Table of Contents
Type: Case Study | Subject: Education | Level: Undergraduate | Word Count: ~2,400 words
This model Case Study was produced by an Essays UK specialist as reference material for learning purposes only. For support in this field, see our education writing experts.
Overview: This model case study examines how a Year 5 pupil with dyslexia is supported within a mainstream primary classroom. It maps practice to the statutory SEND Code of Practice (2015) and its graduated approach, applies theories of inclusive pedagogy, scaffolding and cognitive load, and sets out evidence-informed recommendations. All names and figures are illustrative.
This case study examines the support provided to a Year 5 pupil with dyslexia within a mainstream primary classroom, using the pseudonym ‘Leo’ to protect confidentiality. All names, settings and assessment figures used here are illustrative and have been constructed for the purposes of this model document; they are not drawn from any real individual. Dyslexia is among the most commonly identified specific learning difficulties in England, and the British Dyslexia Association estimates that around 10 per cent of the population experience dyslexic difficulties to some degree (British Dyslexia Association, 2023). For a class teacher, the central professional question is therefore not whether to attach a label to a child, but how to remove the barriers that prevent a capable learner from demonstrating what they genuinely know and can do.
The case is framed within the statutory expectations of the Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) Code of Practice (Department for Education and Department of Health, 2015), which situates high-quality, inclusive classroom teaching at the heart of effective provision. It also draws on established theory concerning inclusive pedagogy, scaffolding and cognitive load. The aim of the study is to analyse how targeted, evidence-informed adjustments can enable a dyslexic learner to access the curriculum alongside their peers, and to reflect critically on both the strengths and the limitations of the strategies adopted. Throughout, the emphasis falls on ordinary, replicable classroom practice rather than on specialist intervention delivered in isolation from the mainstream setting.
Leo is a nine-year-old boy in a mixed-ability Year 5 class of thirty pupils in a two-form-entry primary school in the north of England. He is articulate and curious, contributes confidently to class discussion, and demonstrates strong reasoning in science and mathematics when tasks are presented orally or practically. His teachers describe him as a creative problem-solver with a mature spoken vocabulary. These strengths are significant, because they illustrate the characteristic profile of many dyslexic learners: an uneven pattern in which verbal and conceptual ability outstrips performance on tasks that depend heavily on accurate, fluent reading and writing (Snowling, 2019).
Difficulties became more visible as the literacy demands of the curriculum increased in Key Stage 2. By the autumn term of Year 5, Leo’s reading age was assessed at approximately seven years and six months, against a chronological age of nine years and four months. His spelling was inconsistent, with frequent phonologically plausible errors, letter reversals and omitted sounds. Written tasks took him considerably longer than his peers, and the volume he produced was markedly lower than the quality of his oral contributions would predict. A screening assessment coordinated by the school’s Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCO) indicated weaknesses in phonological awareness, working memory and processing speed, a cluster consistent with dyslexia. These figures are illustrative, but the profile they describe is a recognisable one.
The practical consequences of this profile extended beyond the acquisition of literacy skills. Leo had begun to avoid reading aloud, to disengage during extended writing tasks, and occasionally to present behaviour that masked difficulty, such as distracting peers when a task felt unmanageable. His parents reported that homework involving reading or writing often provoked frustration and a growing belief that he was ‘not clever’. This affective dimension is important: the secondary emotional impact of unaddressed literacy difficulty, including lowered self-efficacy and anxiety, can compound the primary learning barrier and is well documented in the practitioner literature (Reid, 2016). Any effective response therefore needed to address both access to the curriculum and Leo’s developing sense of himself as a learner.
Identification in this case was deliberately collaborative rather than clinical. The class teacher’s ongoing formative observations were triangulated with standardised screening coordinated by the SENCO, with information gathered from Leo’s parents about his early language development and his experiences at home, and with Leo’s own account of which tasks he found hard and why. This multi-informant approach reflects the Code of Practice’s insistence that the views of pupils and families are central to assessment and planning, and it guards against the tendency to interpret difficulty solely as a within-child deficit. It also ensured that the resulting support plan was grounded in a rounded picture of Leo as a learner, including his considerable strengths, rather than in a single test score captured at one moment in time.
Analysis of the case points to three interlocking issues that a classroom response must address. First, there is a decoding and fluency barrier: Leo’s slow, effortful word reading limits his access to curriculum content across every subject, not only in English. Second, there is a working-memory and processing-speed barrier that makes multi-step instructions, copying from the board, and simultaneous composing and transcribing particularly demanding. Third, there is a motivational and self-concept barrier arising from repeated experiences of relative failure in highly visible literacy tasks.
It is important to recognise that these barriers are cross-curricular rather than confined to English lessons. In history, the volume of reading required to access source material can obscure Leo’s strong analytical thinking; in mathematics, dense word problems can mask secure numerical reasoning; and in science, written recording can understate genuine conceptual understanding. Framing the issue in this way matters because it locates responsibility for adjustment with every teacher Leo encounters, not solely with the English lead or the SENCO, and it reframes literacy support as a whole-school concern rather than a subject-specific one.
A further, systemic issue concerns the risk of a ‘wait to fail’ model, in which support is deferred until a pupil has fallen significantly behind. The SEND Code of Practice (Department for Education and Department of Health, 2015) explicitly counters this by framing early identification and ordinarily available high-quality teaching as the first line of provision. The case must therefore be understood not simply as a problem located within Leo, but as an interaction between his learning profile and the demands and design of the classroom environment, a position consistent with the social model of disability that underpins current SEND policy.
The statutory framework for this case is the SEND Code of Practice (Department for Education and Department of Health, 2015), which establishes that the majority of pupils with special educational needs should have their needs met within mainstream settings through high-quality, differentiated teaching. Where a pupil requires provision additional to or different from this, the Code sets out a cyclical ‘graduated approach’ of Assess, Plan, Do, Review. This cycle positions the class teacher, supported by the SENCO, as the person with primary responsibility for the progress of pupils with SEN, and treats support as iterative rather than fixed. Applied to Leo, the graduated approach provides a structure for responding without waiting for formal diagnosis or an Education, Health and Care plan, neither of which is a precondition for high-quality support.
| Stage | Action for Leo |
|---|---|
| Assess | SENCO screening of phonological awareness, working memory and reading fluency; teacher observation; parental and pupil views gathered. |
| Plan | Agree specific, time-limited outcomes (e.g. reading fluency, spelling of high-frequency words) and the adjustments and interventions to deliver them. |
| Do | Class teacher embeds adjustments daily; targeted structured literacy intervention delivered in short, frequent sessions. |
| Review | Progress evaluated against outcomes each half-term with Leo and his parents; provision adjusted accordingly. |
The working definition used in English education derives from the Rose Review, which characterises dyslexia as a learning difficulty that primarily affects the skills involved in accurate and fluent word reading and spelling, associated with difficulties in phonological awareness, verbal memory and verbal processing speed (Rose, 2009). Crucially, Rose describes dyslexia as a continuum rather than a distinct category, and stresses that it occurs across the range of intellectual abilities. This conceptualisation is directly relevant to Leo, whose strong reasoning coexists with specific literacy difficulty. It also justifies a response centred on structured, cumulative teaching of the phonological and orthographic skills he finds difficult, rather than one that lowers cognitive expectations in subjects such as science or mathematics.
Vygotsky’s (1978) concept of the zone of proximal development offers a theoretical rationale for the adjustments made in Leo’s classroom. The zone describes the distance between what a learner can achieve independently and what they can achieve with appropriate support; learning is most productive when teaching is pitched within this zone and temporary ‘scaffolds’ are provided and gradually withdrawn. For Leo, scaffolding takes the form of writing frames, pre-taught vocabulary, worked examples and talk-partner rehearsal before writing. These supports do not reduce the intellectual challenge of the task; rather, they reduce the incidental literacy load that would otherwise prevent Leo from engaging with that challenge. The explicit intention is that scaffolds are faded as competence grows, so that support fosters independence rather than dependence, a distinction central to inclusive pedagogy (Florian and Black-Hawkins, 2011).
Structured, multisensory approaches are strongly associated with effective literacy teaching for dyslexic learners, engaging visual, auditory and kinaesthetic channels simultaneously to strengthen the links between sounds, letters and meaning (Reid, 2016; Mortimore, 2008). The theoretical underpinning is partly explicable through cognitive load theory (Sweller, 1988), which holds that working memory has a strictly limited capacity. Because decoding is not yet automatic for Leo, it consumes a large share of that capacity, leaving little available for comprehension or composition. Adjustments such as providing printed instructions, reducing copying, breaking tasks into steps, and permitting the use of assistive technology all serve to lower extraneous cognitive load, freeing working memory for the genuine learning objective. Interpreted in this way, the adjustments are not concessions but principled design choices that align the task with how learning works.
A recurring tension in SEND provision is that the very adjustments intended to help a pupil can inadvertently single them out, reinforcing a sense of difference that undermines confidence. The concept of inclusive pedagogy developed by Florian and Black-Hawkins (2011) responds to this tension by shifting the question from ‘what is additional or different for some’ to ‘how can the learning environment be extended so that it is rich enough for all’. In Leo’s classroom, this principle is realised by making many supports universally available: writing frames, vocabulary mats, audio versions of texts and the option to plan ideas orally are offered to the whole class, so that Leo can draw on them without being visibly marked out. This approach also connects to the wider debate about whether effective teaching for pupils with learning difficulties is genuinely distinct from good teaching for all, or simply a more deliberate and intensive version of it (Norwich and Lewis, 2007). In practice, a universal-design orientation reduces stigma while raising the quality of provision for every learner.
Finally, the case carries a legal dimension. Under the Equality Act 2010, dyslexia may constitute a disability where it has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on a person’s ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities. Schools are consequently under an anticipatory duty to make reasonable adjustments so that disabled pupils are not placed at a substantial disadvantage. For Leo, adjustments such as extra time, access to text-to-speech software, and the use of a laptop for extended writing are therefore matters of entitlement and equity, not merely of good will. This legal framing reinforces the pedagogical analysis: the barrier to be removed lies in the interaction between the learner and the environment, and the responsibility for adjustment rests with the setting.
Drawing the policy and theoretical analysis together, the following recommendations represent a coherent, evidence-informed response for Leo within the mainstream classroom. They are designed to be ordinarily available, sustainable for the class teacher, and consistent with guidance from the Education Endowment Foundation (2021) on supporting pupils with special educational needs in mainstream schools.
These recommendations should be formalised within the Plan stage of the graduated approach, reviewed with Leo and his parents each half-term, and refined in light of evidence of progress. Where progress remains insufficient despite well-implemented support, the SENCO would consider referral for a more specialist assessment, in line with the Code of Practice.
This case study has argued that supporting a pupil with dyslexia in a mainstream classroom is, first and foremost, a matter of inclusive design rather than remedial separation. Analysed through the SEND Code of Practice and its graduated approach, Leo’s needs can be met through everyday high-quality teaching augmented by targeted, structured intervention. Theories of scaffolding and cognitive load explain why specific adjustments work: they reposition the literacy demands of a task so that an able reasoner is no longer penalised for a specific processing difficulty, while the Equality Act 2010 confirms that such adjustments are an entitlement. The most significant limitation of any single plan is the time and training the class teacher can realistically draw on, which is why sustainable, ordinarily available strategies have been prioritised throughout. Ultimately, the case illustrates a broader principle of inclusive education: when barriers are located in the environment rather than the child, the professional task becomes a tractable and shared one of removing them, so that the pupil can learn, participate and succeed alongside their peers.
British Dyslexia Association (2023) About Dyslexia. Bracknell: British Dyslexia Association. Available at: https://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk (Accessed: 14 October 2026).
Department for Education and Department of Health (2015) Special Educational Needs and Disability Code of Practice: 0 to 25 Years. London: Department for Education.
Education Endowment Foundation (2021) Special Educational Needs in Mainstream Schools: Guidance Report. London: Education Endowment Foundation.
Equality Act 2010, c. 15. Available at: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/15/contents (Accessed: 14 October 2026).
Florian, L. and Black-Hawkins, K. (2011) ‘Exploring inclusive pedagogy’, British Educational Research Journal, 37(5), pp. 813–828.
Mortimore, T. (2008) Dyslexia and Learning Style: A Practitioner’s Handbook. 2nd edn. Chichester: Wiley.
Norwich, B. and Lewis, A. (2007) ‘How specialised is teaching children with disabilities and difficulties?’, Journal of Curriculum Studies, 39(2), pp. 127–150.
Reid, G. (2016) Dyslexia: A Practitioner’s Handbook. 5th edn. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Rose, J. (2009) Identifying and Teaching Children and Young People with Dyslexia and Literacy Difficulties. Nottingham: Department for Children, Schools and Families.
Snowling, M.J. (2019) Dyslexia: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sweller, J. (1988) ‘Cognitive load during problem solving: effects on learning’, Cognitive Science, 12(2), pp. 257–285.
Vygotsky, L.S. (1978) Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
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