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I agree. If you suspect that your child may be dyslexic and would benefit from additional support then your first step should be to consult your child's teacher or the school's Special Educational Needs Coordinator SENCo to discuss your concerns.
The SENCo may decide to carry out screening tests or checklists to find out more about your child's areas of strength and weakness in order to see how best they can be supported in the classroom. By January or February of first grade, tests of early word reading, decoding, and spelling begin to be useful in providing information about what the student has learned and what gaps in knowledge exist.
This information may be used to plan instruction and guide ongoing assessment. Because dyslexia is genetically linked, a family history of dyslexia indicates that a student is more likely to have dyslexia. A history of delayed speech or language also puts a child at-risk for reading difficulties. It is important to know the types and length of time of any interventions the student has. School attendance problems should be ruled out.
A history of poor attendance, alone, can explain an identified weakness in skill development. Until recently, an intelligence test was considered to be a necessary part of the evaluation because the diagnosis of a learning disability was based on finding a significant difference between IQ and reading skill.
Poor achievement despite average or better intelligence was considered a key indicator. Current regulations no longer require that such a discrepancy be present when making a diagnosis. This change in the regulations came about because many studies have shown that intelligence is not the best predictor of how easily a student will develop written language reading and spelling skills.
Instead, oral language abilities listening and speaking are considered the best predictors of reading and spelling. A formal measure of intelligence is not always needed to document average intellectual abilities. For older students or adults, past achievement in school or work may indicate at least average intelligence. Oral language, simply stated, refers to our ability to listen to and understand speech as well as to express our thoughts through speech.
Oral language is made up of low-level skills, such as recognizing and making the sounds within our speech, and higher-level skills, such as getting meaning by listening to someone speak or creating sentences to express thoughts.
Students with dyslexia typically have adequate higher- level language skills. Indicators of higher-level oral language skills include being able to understand an age-appropriate story and spoken directions, to carry on a conversation, and to understand and use words that are age appropriate.
If a student has average higher-level oral language skills but much difficulty developing written language reading and spelling skills, the need for evaluation for dyslexia is recommended. This deficit limits the ability to learn to read and spell using the sounds of the language. Young children with dyslexia often have delays in language development, but their higher-level language skills are usually age- appropriate by the time they enter school.
Difficulties with higher-level language skills suggest a need for a language evaluation by a speech-language pathologist to rule out language impairment. Word recognition is the ability to read single printed words. It is also called word reading or word identification. Tests of word recognition require that students read individual words printed in a list.
The student is not able to use cues, such as the meaning of a sentence, to help them figure out the word. Tests of word recognition that score both accuracy and the time it takes for the student to read the words fluency are particularly useful. Students with dyslexia often become accurate but are still very slow when reading words. Both accuracy and the speed of word reading can affect understanding what is read. Decoding is the ability to read unfamiliar words by using letter-sound knowledge, spelling patterns and chunking the word into smaller parts, such as syllables.
Spelling is the opposite of word attack but is even more difficult. It requires separating out the individual sounds in a spoken word, remembering the different ways each sound might be spelled, choosing one way, writing the letter s for that sound and doing the same, again, for the next sound in the word.
Spelling is usually the most severe weakness among students with dyslexia and the most difficult to remedy. Phonology is one small part of overall language ability. It is a low-level language skill in that it does not involve meaning.
Our spoken language is made up of words, word parts such as syllables , and individual sounds phonemes. We must be able to think about, remember, and correctly sequence the sounds in words in order to learn to link letters to sounds for reading and spelling.
Good readers do this automatically without conscious effort. However, students with dyslexia have difficulty with identifying, pronouncing, or recalling sounds.
Tests of phonological processing focus on these skills. Students with dyslexia often have a slow speed of processing information visual or auditory. But dyslexia can go undiagnosed for years or even decades. Dyslexia is not connected with intelligence. It is a neurobiological disorder that affects the parts of your brain involved in language processing.
When doctors make a diagnosis, they consider the results of a series of reading tests along with the symptoms reported by the person, their parents, or their teachers. Keep reading to learn how dyslexia symptoms can vary with age, plus what symptoms to look out for and when.
The earliest signs of dyslexia emerge around 1 to 2 years of age when children first learn to make sounds. However, not all people with speech delays develop dyslexia, and not all people with dyslexia have speech delays as children. A speech delay is just a cue for parents to pay attention to language development.
Children from families with a history of reading difficulties should also be monitored closely for dyslexia. Keep reading: What causes developmental delays? Around age 5 or 6 years, when kids begin learning to read, dyslexia symptoms become more apparent. Children who are at risk of reading disabilities can be identified in kindergarten.
Early intervention programs usually focus on phonological word sound awareness, vocabulary, and reading strategies. Many teachers are not trained to recognize dyslexia. Children who are intelligent and participate fully in class often slip through the cracks because they are good at hiding their reading trouble. By the time your child reaches middle school, they may have fallen behind in reading, writing, and spelling.
Read more: Vision-based therapies may not be needed for all dyslexic children ». High school and college involve a new set of challenges for students with dyslexia. They face far more rigorous academic challenges when quick reading comprehension is essential. High school and college students are assigned more reading material.
They must also learn to work with several different teachers, all with different expectations. In addition to the signs already seen in childhood, dyslexia signs in young adulthood can include:. A lack of a uniform definition of dyslexia makes it hard for researchers to study. Various estimates suggest that as many as 5 to 10 percent of the population may have dyslexia.
Learn more about dyslexia in adults ». For children with learning problems, the earlier you intervene, the better.
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