How can you tell if a child is dyslexic?

Question

What red flags or reading struggles does a student typically have before they get diagnosed with dyslexia?

Answer 1

From a professional standpoint, dyslexia is suspected when reading difficulty is "unexpected" in a student whose intelligence is not in line with reading ability.

Secondly, dyslexic characteristics will show up while working with a student, such as:

1. Difficulty remembering letters and sounds
2. Difficulty in phonological awareness: rhyme, onset-rhyme, syllables
3. Difficulty in phonemic awareness: phoneme blending, segmenting, substitution, and manipulation

For these reasons, BLS, incorporates each of the aforementioned items in every lesson.

Answer 2

During my time teaching at a highly neurodivergent school district, I observed many children who later received a dyslexia diagnosis, and certain patterns were consistently evident. These students often showed significant difficulty with “phonemic awareness”; in other words, during read-aloud activities, they struggled to connect sounds with corresponding letters or groups of letters. On written or typed tasks, many also had a hard time with word retrieval and spelling, frequently relying on incorrect or phonetically spelled versions of words. These challenges were usually disproportionate to their verbal skills and comprehension levels, which highlighted a disconnect between reading/writing and speaking/listening.

After sharing this information with students’ special education case managers, we would develop Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) to outline the proper accommodations and modifications needed to support this student.

At the end of the day, these signs were less so “red flags” and more so indications of students’ learning needs—which, as educators, we are looking out for and addressing in all of our students. :)

Answer 3

Dyslexics often read slowly and with much effort regardless of how many times they have seen the words or sentences. On the other hand, dyslexics are often very creative and out-of-the-box thinkers. Their lack of reading ability seems incongruent with their intelligence. This is why they sometimes get accused of being lazy. Thankfully, science has shown that the real problem is the dyslexics' lack of awareness of small word parts called phonemes. This problem can be addressed through explicit instruction by a qualified parent/teacher/tutor using the Orton-Gillingham phonetic progression.