Shaywitz lays out the “sea of strength” model of early identification where parents and teachers can easily see the warning signs of dyslexia (p. 93). The two key components are a weakness in getting to the sounds of words with strengths in thinking and reasoning, and then ensuring the child has assistance for their weakness and accommodations for their strengths (p. 93). Some early warning signs in the primary grades for dyslexia are a delay in speaking, difficulties with pronunciation or continued “baby talk” past what is appropriate, leaving off the beginning sounds of words, inverting the sounds within a word, trouble with rhyming, using the incorrect phoneme for a word (saying tomato instead of potato), word retrieval difficulties (vague
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When diagnosing someone for dyslexia several areas need to be examined, in short it is a clinical diagnosis based on a reading difficulty that is “unexpected” for that “person’s age, intelligence, level of education, or profession” (p. 132). This information comes from a variety of sources, including: a family history, teacher observation from reading and speaking, and a battery of diagnostic testing. Since reading is made up of two separate operations: decoding the word and comprehension, several different testing measures are necessary. Each test gives specific insight to a child’s strength and weakness. The first set of tests examines how well someone can read words and then comprehend what they have read. While tests measure silent word reading, comprehension, fluency and accuracy like The Woodcock-Johnson IV, other tests such as The Gray Oral Reading Test V is the only one that measures the accuracy, rate, and comprehension at the oral level (p. 134). Certain tests just have measurements for spelling or encoding. The second part of the evaluation is equally important; it measures a person’s learning strengths. Tests of cognitive abilities, like the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children V, observation and assessment will help to find where a person can succeed. In the past schools simply used the discrepancy model to determine if a student met certain criteria, or if a reading problem was …show more content…
Research shows that if we do not help poor readers in kindergarten and first grade with phonology, they will still be poor readers in firth grade (p. 145). We must teach our children these skills in first grade, so that from second grade moving forward they can fine-tune them and gain automaticity. Shaywitz notes that we can predict by first grade whether a child will have reading problems, and most remediation programs can change an at-risk child’s reading future. Dr. Reid Lyons at the NICHD stated that when we use scientific research methods in teaching our at-risk students, it would reduce the need for intervention in the higher grades (p. 261). Perhaps this is the most powerful antidotal evidence available; proven methods are available to teach reading, they just need to be
When diagnosing someone for dyslexia several areas need to be examined, in short it is a clinical diagnosis based on a reading difficulty that is “unexpected” for that “person’s age, intelligence, level of education, or profession” (p. 132). This information comes from a variety of sources, including: a family history, teacher observation from reading and speaking, and a battery of diagnostic testing. Since reading is made up of two separate operations: decoding the word and comprehension, several different testing measures are necessary. Each test gives specific insight to a child’s strength and weakness. The first set of tests examines how well someone can read words and then comprehend what they have read. While tests measure silent word reading, comprehension, fluency and accuracy like The Woodcock-Johnson IV, other tests such as The Gray Oral Reading Test V is the only one that measures the accuracy, rate, and comprehension at the oral level (p. 134). Certain tests just have measurements for spelling or encoding. The second part of the evaluation is equally important; it measures a person’s learning strengths. Tests of cognitive abilities, like the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children V, observation and assessment will help to find where a person can succeed. In the past schools simply used the discrepancy model to determine if a student met certain criteria, or if a reading problem was …show more content…
Research shows that if we do not help poor readers in kindergarten and first grade with phonology, they will still be poor readers in firth grade (p. 145). We must teach our children these skills in first grade, so that from second grade moving forward they can fine-tune them and gain automaticity. Shaywitz notes that we can predict by first grade whether a child will have reading problems, and most remediation programs can change an at-risk child’s reading future. Dr. Reid Lyons at the NICHD stated that when we use scientific research methods in teaching our at-risk students, it would reduce the need for intervention in the higher grades (p. 261). Perhaps this is the most powerful antidotal evidence available; proven methods are available to teach reading, they just need to be