Diagnosis 

A child’s difficulty in reading and writing may be ascribed to health problems like vision problems, hearing problems or conditions like ADHD. If a child does not have any health problems which explain their learning difficulties, the teaching method may be incompatible and a different approach may be needed. The RTI (Response To Intervention) approach is based on educational research that appropriate early intervention, provided in kindergarten till grade three, is very effective in closing the gap for struggling readers. If a child’s progress is concerning after additional support and teaching in the form of RTI, a formal clinical evaluation is needed to find out if they have Dyslexia. A Dyslexia diagnostic assessment is done by an educational psychologist or a specialist teacher. Birth history, family history, child development including speech and language development and early educational history are taken. The areas assessed in an educational evaluation of Dyslexia are: 

• Phonological Awareness – awareness of and access to the sound structure of oral language

• Language-Based Memory – ability to recall sounds, syllables, words

• Rapid Automatic Naming – speed of naming objects, colors, digits, or letters

• Receptive Vocabulary – understanding of words heard

• Phonics Skills – understanding of the symbol (letter) to the sound(s) relationship, individually or with other letters

• Decoding – ability to use symbol-sound relationship to identify (read, pronounce) words (real words or nonsense words)

• Oral Reading Fluency – ability to read accurately, at a story-telling pace (single words, sentences and paragraphs)

• Spelling

• Writing (sentence level, paragraph level)

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