Who is at risk?
Preschool
Speaking:
- Late learning to talk or slow to learn new words
- Trouble producing speech sounds (Is your child in speech?)
- Mixing up sounds and syllables in long words
- Mispronounced words; persistent baby talk
- Difficulties with word retrieval
- Pausing or hesitating often when speaking
- Slow vocabulary growth, often unable to find the right word
Reading:
- Avoids letters or confuses them
- Cannot recall sounds of letters
- Difficulty in learning (and remembering) names of letters, learning numbers, and the day of the week
- Failure to know the letters in his/her own name
- Unable to break words into separate speech sounds
- Difficulties with rhyming words
- Trouble learning common nursery rhymes such as “Jack and Jill” and “Humpty Dumpty”
School and Life:
- Late establishing a dominant hand
- Constant confusion of left versus right
- Poor ability to follow directions or routines
- Difficulty learning to tie shoes
- A close relative with dyslexia
- Trouble memorizing (For example: address, phone number, the alphabet, days of the week, or learning numbers)
- Extremely restless and easily distracted
- Trouble interacting with peers
Grades K-1
Speaking:
- Late Learning to talk or slow to learn new words
- Trouble producing speech sounds (Is your child in speech?)
- Mixing up sounds and syllables in long words
- Mispronounced words; persistent baby talk
- Difficulties with word retrieval
- Pausing or hesitating often when speaking
- Slow vocabulary growth, often unable to find the right word
- Low on phoneme awareness tests (taking apart speech sounds in words)
Reading
- Trouble Learning phonics (sounds of letters)
- Poor spelling
- Cannot remember “sight” words (flashcard words)
- Poor Handwriting
- Failure to understand that words come apart; for example, that batboy can be pulled apart into bat and boy and later on, that the word bat can be broken down still further and sounded out as /b/ /a/ /t/.
- Inability to learn to associate letters with sounds, such as being able to connect the letter b with the /b/ sound
- Makes multiple reading and spelling errors including;
letter reversals (b/d)
inversions (m,w),
transpositions (felt/left)
substitutions (house/home) - Reading errors that show no connection to the sounds of the letters; for example the word big is read as goat
- The inability to read common one-syllable words or to sound out even the simplest of words, such as mat, cat, hop, nap
- Complaints about how hard reading is, or running and hiding when it is time to read
School and Life:
- Transposes number sequences confuses arithmetic signs (+, -,x, /. )
- Late establishing a dominant hand
- Constant confusion of left versus right
- Poor ability to follow directions or routines
- Difficulty learning to tie shoes
- A close relative with dyslexia
- Trouble memorizing (For example: address, phone number, the alphabet, days of the week, or learning numbers)
- Extremely restless and easily distracted
- Trouble interacting with peers
- Indicators of Strengths:
- Curiosity
- A great imagination
- The ability to figure things out
- Eager to embrace new ideas
- Getting the gist of things
- A good understanding of new concepts
- Surprising maturity
- A Large vocabulary for the age group
- Enjoyment of solving puzzles
- Talent at building models
- Excellent comprehension of stories read or told to him
Grades 2-5
Speaking:
- Searches for specific word and ends up using vague language such as “stuff” “thingy” instead of the intended object
- Pauses, hesitates, and/or uses lots of “umm’s” when speaking
- Confuses words that sound alike, such as saying “tornado” for volcano, substituting “lotion” for ocean
- Mispronunciation of long, unfamiliar words, or uncomplicated words
- Common sayings come out slightly twisted
- Seems to need extra time to respond to questions
Reading:
- Very slow in acquiring reading skills
- Letter & number reversals continue past the end of first grade
- Reading is slow, choppy and awkward (sounds like reading a foreign language):
- Guesses based on the shape or context
- Skips or misreads prepositions (at, to, of)
- Ignores suffixes
- Trouble reading unfamiliar words, often making wild guesses because he cannot sound out
- Doesn’t seem to have a strategy for reading new words
- Avoids reading aloud Reading is tiring
- Reading is tiring
- Cannot recall sight words even after practice (they, were, does) or homonyms (their, they’re, there)
- Poor spelling characterized by omitted speech sounds for letters, poor recall of even the commonest “little” words.
- Weak reading comprehension when compared to listening comprehension
- Poor handwriting or written expression
- Avoidance of reading and writing
School and Life
- Trouble with remembering dates, names, telephone numbers, random lists.
- Slow recall of facts
- Slow to learn new skills, relies heavily on memorization
- Difficulty telling time with a clock with hands
- Poor ability to follow directions or routines
- Trouble with math
- Memorizing multiplication tables
- Memorizing a sequence of steps
- Directionality
- Impulsive, lack of planning
- Unstable pencil grip
- Poor coordination, unaware of physical surrounding, prone to accidents
Middle School and beyond
Speaking:
- Searches for specific word and ends up using vague language such as “stuff” “thingy” instead of the intended object
- Pauses, hesitates, and/or uses lots of “umm’s” when speaking
- Confuses words that sound alike, such as saying “tornado” for volcano, substituting “lotion” for ocean
- Mispronunciation of long, unfamiliar words, or uncomplicated words – get tongue tied
- Common sayings come out slightly twisted
- May have difficulty processing complex language or a series of instructions at speed
- May have difficulties with oral or written expression or Verbal skills may be noticeably superior to written expression
Reading:
- Usually reads below grade level and may have difficulty with comprehension compared to listening comprehension
- May have poor grades in many classes
- Slow to discern and learn prefixes, suffixes, root words and other reading strategies
- May reverse letter sequences – “soiled” for “solid,” “left” for “felt”
- May avoid reading aloud
School and Life:
- Disproportionate poor performance on multiple choice tests
- May spell the same word differently on the same page
- Poor handwriting: pencil grip is awkward, fist-like or tight
- Difficulty planning and writing essays
- Seems to need extra time to respond to questions
- May have slow or poor recall of facts
- May have difficulty with planning, organizing, and managing time, materials and tasks
- May have inadequate vocabulary & or store of knowledge
- May have trouble with math, especially math fact speed, word problems, and solutions requiring several steps in sequence
- Printed music may be difficult
- May not be able to work fast enough to cope and he lacks effective strategies for studying
- Has trouble with finishing tests on time—doesn’t finish or rushes and makes careless errors; final test grade does not reflect the person’s knowledge of the topic
- Homework that never seems to end; parent recruited as reader
- Requires a quiet environment to concentrate on reading
- Relies on other sources of information that does not require reading
- May become hostile or resistant to school
-complains of stomach aches or headaches
-may have nightmares about school - May be overwhelmed by multiple assignments
- Extreme difficulty learning a foreign language
- Messy handwriting
- May have an extremely messy bedroom, backpack, desk
- Low self-esteem that may not be immediately visible or manifest in defiance and defensiveness
- Development of anxiety, especially in test-taking situations
- History of problems in reading, spelling, foreign language learning in family members
Strengths:
- Excellent thinking skills: conceptualization, reasoning, imagination, abstraction
- Often good “people” skills
- Often spatially talented
- Could be a nontraditional, broad, global, thinker
- Learning that is accomplished best through meaning rather than rote memorization.
- Ability to get the “big picture”
- A high level of understanding of what is read to him
- The ability to read and to understand at a high level overlearned (that is, high practiced) words in a special area
of interest; for example, if his hobby is race cars, he may be able to read auto mechanic magazines. - Improvement as an area of interest becomes more specialized and focused; he develops a miniature vocabulary that he can read.
- May have a surprisingly sophisticated listening vocabulary
- Excellence in areas not dependent on reading, such as math, computers, and arts,
Additional Resources: http://www.readingrockets.org/article/296/, http://www.readingrockets.org/helping/target/, http://dyslexia.yale.edu/when2act_preK.html