For beginning readers, the construction of word usage and meaning are on the initial continuum of learning how to read and sound out words. Reading for students with dyslexia is a mind jungle gym of transposed words and meanings or a juxtaposition of consonants and syllables that render the written word utterly meaningless. Reading doesn't happen in a vacuum of luck or as a given in a child's cognitive development. Reading takes work, effort, active engagement and constant connection with the written word in order to establish a foundation of how words connect and form sentences and paragraphs of meaning.
Students with dyslexia are unable to establish the foundation of reading without intervention support. The steps of reading construct for a student struggling with dyslexia becomes a free fall of frustration. The dyslexic student can't navigate the traditional steps of reading. He/she may have issues with the following items listed below that prevent reading understanding from happening:
- Have difficulty with understanding the phonics of word sounds or how to spell words
- Have trouble understanding how written letters grouped together can form words with meaning
- Have auditory issues in associating sounds with letters and vowels
- Have comprehension issues with pages of words that become an active jumbling of letters.
- Provide brain freezes and starts and stops in interpreting word meaning
Dyslexic students can be the smartest students in the classroom, but the inability to read can make even the smartest student feel less than adequate in the academic arena of reading and spelling.
