Preschool

Many of those with dyslexia have trouble with phonetic awareness, a critical step for reading. You can see signs of a future reading disability before a child even begins school. Although specific difficulties are noted they still reach other developmental milestones on time.

• Delays in learning to talk.

•Children may have trouble producing longer words, and may continue to use easy words incorrectly.

•May confuse sounds that are similar.

•Difficulty with rhyming.

• Difficulty in breaking words into syllables.

•Trouble noticing individual sounds in spoken words.

•Difficulty learning the sequence of the alphabet.

•Delays recognising naming the letters in his or her own name.

•Trouble learning common groups and sequences such as days of the week, colours or shapes etc.

Primary School

Most children learn to read by understanding that sounds make up words, and that letters represent these sounds. They learn to blend these sounds to read, and eventually words are automatically recognised. This allows the reader to spend more time on comprehension of the material.

•Trouble learning the alphabet

•Trouble matching sounds to letters.

•Trouble blending words.

•Trouble sounding out words.

• Trouble with spelling.

•Messy handwriting.