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Potential Dyslexia Symptoms

Every person is different, so no one will have every symptom, however a person with dyslexia will have many.  Dyslexia symptoms can range from mild to severe and the effects on individuals can vary greatly.  

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Professional screeners will look for many different factors when performing an analysis  of an individual.  Testers look for a “constellation” or cluster of symptoms in the following areas:  

Susan Barton Discusses Dyslexia and Its Symptoms

Reading Difficulties
Spelling Difficulties
  • Can read a word on one page, but won't recognize it on the next.

  • Knows phonics, but can't—or won't—sound out an unknown word.

  • Slow, labored, inaccurate reading of single words in isolation.(when there is no story line or pictures to provide clues)

  • Say a word that has the same first and last letters, and the same shape.  (such as house-horse or beach bench)​
  • Insert or leave out letters. (such as could–cold or star–stair)

  • Say a word that has the same letters, but different sequence. 

    (such as who–how, lots–lost, saw–was, or girl–grill)
  • When reading aloud, reads in a slow, choppy cadence, and often ignores punctuation.

  • Becomes visibly tired after reading for only a short time.

  • Reading comprehension may be low due to spending so much energy trying to figure out the words.

  • Listening comprehension is usually significantly higher than reading comprehension.

  • Directionality confusion shows up when reading and when writing.

    • b–d, (left-right) confusion is a classic warning sign

    • b–p, n–u, or m–w (up - down) confusion

  • Substitutes similar-looking words, even if it changes the meaning. 

    (such as sunrise for surprise, house for horse, while for white, wanting for walking.)
  • When reading a story or a sentence, substitutes a word that means the same thing but doesn't look at all similar (such as trip for journey, fast for speed, or cry for weep.)

  • Misreads, omits, or even adds small function words (such as an, a, from, the, to, were, are, of)

  • Omits or changes suffixes (such as need for needed, talks for talking, or late for lately)

  • Spelling is far worse than reading.

  • Utilize inventive spelling.

  • Have extreme difficulty with vowel sounds, and often leave them out.

  • With enormous effort, may be able to “memorize” Monday's spelling list long enough to pass Friday's spelling test, but can't spell those very same words two hours later.

  • Continually misspells high frequency sight words 

  • Misspells even when copying something from the board or from a book.

  • Written work shows signs of spelling uncertainty—numerous erasures, cross outs, etc.

Hand Writing Difficulties (Dysgraphia)
  • Unusual pencil grip, often with the thumb on top of the fingers.

  • Young children will often put their head down on the desk to watch the tip of the pencil as they write.

  • The pencil is gripped so tightly that the hand cramps. Will frequently put the pencil down and shake out his/her hand.

  • Writing is a slow, labored, non-automatic chore.

  • Writes letters with unusual starting and ending points.

  • Has great difficulty getting letters to “sit” on the horizontal lines.

  • Copying off of the board is slow, painful, and tedious. 

  • Unusual spatial organization of the page. Words may be widely spaced or tightly pushed together. Margins are often ignored.

  • Has an unusually difficult time learning cursive writing, and shows chronic confusion about similarly-formed cursive letters such as f and b, m and n, w and u. They will also have difficulty remembering how to form capital cursive letters.

Challenges with Written Work
  • Avoids writing whenever possible.

  • Writes everything as one very long sentence.

  • Does not understand that a sentence has to start with a capital letter and end with punctuation.

  • Is confused about what is a complete sentence versus a fragment.

  • Misspells many words—even though they often use only very simple one-syllable words that they are “sure” they know how to spell.

  • Takes an unusually long time to write, due to dysgraphia.

  • Has nearly illegible handwriting, due to dysgraphia.

  • Uses space poorly on the page; odd spacing between words, may ignore margins, sentences tightly packed into one section of the page instead of being evenly spread out.

  • Does not notice their errors when “proofreading.” They will read back what they wanted to say, not what is actually on the page.

Directionality Issues
  • Left–Right confusion.

  • Often starts math problems on the wrong side, or want to carry a number the wrong way.

  • Up–Down confusion.

  • Confusion about directionality words:

    • First–last, before–after, next–previous, over–under, yesterday–tomorrow (directionality in time)

  • North, South, East, West confusion.

  • Often have difficulty reading or understanding maps.

  • Telling time on a clock.

Issues with Sequencing Tasks
  • Learning tasks that has a series of steps which must be completed in a specific order can be difficult.

  • These tasks are usually challenging for people with dyslexia:

    • Tying shoelaces

    • Printing letters

    • Doing long division

    • Touch typing

  • Inability to memorize lists, especially those without obvious meaning

  • Challenges with Multiplication tables.

  • Difficulty with Days of the week or months of the year in order.

  • Difficulty with Science facts

  • Difficulty with History facts

Inability to Memorize Facts
Math Challenges
  • People with dyslexia are often gifted in math. Their three-dimensional visualization skills help them “see” math concepts more quickly and clearly than non-dyslexic people. Unfortunately, difficulties in directionality, rote memorization, reading, and sequencing can make the following math tasks so difficult that their math gifts are never discovered.

    • Memorizing addition and subtraction facts.

    • Memorizing multiplication tables.

    • Remembering the sequence of steps in long division.

    • Reading word problems.

    • Copying an answer from one spot to a different spot.

    • Starting a math problem on the wrong side.

    • Showing their work: They often “see” math in their head, so showing their work is almost impossible.

    • Doing math rapidly.

    • They often excel at higher levels of math, such as algebra, geometry, and calculus

Organizational Difficulties
  • Extremely Messy Bedrooms

  • Difficulty managing school materials

  • Messy backpacks

  • Difficulty keeping track of homework

  • Difficulty managing calendars, notebooks and agendas. 

Reading / Spelling
Writing
written work
Directionality
Sequencing
Memorize
Math
Organizational
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