The Dyslexia Rescue® Method: A Three-Part Approach

The Dyslexia Rescue® (DR) Method is a three-part approach that integrates Structured Literacy instruction, executive functioning skills training, and trauma-informed practices.

At our program's foundation is Orton-Gillingham-based Structured Literacy, aligned with the science of reading. We identify the underlying sources of a student’s reading difficulties and systematically address areas of confusion. Diana Finch, M.Ed., M.Sc., brings extensive expertise to this work, including training in Orton-Gillingham and Reading Recovery, a master’s degree in education, elementary education certification, and experience serving under a presidential appointment during the George W. Bush administration as a federal-level school reformer specializing in literacy.

At the word level, instruction addresses phonemic awareness, sound-symbol relationships, vowel patterns, syllabication, affixes, and Greek and Latin roots. These foundational skills are systematically integrated with connected-text reading, fluency, phrasing, comprehension, grammar, and writing.

Instruction is multisensory, explicit, direct, structured, systematic, and sequential and is informed by research on how the brain learns to read. The Dyslexia Rescue® Method draws on decades of evidence-based literacy research, including the landmark findings of the National Reading Panel and the substantial body of reading research that has followed.

Executive functioning skills are intentionally developed throughout every Structured Literacy lesson. Through consistent emotional co-regulation, explicit instruction, modeling, guided practice, and carefully structured routines, students strengthen the cognitive and self-regulatory skills they need not only for reading, but for learning as a whole.

Students are systematically supported in developing listening skills, inhibitory control, working memory, sustained attention, cognitive flexibility, planning and organization, task initiation, self-regulation, self-monitoring, and metacognition. Rather than simply expecting a child to “pay attention,” “remember,” or “stay on task,” we teach and model the underlying skills that make those behaviors possible.

We recognize that every child has an underlying capacity for calm, focus, and connection—a still point that can become difficult to access when learning is frustrating, overwhelming, or associated with repeated failure. Through compassionate co-regulation and trauma-informed practices, we help students return to a state in which they are better able to think, listen, remember, persist, and learn.

Over time, the goal is to gradually shift regulation from the instructor to the student: co-regulation becomes self-regulation, external structure becomes internal organization, and guided thinking becomes increasingly independent metacognition. In this way, executive functioning development is woven into the Dyslexia Rescue® Method rather than treated as a separate intervention.

Having a Bachelor of Psychology degree and a Master of Ministerial Science degree with a trauma recovery emphasis, Diana Finch, M.Ed., M.Sc., weaves emotional recovery support throughout her structured literacy lessons. 

The cognitive dissonance of confusion is at the root of the emotional trauma response that often accompanies reading struggles. When core reading confusions resolve, pent-up emotions often release and restoration begins. Then, as we begin building knowledge and reading skills, confidence begins to return and a sense of wholeness is gradually restored.

Through authentic, compassionate support, relationship and mentoring  we hold the space for the child to heal on all levels: mental, emotional, social, familial and academic. As the cognitive and emotional dissonance of reading failure eases and fades, relationships come into balance, self-concept is improved and courage is  restored... flow is restored. 

Through cognitive reframing, the student can learn to shift limiting beliefs or negative self-talk into healthier perspectives, integrating past experiences and processing suppressed emotions. Our whole-child approach integrates mind, emotion, environment and present moment awareness into each interaction, supporting each child's innate drive toward success. Mindfulness, centered breath and metacognition are offered in support of emotional regulation throughout the program. While holding safe space for the lession, we rewrite the story of failure into one of wholeness and success through active listening and compassion, offering and cultivating insights into past experiences and new meanings.