CHARACTERISTICS OF DYSLEXIA, 6th – 8th Grade

The following signs may be associated with dyslexia if they are unexpected for the individual’s age, educational level, or cognitive abilities.

• Has a history of reading and spelling difficulties;
• Avoids reading aloud;
• Reads most materials slowly; oral reading is labored, not fluent;
• Avoids reading for pleasure;
• Lacks a strategy to read new words;
• Oral reading filled with substitutions, omissions, mispronunciations and disregard for punctuation;
• Better at reading words in context, rather than in isolation;
• May have inadequate vocabulary;
• Mispronunciation of the names of people and places, tripping over parts of words;
• Uses imprecise language, such as vague references to stuff or things instead of the proper name of an object;
• Not being able to find the exact word, such as confusing words that sound alike: saying tornado instead of volcano, substituting lotion for ocean or humanity for humidity;
• May be slow to discern and to learn prefixes, suffixes, root words and other reading and spelling strategies;
• Difficulty spelling phonetically;
• Poorer performance on multiple choice tests than other types of tests;  
• Inability to finish tests on time;
• Difficulty with word problems in math;
• Strong thinking skills: conceptualization, reasoning, imagination, abstraction;
• Has the ability to get the “big picture”;
• Has a high level of understanding what is read to him;
• Has a surprisingly good listening vocabulary;
• Stronger ability in areas not dependent on reading, such as math, computers, art;
• Deteriorating self-esteem and motivation that might appear as laziness;
• A family history of reading problems in parents or siblings.

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