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Dyslexia Information

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What is Dyslexia?

Dyslexia is a specific learning difficulty that mainly affects reading and spelling, but quickly leads to difficulty with fluency, writing and comprehension. Dyslexia is characterised by difficulties in processing word-sounds and by weaknesses in short-term verbal memory; its effects are sometimes seen in spoken language as well as written language.

Dyslexia is neurologically based (brain based) and often runs in families. It interferes with the learning and processing of language, and varies in the degree of severity from mild, to extreme to profound.

Early exposure to literacy and reading skills should equip all preschool and kindergarten children with the skills to later read, write and spell, but often it does not. Dyslexic children have reading, writing and spelling difficulties in all schools, public, independent or homeschool, because they need to learn reading, writing and spelling in a very specific way.

Dyslexic children need systematic, explicit, and intensive instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, reading fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension strategies.