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Dyslexia and Reading
Stealth Dyslexia
What It Takes
to Read
Math and Dyslexia
Helping Students with
Dyslexia
Spelling Cards
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Dyslexia at Different
Ages
The following is a general
guide to how dyslexia may present with different issues
along the life cycle. Do not read it as a guide to any
specific child - but rather as starting point for
looking into problems more deeply.
Preschool - 1st Grade
A child may have mild
speech articulation difficulties or substitutions,
trouble catching onto rhymes as in Dr. Seuss (not all),
and a slowness with beginning to read first words.
2nd - 4th Grade
By the time children reach the 2nd-4th grade, they may
have made good progress cracking the code of reading,
but now find themselves stress out by amount of reading
assigned or by the amount or errors in their writing.
Children at this age may have problems with spelling,
grammar, and persistent mirror reversals (like b and d).
Sometimes struggling
students may have a surprise spurt of better
reading comprehension ("just clicks") - with some help
from maturing brain connections.
5th - 9th Grade
By the tween and teen
ears, reading and writing speeds may be a bigger issue
than decoding individual words. Students may now suffer
low grades because misread test questions, have
"careless" errors, run out of time on tests, and have
grades lower because of incomplete work.
Language-heavy courses may be particularly difficult
(social studies, science), and note-taking may seem
next-to-impossible. Homework time at the dinner table
may now expand to several hours, and book reports and
mandatory semester projects seem in surmountable.
If a foreign language is required, students may struggle
(French is particularly hard for dyslexics). Also, math
classes may be difficult for some because of visual
memory and dysgraphia problems.
High School and Beyond
In high school,
students may continue experiencing the problems of
5th-9th graders, but also they may find that their
grades are more erratic, depending on the subject or
teacher. The reason for this is - that because the
increased amount of information presented in high
school, students will be more sensitive to how they are
taught and how they are expected to demonstrate their
knowledge.
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