Dyslexia is a neurologically based communication disorder and learning disability. Although at MVP, we view dyslexia as a learning difference.
Dyslexia often manifests as trouble with reading but can also cause difficulty with spelling, writing, learning foreign languages, and organization.
Varying in degrees of severity, students diagnosed with dyslexia display difficulties in single-word decoding, reading fluency, spelling, and/or written composition.
According to dyslexia expert, Dr. Sally Shaywitz, co-director of the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity, children with dyslexia have “a glitch within the language system, which impairs phonemic awareness and thus the ability to segment the spoken word into its underlying sounds.”
The following are common characteristics associated with dyslexia. In order to verify whether an individual is dyslexic, a formal evaluation by a qualified examiner is necessary. Common characteristics associated with dyslexia may include:
Problems with reading words in isolation
Inaccurately decoding unfamiliar or nonsense words
Slow, inaccurate, or labored oral reading
There may be omissions, insertions, or substitutions when reading
Inconsistency—a child may be able to read a word in one context but not in another
Poor spelling
Struggles with phonological awareness, segmenting, blending, rhyming, and manipulating sounds in words
Mispronouncing words, i.e., busgetti for spaghetti
Trouble learning the names of letters and their associated sounds
Weak memory skills for sounds and words
Slow in naming of familiar objects, colors, letters
Variable degrees of difficulty with reading comprehension
Variable degrees of difficulty with written composition
