How can you spot literacy difficulties in those children who have started school and are having their first reading and writing lessons? What exactly are they doing that alerts teachers (and parents/carers) that learning to read and write isn’t going as smoothly as it could be?

1. slow progress

All children in class get exactly the same teaching but some children will forget what they have learned, or will need frequent refreshers to help them remember it. It’s when teachers get that feeling of “it’s just not sticking”. Specifically, that starts right at the beginning when letters and their matching sounds are taught in phonics lessons. It’s when a child sees a letter but can’t remember the sound it makes, even though it has been taught and revised and is obvious for most of the others in the class. 

2. difficulty reading short words

Once the letter-sound combinations have been taught (phonics), children move onto the simplest three letter words that sound like the letters in them: words like cat, dog, rat, etc. These are CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words. The very first step is sounding them out: c-a-t says cat. Children on the dyslexia spectrum may have trouble with this. They may only remember the last sound, so they will say a word that begins with t if they are trying to read cat. Or the sounds look meaningless to them and they don’t know where to begin. What skilled readers will do is sound out the word once or twice and then read it automatically. Reading automatically means they don’t need to sound it out ever again. If a child has to sound out a word for longer than most other learners in order to read it, that could be an indication of difficulties on the dyslexia spectrum. It means that reading isn’t becoming automatic - and exactly what skilled readers are is automatic readers.  

3. flipping letters when writing

Flipping letters is normal for almost all learners at the beginning of learning to write. Even though it’s popularly the most well-known sign of dyslexia, flipping letters doesn’t necessarily mean a young learner is dyslexic. The concern is when it goes on for a long time, when other learners have grown out of letter-flipping, especially if there has been letter-formation training and handwriting training. Handwriting training - especially training joined-up writing - is a really helpful skill for dyslexics. That’s because joined-up writing develops muscle memory which is automatic, so writing words correctly becomes more automatic, like riding a bike.    

4. difficulty writing short words

This is something you see in two different ways. The first is not knowing where to begin - when learners really are unable to link letters and sounds. So if there is a picture of a dog and the young learner’s attempt to write dog comes out as something like mp, or some other random group of letters, this is a sign that dyslexia could be the cause.  

Secondly, very erratic and varied mistakes is a strong clue that a learner is likely to be dyslexic. It’s when learners write the same simple word very many different ways, so there is no predictability to how they write, that is a strong clue that it could be dyslexia. On the other hand, mistakes that you can read and recognise - like kat (cat) and kaic (cake) are the very best kinds of mistakes to make and show the learner has a sophisticated understanding of spelling patterns, but just needs a bit more practice. There’s nothing dyslexic about those kinds of mistakes. 

5. rules don’t work 

Dyslexic learners don’t do well with rule-based spelling instruction because rules are often too abstract for dyslexic brains. Rules like the “magic e” rule are very often not helpful to dyslexic learners. This is where specialised teaching comes into its own for dyslexic learners because it moves them away from rule-based literacy learning to a more tailored approach that creates understanding through making meaning, not just following rules. What you see with dyslexics learners, even the youngest ones, is that they either over-apply a spelling rule to where it has no place, or they make up their own rules and follow those. 

6. fluent reading is hard or isn’t really happening

Once young learners get on to reading short phrases or sentences, the ones on the dyslexia spectrum will be unlikely to read them fluently. That’s because all their mental effort is being put into sounding out words so they are not reading automatically, and therefore easily, like skilled readers.

7. reading one word as different but similar-looking word

Often a dyslexic learner will read one word as another, similar-looking word. If that happens a lot, it’s a clue that it could be dyslexia. One of the reasons for this is just the effort of reading words, and effortful processes are prone to mistakes. Another reason is that dyslexic learners often do not comprehend what they read (see 10, below) and so similar-looking words become interchangeable because that process of “hold on, this doesn’t make sense, let me read that again” doesn’t kick in for dyslexic learners.  

8. sounding out irregular words

Sounding out words like c-a-t / cat is the first strategy children are taught. But so many words in English are irregular that almost as soon as they learn to sound out, they learn it’s not always helpful. There are those “sight words” or “tricky words” like here and some and once that are impossible to sound out - they need to be read in one go, automatically. Children who keep trying to sound out words that cannot be sounded out are relying on the only strategy they know, and this can be an indication of dyslexia.  

9. working so much harder than everyone else 

This is the heart-breaker. There will be that child in class who is working so much harder than everyone else to compensate for their difficulties, but only ever gets poor to average results. This can be where dyslexia becomes a mental health and self-esteem issue and it is vital that the child is supported. Also be alert to when incredible levels of hard work get about the same results as the learners who are not on the dyslexia spectrum because that level of effort is exhausting and is hard to maintain, especially as work gets harder. If these learners are assessed, the results are often at the lower end of the spectrum but not low enough for a “diagnosis” of dyslexia.      

10. not understanding what is read

There is a group on the dyslexia spectrum who are called “poor comprehenders” and while this tends to show up a bit later in the journey of learning to read, it’s one to watch out for. It’s those learners who read fluently, but fail to understand what they have read. This is because all their effort is used for reading the words so there is no capacity left over to understand what they have read. It’s easy to mistake fluent reading for reading with understanding, but they are often two very different things. 

11. a family history of dyslexia

Dyslexia is genetic in so many cases. It may skip a generation, or it may only show up in one child and not their siblings. Because it was not fully recognised until fairly recently, clues are that older family members will tell negative stories about school because of the unrecognised difficulties they had. The chances are that they did not go into jobs that require lots of reading and writing. Once you know what you are looking for, it all falls into place pretty easily. 

Are you a parent and need to talk to your child’s teacher about how they are progressing in reading, writing and spelling but you are a bit worried? Not sure what to ask? Then ask these questions:

1. Be straight up with the teacher and tell them you are worried. Give them any relevant family history, especially a history of reading difficulties in the family, if your child had hearing difficulties in earlier years and if your child was born prematurely or had significant illnesses in their life. Once the teacher then knows this, ask them what they are noticing. What are their general impressions?
   
   

2. Is my child making progress at the right speed? Are they especially behind everyone else in the class? Bear in mind teachers don’t like to compare because comparison is not especially helpful, but knowing their general feeling about where your child is can help. Ask them if they feel if your child is doing ok generally.
   
   

3. Ask if there are any informal interventions in place:

Are you doing any extra work with him/her? Do you notice things where she/he needs extra help, and maybe more than most others need?

4. Ask what you can do at home. Remember, sometimes learning spelling, reading and writing can just be a bit delayed without there being any significant problems, especially if your child is young in the year group. A bit of extra support at home might be helpful.  

5. Timing is key. If the teacher indicates there are problems, you suspect there are difficulties and you have a family history of spelling, reading and writing difficulties, now is the perfect time for a formal assessment. It’s possible to have your child assessed for dyslexia from age 4. Dyslexia is well-understood and there are lots of helpful strategies and accommodations that can be put in place for better outcomes, including keeping your child’s sense of self-esteem up. Ask if your child’s teacher has any advice on where  to get assessed in your area, and if not, look for the dyslexia organisation in your country, like the British Dyslexia Association in the UK https://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/ , and take it from there. 

And two very final things might help.
 

1. Dyslexia and intelligence are not connected. Dyslexic people are not any more or less intelligent than anyone else. Their brains work a bit differently to those who can read and write easily, but we need that variety to thrive. Dyslexia is a learning difference, not a disability.
   
   

2. English is the hardest language to deal with for dyslexics because it has the most difficult letter-sound combinations of any alphabetic language. For a language like Italian, where letters and sounds match much more closely, dyslexia doesn’t cause the kind of severe problems that it does in English. Bear in mind that English as the language itself makes dyslexia harder to deal with for English speakers compared to dyslexia in other languages.