What is Dyslexia?

A Teacher’s perspective by Dr Jean Schedler

Dyslexia is a language-based learning disability. The word dyslexia comes from the Greek language and means poor language.

The exact causes of dyslexia are still not completely clear. Dyslexia occurs in people of all backgrounds and is not due to a lack of intelligence or a lack of a desire to learn.

From a teacher’s perspective, the term dyslexia encompasses a number of symptoms, which results in a person having difficulties with specific language skills, particularly reading.

Other language skills that a person with dyslexia might also experience difficulties with are spelling, writing, and spoken language.

Collectively, these symptoms present a number of challenges for the classroom teacher.

People with dyslexia have been found to have a core difficulty with discriminating individual sounds within spoken words. This ability to discriminate individual sounds within a spoken word is called “phonemic awareness”.

Phonemic awareness instruction is now universally recognised as one of the required building blocks of a research-based reading instructional programme.

Difficulty with phonemic awareness (the ability to recognise and manipulate individual sounds in spoken words) is the best indicator of a student being at-risk for future reading difficulties.

I will be back in NZ in September 2009, to run more training courses for teachers, in the Sonday System reading intervention programme.

This programme is very effective, and its delivery is structured, sequential, and multi-sensory. There are three levels of instruction, starting with early intervention for three to four-year-olds.

I am also running full day seminars on “Phonological Awareness”, in Auckland, and “Reading and Dyslexia” in Christchurch.

To learn more about Dr Schedler’s September 2009 Workshops and also Training in Early Intervention Materials (Sonday System) contact Read Auckland info@readauckland.co.nz or Telephone 09-529 1381.