Dealing with Dyslexia

Dealing with Dyslexia. Kadin’s Story

Kadin failed Grade 1. She was diagnosed with severe dyslexia and was referred to a school for dyslexia where specialist education is provided to learners who suffer from this disorder. Despite repeating Grade 1 at this specialist school Kadin continued to struggle. Her mother heard about Edublox and arranged for an assessment.

Edublox Assessment, 8 September 2010

Kadin was assessed on the Essi Reading and Spelling Test, on a Grade 2, third term level. Norms for the tests, available for each term, have been calculated in the form of stanines and percentile ranks.

Of children doing the test

4% score a stanine of 1 (VERY POOR)
19% score a stanine of 2 or 3 (POOR)
54% score a stanine of 4, 5 or 6 (AVERAGE)
19% score a stanine of 7 or 8 (GOOD)
4% score a stanine of 9 (VERY GOOD)

Kadin scored 3 out of 20 for the Essi Reading Test, which equals a stanine of 1 (VERY POOR). She scored 2 out of 20 for the Essi Spelling Test, which equals a stanine of 1 (VERY POOR).

On the informal paragraph reading test Kadin could read only 20 words per minute.

Our assessment determined that Kadin was struggling with reading and spelling as a result of weak cognitive skills. She scored
56% on the Form Perception Assessment
55% on the Visual Memory Assessment
50% on the Auditory Memory Assessment
50% on the Eye Span Assessment
50% on the Logical Thinking Assessment

SCALE:
90%-100% — Very good/Development will further increase the skill level.
80%-89% — Good/Development will further increase the skill level.
70%-79% — Average/Development is necessary.
0%-69% — Below average/Development is essential.

Kadin also had a directionality problem, which causes one to confuse letters like b and d. She wrote ‘brum’ for ‘drum’, ‘door’ for ‘bore’, ‘tadl’ for ‘table’, ‘dalt’ for ‘belt’, et cetera.

Two Edublox classes per week were recommended but before long distance became a problem and Kadin could attend only one class per week. Soon after starting at Edublox Kadin’s mother re-enrolled her in a mainstream school.

Edublox Re-Assessment, 24 November 2012

Kadin was again tested on the Essi Reading and Spelling Test, this time on a Grade 4, 4th term level. She scored 15 out of 20 for the Essi Reading Test, which equals a stanine of 5 (AVERAGE). She scored 9 out of 20 for the Essi Spelling Test, which equals a stanine of 4 (AVERAGE).

On the informal paragraph reading test Kadin could now read 131 words per minute.

Kadin is still in a mainstream school, where she is coping.

What Is Dyslexia?

The term dyslexia was coined from the Greek words dys meaning ill or difficult and lexis meaning word, and the symptoms below indicate that a child has dyslexia and therefore needs help:

One of the most obvious — and one of the most common — telltale signs is reversals. People with this kind of problem often confuse letters like b and d, either when reading or when writing, or they sometimes read (or write) words like “rat” for “tar,” or “won” for “now.”
Another sure sign, which needs no confirmation by means of any form of testing, is elisions, that is when a person sometimes reads or writes “cat” when the word is actually “cart.”
The person who reads very slowly and hesitantly, who reads without fluency, word by word, or who constantly loses his place, thereby leaving out whole chunks or reading the same passage twice, has a reading problem.
The person may try to sound out the letters of the word, but then be unable to say the correct word. For example, he may sound the letters “c-a-t” but then say “cold.”
He may read or write the letters of a word in the wrong order, like “left” for “felt,” or the syllables in the wrong order, like “emeny” for “enemy,” or words in the wrong order, like “are there” for “there are.”
He may spell words as they sound, for example “rite” for “right.”
He may read with poor comprehension, or it may be that he remembers little of what he reads.
The person may have a poor and/or slow handwriting.