HayU Blog

I’m obsessed with Wordle, the online word puzzle game that has taken me and much of the world by storm. First developed by James Wardle, the game was made public in October 2021 and then purchased for a seven figure sum by the New York Times in January 2022. 

A mystery five letter word.  Six attempts.  Only one mystery word per day.

And let’s not forget the thrill of bragging rights if you win:  gloat to your nearest and dearest by sending an anonymous, taunting graphic of your attempts in each round–without revealing the mystery word to anyone else.

But what if Wordle could be used as a tool to teach reading skills, particularly for individuals with dyslexia?

The answer to that is a tentative yet exciting Yes, but there are a number of factors that may determine how effective a tool it might become. 

As a starting point, we can consider the different components of effective reading. Recent research has confirmed long held views on what goes into making an effective reader. At its core, fluent reading requires highly developed decoding skills (the ability to sound out words accurately), vocabulary (an understanding of the meaning of words) and sight words (the ability to recognize words by sight - on the arrangement of letters that make up the word). A deficit in any of these skills hampers the fluency of reading.

So how might playing Wordle help? 

Dyslexic individuals may find Wordle both frustrating and enjoyable at the same time.  Its utility to build reading fluency will likely relate to how much interest the individual has in playing the game. If it were to be used for the specific purpose of teaching reading skills, it might prove useful to implement a controlled version of the game. A reading teacher might consider looking up past wordle answers by date, and then choosing words that are either orthographically regular, or words that are part of student vocabulary (or are currently being worked on) and then playing the Wordle puzzle for that specific date using a site such as this one. 

Reading teachers may also find it useful to write out common orthographic patterns based on correct guesses to compensate for possible weaker working memory. As an example, if the middle letter is a “T” and the last letter is an “H” it could be an opportunity to review the “tch” ending by having the student focus on just the “T_H” ending rather than the full word all at once. By controlling some of the portions of the game, Wordle could be an enjoyable and useful tool to help with reading development.   

So who’s ready to solve the next Wordle in six tries or less? 

Interested in how Wordle works in the reading brain?  Click here for a deeper dive!

~Hunja Koimburi, M.A. 

Director, Hayutin Education