Dyslexia

Dyslexia refers to a learning disability that impairs a person’s fluency or comprehension accuracy in reading.  Dyslexia occurs on a sliding scale, it may have a small or large effect on the individual depending on the severity of the case.  It can manifest itself as a difficulty with phonological awareness, phonological decoding, orthographic coding, auditory short-term memory, or rapid naming of words.

Dyslexia affects 10% of the population and is different from having a reading difficulty. It has been conclusively proven that dyslexia is not linked to intelligence, but is rather a neurological difference that changes the way students see text on the page.  People with dyslexia often learn visually and are quite creative but have difficulty decoding words.

Characteristics of dyslexia vary greatly from one individual to another. The dyslexic person can experience difficulties in many areas, including:

• Formation of/naming letters
• Sequencing  letters of the alphabet
• associating sound (phonetics) with the symbol (grapheme)
• Sequencing letters to make words
• finding a word in the dictionary
• expressing ideas in writing
• finding the right word when talking
• expressing clear ideas verbally
• distinguishing direction (left from right, east from west)
• Telling time, days of the week, months of the year
• confusion with math symbols
• Sequential memory (memorizing multiplication tables)

We have a great deal of experience with dyslexic students, and have developed a variety of programs and other accommodations to support the dyslexic student in achieving their full potential.