Understand Your Child

Specific Conditions - Dyslexia

What is it?

Dyslexia is a language-based disability in which a person has trouble understanding written words. It may also be referred to as a reading disability or reading disorder. The core difficulty is with word recognition and reading fluency, spelling, and writing.

What are the features of it?

Most commonly, individuals with Dyslexia have difficulty reading and spelling for no apparent reason. The person may be intelligent, able to achieve well in other areas and be exposed to the same education as others, but is unable to read at the expected level. Common problem areas include spelling, comprehension, reading and identification of words.

Common challenges experienced by those with Dyslexia:
• Difficulty with spelling
• Reverses numbers and letters
• Difficulty distinguishing left and right
• Poor organisation
• Difficulties telling the time
• Find it really hard to write by hand
• Find it difficult to copy things accurately from the board to paper
• Difficulty remembering or understanding what they just read
• Difficulty remembering or understanding what they have just heard
• Are unable to repeat what they have just been told
• Have difficulty writing down what they think
• Difficulty understanding and following instructions

Management strategies that support the child with Dyslexia (at preschool, school or home):
• Allow extra time to complete work (to take into account the extra time it takes to read and interpret the information)
• More repeated exposure to the same task than typical
• Use of visual cues rather than long verbal instructions
• Visual prompts wherever possible (ie picture not word lists for organization)
• Continued practice of mastered (familiar) skills, rather than simply moving on new tasks without maintaining the old.

Occupational therapy approaches and activities that can support the individual or their carers include:

• Use of a multi-sensory approach to learning (using as many different senses as possible such as seeing, listening, doing and speaking).
• Providing visual prompts for both instructions and organization
• Visually sequencing tasks (or components within a task) using visual cues
• Visual strategies to assist with reading and spelling (eg colour coding paper size according to letter size)
• Visual modelling rather than simply verbal instructing.