A preschool child may:

• Have had a history of delay in speaking or pronouncing words correctly.
• Experience difficulties following simple instructions.
• Have had a history of conductive hearing loss (i.e. glue ear).
• Find it hard to remember the names of familiar objects e.g. spoon, cup etc.
• Have had difficulty learning nursery rhymes and or familiar songs.
• Have other members of the family who have experienced similar difficulties.

A Primary School Child may:

• Have had particular difficulty learning to read, write or spell
• Often loses their place whilst reading or is over reliant on guessing. Can also miss words out of the text.
• Read slowly and laboriously, often losing their thread or focus.
• Have better comprehension of a text when the story is read to them.
• Have experienced difficulty remembering sequences such as the alphabet and months of the year
• Have difficulty distinguishing their left from their right
• Have persistent and continued reversing of letters and numbers (particularly past the age of 7)
• Is generally articulate and knowledgeable
• Sometimes experience “word finding difficulties” i.e have long pauses in their conversation or use the wrong word as an incorrect substitute
• Has poor hand-eye coordination and finds copying information from sheets, boards or books very difficult

A secondary aged child may:

• Have a tendency to read inaccurately and without adequate comprehension
• Have inconsistent and poor spelling
• Experience difficulty planning and writing essays
• Struggle to organise themselves and their equipment and start and complete tasks
• A tendency to confuse verbal instructions, times or places or dates
• Greater difficulty learning a foreign language
• Disorganised at home and school
• Greater difficulty revising and remembering content
• A tendency to get frustrated and suffer from poor self esteem

Identifying Dyslexia

Many online tests claim that they “identify” Dyslexia. However, most often these tests give people an indication that they might be experiencing a specific learning difficulty rather than a definitive diagnosis of Dyslexia. As such, if you feel that your child could be experiencing Dyslexia then you might choose to:

• Discuss your concerns with your child’s class teacher in the first instance. Often this
• process alone can be reassuring and provide you with both contextual information in relation to your child’s performance in comparison to their peers as well as give you helpful advice and strategies regarding how best to support your child’s literacy acquisition.
• If after speaking with your child’s class teacher you remain concerned about their development and or educational progress you could choose to speak to your school SENCO. The SENCO can help identify specific approaches that could help your child that could be offered both in school and at home. They might provide alternative resources such as specialist reading schemes, access to computer programmes as well as ensuring that classroom activities are appropriate for your child. Upon raising your concerns your child should then fall into the schools assess, plan, do review cycle, thus ensuring that all approaches, strategies and interventions are kept under constant review in order to determine that they remain appropriate and are resulting in appropriate levels of progress for your child.
• Further to consulting your SENCO you may also choose to consult an Educational Child Psychologist, like ourselves. An Educational Psychologist will discuss your child’s developmental and educational history. They will consider assessment information in relation to your child’s current profile of strengths and weaknesses and may agree to undertake a number of tests with your child. Such tests may include:
• A reading and spelling assessment such as the TOWRE (test of word reading efficiency) which looks at the rate of reading as well as the child\young person’s phonological decoding skills
• A cognitive ability assessment such as the BAS 111 (British Ability Scales 111) or the WISC (1V) (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children 1V) which will look at your child’s verbal, non-verbal and spatial skills. Further diagnostic assessments could also be undertaken which would look at rate of information processing and visual, auditory and working memory. It is important to note that the key features to a good Dyslexia assessment should always consider:
• Rate of reading efficiency as well as decoding
• Visual, auditory and working memory
• Verbal and non-verbal skills – so that a comparison between strengths and weaknesses can be gained.

Interventions for Dyslexia

If after assessment your child has been identified as having Dyslexia there are a number of interventions which could make a real difference. These should always be bespoke to your child, agreed with their class teacher and school SENCO and kept under review so as to ensure their effectiveness. For further information about the appropriateness of assessment for Dyslexia and or to discuss suitable educational/developmental interventions for your child.