What is Dyslexia?
Dyslexia is characterized by difficulties with word recognition and fluency as well as poor spelling and decoding skills.
- According to the Yale Center for Dyslexia, an estimated 20% of the population has dyslexia.
- The average family pays $6,000 to $8,000 per year for tutoring. Those are the lucky ones.
- Dyslexia is found in 41% of the prison population.
There is no correlation between dyslexia and IQ and there are varying degrees of dyslexia. Dyslexia is hard to diagnose and sometimes subjective. Once it is diagnosed, it’s not like you can take a pill or a shot and have it go away.
Dyslexia Intervention
According to the International Dyslexia Association, Orton-Gillingham systems are recognized as the only research proven effective methods in working with dyslexic individuals. These methods use multi-sensory decoding skills that teach reading which build on sounds, syllables and spelling rules.
But Orton-Gillingham is not only effective for dyslexia. When the 2000 National Spelling Bee champion was asked what made her such a good speller, she responded "In kindergarten, my teacher taught me the 72 phonograms." It is also effective in taking children with Down syndrome beyond sight words and into independent reading.
Prevention
Most classroom teachers have not been trained about dyslexia and how to remediate in Orton-Gillingham methods. And most students do not manifest symptoms until 2nd or 3rd grade. Sight word memorization may be detrimental to students with dyslexia and individuals may experience great difficulity, confusion and frustration trying to suppress that automatic tendency to see whole words rather than the sounds in them. They often resort to guessing from pictures and content rather than starting at the beginning to read words phonetically.
Why wait until a child struggles to intervene. Begin teaching young children to learn to read with the intervention. Start with sounds and start younger!
Here is a great TED Ed video
on Dyslexia
by Kelli Sandman-Hurley.
"Curing Dyslexia: What is Possible?
by Dr. Patricia Mathes
The recent webinar, "Curing Dyslexia: What is Possible?," by Dr. Patricia Mathes, PHD, is well worth watching if you have a child with dyslexia or suspect that your child may be dyslexic. New brain research and interventions are discussed with positive outcomes. You can view it on YouTube by selecting the picture below.
Click picture to watch video.