Over Coming Dyslexia by Sally Shaywitz

Over Coming Dyslexia

A new and complete science- based program for reading problems at any level

By Sally Shaywitz, M. D. 2003

I read this book five years ago while obtaining my Masters degree in Brain Based Teaching. Since then I have come to realize how wide spread the misunderstanding of dyslexia is among parents and educators. I have had many parents come to me with concerns that their kindergartener may have dyslexia when they see their child writing and making a common mistake that we call reversals. The most common ones seen in children’s writing are: b/d, u/n, p/q, M/W, or 6/9 and even 12/21. These reversals are not indicators of dyslexia.

As Shaywitz explains there are two components in the reading process, decoding which results in word identification and comprehension which relates to meaning. Dyslexia is a problem in the ability to decode. Dyslexic readers cannot readily convert the alphabetic characters into a linguistic code or phonetic code. You see speaking is natural, it is in our genes. Reading on the other hand is not a natural human trait, it is an acquired act, an invention of man that must be learned, Shaywitz explains.

Shaywitz goes on to say the very first discovery a child makes on his way to reading is that words have parts, phoneme segmentation. These smaller units of speech phonemes then can be attached to a letter or letters making the code. This is the alphabetic principle.

In readers with dyslexia there is a glitch at the phonological level and it impedes their phonemic awareness and their ability to segment the spoken words into sounds. As a result the ability to break the reading code is not easily attainable. The phonemes are less sharply defined. The deficit in phonological processing interferes with decoding and prevents word identification.

        Dyslexia has no ties to a child’s mental capacity. Many times people with dyslexia have very high intelligence that allows them cover their impairment by using the knowledge of other words in the context or picture clues to make meaning of the print they can’t actually read.

Although reversals are not necessarily a sign of dyslexia in emergent readers there are the following signs to watch for to evaluate whether a child should be tested or not: Insensitivity to rhyme, difficulty in rote memorization, and incorrect retrieval of words with similar phonemes. For example humidity may be retrieved as humanity. Misnaming is not a lack of knowledge but rather confusion in sounds of spoken language.

This is an excellent book I need to go back and read cover to cover. It encapsulates both the phonological lessons in the purple book we use in kindergarten as well as the Imagine program. It’s reconfirmed of the fact that we are on the right path to improving our instruction of reading in our counties.