• Characteristics of Dyslexia

    Dyslexia means a disorder of constitutional origin manifested by a difficulty in learning to read, write, or spell, despite conventional instruction, adequate intelligence, and sociocultural opportunity.
     
    • Difficulty reading real words in isolation and lists of words
    • Difficulty accurately decoding nonsense words
    • Slow, inaccurate, or labored reading
    • Difficulties with learning sound/symbol correspondences
    • Confusion of visually similar letters (p/d/b/q, w/m, h/n)
    • Confusion of auditorily similar letter (d/t, b/p)
    • Difficulties remembering basic sight vocabulary
    • Problems with segmenting words into individual sounds and blending sounds to form words
    • Difficulty remembering spelling words over time and applying spelling rules
    • Significant difficulty reading and spelling multisyllabic words, often omitting entire syllables as well as making single sound errors
    • Lack of awareness of word structure (prefixes, roots, suffixes)
    • Omission of grammatical endings in reading and/or writing (-s,-ed,ing)

    Students in elementary school with dyslexia will show some of the previously mentioned characteristics.  Before first grade a child may have difficulty recognizing and producing rhymes, remembering rote information such as letter names and phone numbers, and delay in talking or mispronouncing words. In middle school a dyslexic student may show difficulties with reading comprehension and learning new information from text.  This is a result of underlying word recognition difficulties and significant difficulties in writing related to problems in spelling and organizing ideas. High school students may have difficulty with note taking and learning a foreign language.

     
    Resources: Overcoming Dyslexia, Literacy & Learning, Allen ISD Dyslexia Handbook for Parents