As defined by the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity, dyslexia is a learning disability that interferes with reading and includes trouble matching physical letters on the page (graphemes) with their sounds (phonemes). Children cannot hold letter sounds long enough to apply them to what they are seeing on the page.
The Georgia Educational Teaching Agency, which offers incredibly informative workshops on a variety of topics related to parenting, childhood development, and learning disabilities, explains that dyslexia has certain characteristics that can serve as red flags to parents and teachers. Among these are:
Kindergarten and First Grade Failure to understand that words come apart Inability to learn and associate letters to sounds and sounds to letters Reading errors that show no connections to the sound of the letters Inability to read common one–syllable words Complaints about how hard it is to read Second Grade and Up Problems in Speaking Mispronounces long unfamiliar or complicated words, leaving out parts or confusing order of parts Speech is not fluent; marked with hesitations, lots of um’s. Not be able to find the exact word Need time to summon oral responses May misname objects. The misnaming is not a lack of knowledge but from confusing the sounds of the language Difficulty remembering isolated pieces of information
Problems in Reading Very slow progress in acquiring reading skills Lack of strategy to read new words Trouble reading unknown words that must be sounded out Inability to read and remember small function words such as: that, an, in Omitting parts of words Fear of reading out loud Oral reading is choppy and labored Oral reading lacks prosody (intonation) Reliance on context to discern meaning Inability to finish tests on time Disastrous spelling Substitutions of words of the same meaning that are hard to pronounce
The Georgia ETA offers a 2-hour parent class on dyslexia. If a group of you and/or business or place of faith are interested in hosting this or any of the other wonderful course offerings, please do not hesitate to contact the agency's Curriculum and Instruction Specialist: Brenda Fitzgerald brendafitzgerald@georgiaeta.com 678.665.6606 cell 770.794.8525 office
