Visual Reading Strategies for Kids with ADHD and Dyslexia: How to Actually Remember What You Read
- Kelly Sutherland
- Apr 4
- 4 min read
Here's what most parents try when a child doesn't understand what they read: they read it again.
And sometimes that helps. But for children with ADHD or dyslexia, re-reading the same text often just means experiencing the same confusion a second time, slightly more frustrated.
The issue usually isn't the reading. It's what's happening — or not happening — while the reading occurs.
Reading comprehension is an active process. The brain has to do something with the words — connect them, organize them, ask questions about them, hold earlier ideas while processing later ones. For children whose executive function or decoding is already working overtime, that 'doing something' part often gets skipped entirely.
The fix isn't more reading. It's making thinking visible.
What are the best visual reading strategies for kids with ADHD and dyslexia?
Quick Answer:
Visual reading strategies — like text mapping, color-coded sticky notes, GIST summaries, and sketchnotes — help ADHD and dyslexia students comprehend what they read by making thinking visible and active. These strategies don't require re-reading the text. Instead, they slow down processing, reduce cognitive load, and give struggling readers a structure to hold onto. Parents can use all of these at home without any teaching background.
How to Annotate and Highlight When Your Child Struggles to Read on a Screen
Your child is reading an article for school. They have a highlighter. By the end of the page, everything is yellow.
Or the opposite: they highlight nothing, because they don't know what counts.
Digital reading has made this problem worse — not because screens are inherently bad for reading, but because most students have never been taught a system for reading on a screen. They're expected to absorb, retain, and respond to content on devices without a single strategy for making it interactive.
Why Highlighting Alone Doesn't Work
Research on highlighting as a learning strategy is surprisingly discouraging — when used without a system, it produces minimal retention gains. The problem is that highlighting is passive. The student is marking, not thinking.
What transforms highlighting into a comprehension tool is the decision-making behind it: what category does this belong to? Why does this matter? What do I do with this mark later?
That metacognitive layer — thinking about thinking — is exactly what passive highlighting skips.
The Four-Color Annotation System
This is the system I use with my 5th graders and teach to families. It takes one week to build the habit and works across subjects.
Yellow — Main idea or key fact: This is the most important point in this section
Orange — Vocabulary: A word I don't know, or a word the author uses in an unusual way
Pink/Red — Question or confusion: Something that doesn't make sense, or something I want to know more about
Green — Connection: This reminds me of something I already know, or something from another subject
For digital reading, this translates directly to the highlight color options in most school platforms (Google Docs, Newsela, ReadWorks, Epic). For print reading, any set of four colored highlighters works.
Visual Reading Strategies for Kids with ADHD and Dyslexia
Adaptations for ADHD
For students with ADHD, the system works best when it's simplified at first. Start with just two colors — main idea and question. Add the others once the habit is built. The goal is to create a low-friction entry point, not a perfect annotation system.
Also helpful: set a timer and read in 10-minute chunks with a 2-minute annotation pause at the end of each chunk. This breaks the sustained attention demand and gives the working memory time to consolidate before moving on.
Adaptations for Dyslexia
For students with dyslexia, decoding and comprehension monitoring are competing demands. Annotation can actually help by slowing the pace and making comprehension explicit — but it only works if decoding is not the limiting factor. If your child is struggling to read the words themselves, annotation won't solve that. Pair annotation practice with accessible text (simplified versions, audiobooks with text, or read-alouds first, then silent reading).
The Text Mapping Connection
Text Mapping is a companion strategy to annotation — instead of marking within the text, the student creates a visual map of the text's structure. If you're not familiar with Text Mapping, it's one of the three systems at the core of my work with families. The Head Coach Starter Kit (free, link below) covers how parents can support this kind of strategic reading at home without becoming a reading teacher.
Text mapping is just the beginning.
In Video 2 of the Why Series, I introduce text mapping as System 2 in a connected three-part approach to building a biliterate brain. Seeing the structure before you read isn’t just a strategy — it’s the foundation that makes everything else possible. In the video I show specifically how text mapping sets up the thinking that System 3 (NotebookLM) then deepens, and how the whole loop feeds back into conversation. If you’ve been using text mapping at home, this video will show you exactly where to take it next.
Watch Video 2 here:
If you missed the first video in the series, you can watch it here:
Frequently Asked Questions
My child's school uses a specific platform. How do I know if it supports color highlighting?
Most commonly used school platforms (Google Docs, Newsela, CommonLit, ReadWorks, Epic) support some version of text highlighting. Check the toolbar for a highlighter icon. If the platform doesn't support color options, the student can add sticky note annotations instead.
Is this the same as text mapping?
Related but different. Annotation is done within the text — marking the words as you read. Text Mapping creates a separate visual representation of the text's structure. They complement each other well, especially for complex nonfiction.
What if my child just won't do it?
Start by annotating together out loud. Say "I'm going to highlight this yellow because it seems like the main idea — what do you think?" Make the decision-making visible before asking them to do it independently. Resistance usually means the cognitive demand feels too high, not that the strategy doesn't work.
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