Dyslexia

Dyslexia is an extremely common disorder amongst children in our primary schools today. This essay will look at the characteristics of dyslexia, strategies to deal with dyslexia in the mainstream classroom and the inclusion of children with dyslexia into the mainstream classroom. To define dyslexia is a difficult task as it is immensely broad. It must be noted that children can suffer from severe dyslexia or have minor aspects of dyslexia. There is no uniform profile for a person who is diagnosed with dyslexia. It can affect peoples learning abilities in many different ways. One definition of dyslexia is ‘a disorder manifested by a difficulty in learning to read, despite conventional instruction, adequate intelligence and socio-cultural opportunity, which is dependent upon fundamental cognitive difficulties which are frequently of constitutional character’.  

While it is true dyslexia is evident when a child’s reading and/or spelling skills develop with great difficulty despite appropriate teaching and learning experiences, also when their reading and/or spelling fall significantly below the standard which one would expect him/her to be at given his/her overall profile, dyslexia can manifest itself in different forms. Other aspects of dyslexia can be recognised through ‘a weakness in areas such as speed of processing, short term memory, sequencing, auditory / visual perception, spoken language and motor skills’ . Phonological awareness has been researched and been proven to be a ‘central unifying thread in the reading process’ .At the age of six a weak phonological awareness can be a strong predictor for reading difficulties. As phonological awareness has such a great importance in reading, it is of grave importance that students are exposed to a rich phonological environment as soon as they begin school. The use of nonsense (pseudo words) in the higher classes is important as they are a clear indicator of a child’s phonological knowledge. They cannot learn...