What is Dyslexia?

Grades 4-8

At this stage, children progressing normally have mastered basic reading skills and are now expected to learn new information from reading. Many students with dyslexia continue to have significant difficulties with developing word recognition skills and therefore have trouble coping with more advanced reading activities necessary to succeed in the upper elementary grades and beyond. Students with dyslexia will show some of the following characteristics:

• significant difficulty reading and spelling multisyllabic words, often omitting entire syllables as well as making single sound errors
• lack of awareness of word structure (prefixes, roots, suffixes)
• frequent misreading of common sight words (where, there, what, then, when, etc.)
• difficulties with reading comprehension and learning new information from text because of underlying word recognition difficulties
• if underlying oral language problems exist affecting vocabulary knowledge and grammar, difficulties in comprehension of text will occur
• significant difficulties in writing related to problems in spelling as well as organizing ideas