Do regular backpack audits: Schedule a time each week for your child to clean out and organize her backpack.

   

• Help your child think ahead: To make her feel more secure, review plans for the next day with your child before bedtime.

The research measures orthographic processing skills, or participants' abilities to process language. In orthographic processing, people identify a word according to its appearance. Most people read by identifying letters and words with specific sounds.

People with dyslexia have difficulty using sounds to identify letters and words, which makes reading difficult. By using orthographic processing to identify words, people with dyslexia could read more easily by targeting higher orthographic processing skills they have rather than trying to teach them to sound out words.

The research can also track whether people with low literacy skills are as affected by the primes because they may not have been exposed to as many words. Someone with low orthographic skills might not recognize a word that's spelled incorrectly or a word that is made up.

This study could significantly improve the understanding of how different people read by showing how being exposed to print sets up the brain to get information from words very quickly.