“Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurobiological in origin. It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities. These difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language that is often unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities and the provision of effective classroom instruction. Secondary consequences may include problems in reading comprehension and reduced reading experience that can impede growth of vocabulary and background knowledge.”
Adopted by the IDA Board of Directors, Nov. 12, 2002. Many state education codes, including Arizona, Oregon, Washington, New Jersey, Ohio and Utah, have adopted this definition.
“Substitute Senate Bill 6016 (SSB 6016) from the 2009 legislative session requests that the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI) provide training to the state’s nine regional Educational Service Districts (ESDs) on the topic of dyslexia and to develop a state dyslexia handbook. Substitute Senate Bill 6016 builds upon the successful implementation of the Lorraine Wojahn Dyslexia Pilot Project, which was authorized in the 2005 legislative session under Engrossed Substitute Senate Bill 5349 and continued for the 2007–09 biennium in House Bill 1128.” Since that time additional bills have been introduced and passed supporting dyslexia.”
Cheryl Anthony helped to introduce SSB 6016 in 2009 which ultimately led to the development of the Washington Dyslexia Resource Guide.
Pre-school
Dyslexia symptoms include:
- Delayed speech
- Mixing up the sounds and syllables in long words
- Chronic ear infections
- Severe reactions for childhood illnesses
- Late establishing a dominant hand
- Difficulty learning to tie shoes
- Trouble memorizing their address, phone number, or the alphabet
Elementary School
The symptoms are:
- Non-automatic handwriting
- Letter and or number reversals continuing past the end of the first grade
- Extreme difficulty learning cursive
- Slow, choppy, inaccurate reading:
- Guesses based on shape or context
- Skips or misreads prepositions (at, to, of)
- Ignores suffixes
- Can’t sound out unknown words
- Terrible spelling
- Often can’t remember sight words (they, were, does) or homonyms (their, they’re, there)
- Difficulty telling time on a clock with hands
- Trouble with math
- Memorizing multiplication tables
- Memorizing a sequence of steps
- Directionality
- When speaking, difficulty finding the correct word
- Extremely messy bedroom, backpack, and desk
- Dreads going to school
- Complains of stomach aches or headaches
- May have nightmares about school
High School
All of the elementary symptoms plus:
- Limited vocabulary
- Extremely poor written expression
- Large discrepancy between verbal skills and written composition
- Unable to master a foreign language
- Difficulty reading printed music
- Poor grades in many classes
- May drop out of high school
Adults
Educational history will be similar to earlier years. In addition:
- May have to read a page 2 or 3 times to understand it
- Slow reader
- Terrible speller
- Difficulty putting thoughts onto paper
- Still has difficulty with right versus left
- Often gets lost, even in a familiar city
- Sometimes confuses b and d, especially when tired or sick
Used with permission from Bright Solutions for Dyslexia—www.Bright Solutions.US.