Signs & Symptoms
Warning Signs for Dyslexia/Struggling Readers:
Preschool/Kindergarten:
- Delayed speech
- Saying sounds in the wrong sequence (e.g. eminy = enemy, aminal = animal)
- Trouble with rhyming words
- Trouble with Phonemic Awareness (hearing and manipulating sounds in words)
- Delay in establishing a dominant writing hand
- A history of family members with learning difficulties
Early Elementary:
- Difficulty learning the alphabet
- Difficulty learning the sounds of letters
- Issues with writing hand dominance: can’t choose between the left and right hand
- Struggles with spelling
- Difficulty with handwriting
Later Elementary & Older Students:
- May read at or close to “grade level” but are slow readers
- Replaces functional words when reading such as the for a or and for is
- Reads the beginning of words correctly but does not read all the way through the word
- Leaves out letters while spelling (e.g. drik = drink)
- Writing is extremely difficult
- Reversal of letters past second-grade
Adapted from Richard Gentry: https://jrichardgentry.com/what-is-dyslexia.html