Primary reading and spelling characteristics of dyslexia:

• Difficulty reading real words in isolation
• Difficulty accurately decoding nonsense words
• Slow, inaccurate, or labored oral reading (lack of reading fluency)
• Difficulty with learning to spell

Texas Education Code 38.003

Interesting Facts about Dyslexia

• More than 25 million Americans struggle with dyslexia
• One in twenty children have a severe case of dyslexia
• One in five has a milder case of dyslexia

Severe Dyslexia

• Permanent type of dyslexia that improves little with age
• Found in 3-5% of the population
• Family History
• Intensive early training can raise most to a reading level between 4th and 6th
• Spelling skills rarely rise over 4th grade

Mild to Moderate Dyslexia

• With proper intervention can seem to diminish as a person matures
• 12-14% of school population
• Equal ratio- boys to girls
• More identification in boys (4:1)
• Family History

Types of Dyslexia

• Visual dyslexia- visual interpretation of printed symbols
• Most easily diagnosed
• Has nothing to do with visual acuity
• Information is “scrambled in the language portion of the left side of the brain
• Reversals, transpositions, inversions, mirror images, and scrambled sequences
• Scotopic Sensitivity or Irlen Syndrome
• Auditory dyslexia- inablitlity to hear separate sounds within spoken language
• Cortex does not process speech sounds accurately
• Sounds do not register
• Use of similar sounding words
• Chunks of message are left out
• Blocks development of spelling
• “Tone deafness
• Dysgraphia- poor graphmotor or writing ability
• Awkward control of the pencil
• Cramped or illegible handwriting
• Many suffer from hand cramps
• Handwriting gets more illegible the longer they write
• Appears to draw the letters
• Combination