AN OUNCE OF PREVENTION: When dyslexia is identified early through screening in PreK or kindergarten, a dyslexia-specific intervention can be started immediately, to prevent reading failure.
In second grade she continued to fall further behind in reading, even after she was placed in a small group intervention for struggling readers. When her parents asked for testing, it was already late spring, and the evaluation was delayed until the following year.
UNUSUAL READING BEHAVIORS
During the summer after second grade, while waiting for Chloe to be tested at the beginning of the upcoming school year, her parents encouraged her to read more, thinking that she might just need more exposure to books. But as they listened to her read, they noticed some very unusual reading behaviors.
She was still struggling to sound out words like work and take – words that are immediately recognized by most students her age. If those same words happened to be repeated in the next sentence, she would not recognize them and would try to sound
them out again. Surprisingly, she was often able to read what her parents considered to be more difficult words like dinosaur and elephant.
Her reading was either painfully slow, or fast and scrambled. She added or deleted letters in words, words in sentences, and guessed at many words that they thought she should know. She often switched articles like the and a and had trouble reading the most common prepositions such as of, for, in, and into. She tended to drop or change suffixes. She might read park for parked or parking.
She ignored punctuation cues like commas and periods, and often connected and ended sentences in the strangest places – without even noticing that the rearrangement changed the meaning or didn't make much sense. She also shifted letters in words, as well as words in sentences. Even though Chloe was intelligent and had excellent listening comprehension, these quirky reading behaviors interfered with her reading comprehension.
It was a puzzling picture, because these weren’t the same mistakes made by her older siblings, even when they were first learning to read. This was different. It showed up in the simplest sentences. She often changed plural form words to their singular form (and vice versa) and would even change the tense of the verb or replace it altogether. For example, if she was asked to read the following sentence:
The cat went up the tree.
Chloe might read it as Some cats went into the trees.
or A cat will go to the trees.
She also made some interesting substitutions, known as "semantic substitutions." She might read the word rug as carpet or the word yell as shout. Even though these substitutions did not impact the meaning of the sentence, they were puzzling to her parents. They realized that her reading problems were not only related to phonics, but involved a much broader challenge that impacted how she read words, sentences, and even paragraphs.
As expected, when she entered third grade, Chloe was finally tested to find out why she was still having problems learning to read. The testing revealed that Chloe was dyslexic. According to the International Dyslexia Association, "Dyslexia refers to a cluster of symptoms, which result in people
having difficulties with specific language skills, particularly reading. Students with dyslexia usually experience difficulties with other language skills, such as: spelling, writing, and pronouncing words."
WHY EARLY SCREENING IS SO IMPORTANT
Dyslexia is the most common learning disability, affecting up to 20% of children. When it is identified early through screening in PreK or kindergarten, a dyslexia-specific intervention can be started immediately, to prevent reading failure. When this doesn't happen, an achievement gap in reading is present as early as the first grade. Once behind, catching up requires a major effort for both the student and their teacher or tutor.
The reading achievement gap is not the only consequence of delayed screening and intervention. The entire academic life of the child suffers. Both daytime schoolwork and homework are much harder, and the child may develop anxiety, depression, and anger. Many dyslexic children develop lifelong self-esteem issues, making early identification and intervention absolutely critical.
They are frequently retained in kindergarten or first grade, where they unfortunately receive the same reading instruction that failed them the previous year. Grade retention is not the solution, nor is it an effective substitute for the intensive intervention they need. Retained students often feel ashamed and embarrassed, believing that they are not as smart as their peers.
According to the International Dyslexia Association, all students, and especially students with dyslexia, can benefit from an approach to reading instruction called structured literacy. This framework is based on the science of reading – a large body of reading research conducted over the past several decades. Structured literacy involves explicit and systematic reading instruction, where a student begins by learning the individual sounds of letters, and then they progress to using this knowledge to decode words as they read.
Once students have mastered these foundational skills, they are gradually introduced to more complex instruction. In addition, students with dyslexia require an intensive intervention that includes ongoing cumulative review, close progress monitoring, and a heavy focus on fluency training, to overcome the challenges of dyslexia.