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This is a graph that shows the testing that was done on a fourth grade boy name Aaron.
And you see that the kinds of tests that were given and the profile of the test of his test
performance, help us to make the diagnosis of Dyslexia. First, we look to see if the
child has average, at least average intelligence, which says he is able to learn. Then we look
to see what the child's ability is with oral language. And for Adam, he had very average
oral language. Then we look to see what his reading abilities are. Here's reading comprehension,
here's the ability to read words. Now his comprehension is much less than his intelligence
which suggests or that his oral language would suggest. We see the real difficulty beginning
here with his ability to read words, that is to take words apart and understand the
letter sound correspondences. Then we see that his spelling is about unpar with that
and his greatest difficulties here have to do with his ability to sound out words for
reading and spelling. And so this is an example, Aaron, is a child who has what we refer to
as a phonological difficulty, difficulty with the sounds of the language and how this relate
to the letter structure, that is critical if we want to learn to spell words we've not
seen before. There are eight really critical predictors of poor reading after a child comes
to school. The very first one is family history of Dyslexia or of poor reading and that has
to do with the possibility that the gene that supports the ability to learn to read and
spell has, has a mutation that impacts development. Secondly is the early language development.
Children who have difficulties acquiring language early on are more likely than others to have
difficulty with reading in school. The other predictors have to do with how easily they
become interested in print as in their environment, the ability to learn letters of the alphabet.
The ability to isolate sounds, syllables and words, sounds and words. The ability to use
vocabulary. The ability to learn new words and to use them effectively. The ability re-tell,
to recall stories or songs and re-tell them. Memory is a very important characteristic
that supports learning to read and spell in school. And finally, the rate at which children
are able to name things. Speed of learning, speed of recall is another very important
characteristic that predicts the likelihood that a child will have difficulty acquiring
literacy.