HERE ARE SOME COMMON SIGNS TO WATCH OUT FOR
Preschool Years
Kindergarten & First Grade
Kindergarten & First Grade
- Trouble learning common nursery rhymes, such as “Jack and Jill”
- Difficulty learning (and remembering) the names of letters in the alphabet
- Seems unable to recognize letters in his or her own name
- Mispronounces familiar words; persistent “baby talk”
- Doesn’t recognize rhyming patterns like cat, bat, rat
- Auditory and/or visual processing deficits
- Issues with short-term memory, rapid automatized naming, and expressive vocabulary
- Late in talking/speech and language delays
- A family history of reading and/or spelling difficulties (dyslexia often runs in families)
Kindergarten & First Grade
Kindergarten & First Grade
Kindergarten & First Grade
- Reading errors that show no connection to the sounds of the letters on the page—will say “puppy” instead of the written word “dog” on an illustrated page with a picture of a dog
- Does not understand that words come apart
- Complains about how hard reading is; “disappears” when it is time to read
- A history of reading problems in parents or siblings
- Cannot sound out even simple words like cat, map, nap
- Does not associate letters with sounds, such as the letter b with the “b” sound
STRENGTHS
- Curiosity
- Great imagination
- Ability to figure things out; gets the gist of things
- Eager to embrace new ideas
- A good understanding of new concepts
- Surprising maturity
- A larger vocabulary than typical for age group
- Enjoys solving puzzles
- Talent for building models
- Excellent comprehension of stories read or told to him or her
Second Grade & Higher
Kindergarten & First Grade
Second Grade & Higher
- Very slow in acquiring reading skills. Reading is slow and awkward.
- Trouble reading unfamiliar words, often making wild guesses because he or she cannot sound out the word
- Doesn’t seem to have a strategy for reading new words
- Avoids reading out loud
- Searches for a specific word and ends up using vague language, such as “stuff” or “thing,” without naming the object
- Pauses, hesitates, and/or uses lots of “um’s” when speaking
- Confuses words that sound alike, such as saying “tornado” for “volcano,” substituting “lotion” for “ocean”
- Mispronunciation of long, unfamiliar or complicated words
- Seems to need extra time to respond to questions
- Trouble remembering dates, names, telephone numbers, random lists
- Struggles to finish tests on time
- Extreme difficulty learning a foreign language
- Poor spelling
- Messy handwriting
- Low self-esteem that may not be immediately visible
STRENGTHS
- Excellent thinking skills: conceptualization, reasoning, imagination, abstraction
- Learning that is accomplished best through meaning rather than rote memorization
- Ability to get the “big picture”
- A high level of understanding of what is read to him or her
- The ability to read and to understand at a high level overlearned (or highly practiced) words in a special area of interest
- Improvement as an area of interest becomes more specialized and focused—and a miniature vocabulary is developed that allows for reading in that subject area
- A surprisingly sophisticated listening vocabulary
- Excels in areas not dependent on reading, such as computers and visual arts, or in more conceptual (versus fact-driven) subjects, including social studies, and creative writing