How to Design an Inclusive Classroom Without a Budget

You do not need a large budget or hours of spare time to make your classroom dyslexia-friendly. By making small, deliberate changes to your physical environment, lesson delivery, and learning resources, you can remove major barriers to learning for your neurodivergent pupils by Monday morning.

These simple tweaks focus on reducing cognitive overload and visual stress. They are designed to fit into a busy school day without requiring extra prep time or expensive equipment. Many of these ideas align directly with official guidance on inclusive practice.

For a broader look at what these approaches look like nationally, you can read our guide on what inclusive teaching actually means in the classroom.

The physical classroom: Simple layout and lighting tweaks

The physical setup of your room can either drain a dyslexic pupil's energy or help them focus. Visual processing difficulties often go hand-in-hand with reading challenges.

Reduce visual noise

Busy classroom walls can be overwhelming. Try to keep the area around your main whiteboard clear of brightly coloured displays, hanging decorations, or complex charts. This helps pupils focus on the active teaching area.

Rethink your seating plan

Place dyslexic pupils where they have a clear, direct view of the whiteboard without having to twist around. Sitting them closer to the front also makes it easier to copy information and hear your instructions clearly.

Consider the lighting

Fluorescent lights can cause glare on whiteboards and white paper, which makes text swim or blur. If possible, turn off overhead lights near the screen and rely on natural light from windows.

Structuring your lessons: Multi-sensory delivery

Multi-sensory teaching does not require expensive resources. It simply means presenting information in more than one way at the same time.

Dual coding

Whenever you write a key word on the board, pair it with a simple icon, drawing, or physical gesture. If you are teaching gravity, draw an arrow pointing down alongside the word. This helps pupils anchor the meaning without relying solely on reading the letters.

Verbal and visual instructions

Avoid giving long lists of spoken instructions. Write the key steps on the board as short, numbered bullet points. Keep the language simple and direct. For example:

1. Open your blue book.
2. Write the date.
3. Answer question one.

Scaffold the writing

Provide writing frames or sentence starters on the board. This reduces the mental effort needed to structure a response, allowing the pupil to focus entirely on demonstrating their actual knowledge. For more ideas on supporting communication in class, see our 5 quick classroom tweaks for speech and language needs.

Reducing the cognitive load on paper

How we present worksheets and printed texts can make a massive difference to a pupil's reading speed and comprehension.

Font and spacing

Use sans-serif fonts like Arial, Comic Sans, or Calibri. Avoid fonts with decorative tails (serifs) like Times New Roman, which can make letters run together. Use a minimum font size of 12pt, and set your line spacing to 1.5. This extra breathing room on the page helps the eye track from line to line.

Use coloured backgrounds

Pure white paper can cause high contrast glare. If you can, print worksheets on light pastel paper, such as yellow, green, or blue. If printing on coloured paper is not an option, changing the background colour of your interactive whiteboard slides to a soft cream or pastel tone helps the whole class.

Bold key terms

Avoid using italics or underlining for emphasis, as these styling choices can distort the shapes of letters. Instead, use bold text to highlight key vocabulary or instructions.

Your Monday morning checklist: Quick wins

Here is a checklist of zero-cost actions you can take for your next lesson:

• [ ] Change slide backgrounds: Set your lesson presentation slides to a soft cream or light blue background instead of bright white.
• [ ] Check the board: Ensure the area directly around your main teaching screen is free from distracting posters.
• [ ] Adjust the font: Change your worksheet template to Arial, size 12, with 1.5 line spacing.
• [ ] Print on colour: Run off a few copies of the lesson worksheet on light yellow or blue paper for pupils who struggle with glare.
• [ ] Check seating: Ensure pupils who struggle with literacy are seated with a direct line of sight to you and the board.

Where to find further support

These practical classroom adjustments are supported by the Department for Education's guidance, SEND training for schools: inclusive teaching and areas of development, which outlines how mainstream schools can adapt their environments and teaching styles to support neurodivergent learners.

If you want to train your wider school team on these methods, we have a guide on how to run in-house SEND and dyslexia training for your staff.

For pupils who need more structured, individualised reading practice, technology can provide a helpful screen-based option. Our app, Lexy, is built on multisensory structured literacy principles to help pupils build reading fluency at their own pace. It is free for up to five students, making it an easy tool to trial in your classroom without dipping into your budget.