Dyslexic children often confuses letters that look similar (b, d, p,, q) and letters with similar sounds (d/t, b/p, f/v)

Phonemic awareness involves awareness of individual sounds. Children with poor phonemic awareness may not be able to segment sounds in a word or blend sounds together. As an example, BAT, replace the B sound with the K sound. If they have difficulty, it might be worth additional testing.

A dyslexic student will find sight words more difficult to learn than most children. They may not recognize them when they encounter them in text – even if they have memorized them for a spelling test or flash cards.

You may notice that a student’s handwriting is less legible than their classmates. They may display a very awkward looking pencil grip even after instruction in handwriting. They may begin to show signs of avoiding of writing activities

Math concepts such as addition and subtraction may be difficult for a dyslexic child to grasp, even when the teacher uses counting objects to demonstrate the concept.

When reading orally, they may omit or add words in a sentence and letters within words (reading blad for bad) and omit or substitute articles and prepositions (reading the for a, and for for of). Their reading comprehension may be poor, even when decoding improves. Most likely they are reading words that they memorized and guessing at the others.

When writing dictated sentences, a dyslexic student may skip prepositions and articles or other words, and they often need sentences repeated several times. Penmanship goes dramatically down with the effort it takes to write down a word. They may want to give up because these activities are much harder for them than average.

Dyslexic students may have trouble spelling even the simplest words. They may pass a spelling test on Friday after practicing all week, and not remember how to spell any of those words on the following Monday. Spelling their last name may be very difficult and they may replace it with an initial.

Difficulty telling time using an analog clock, memorization of the multiplication tables (if introduced), word problems, and understanding math symbols (all signs of dyscalculia).

Dyslexic students have a decoding impairment where they are painstakingly slow on trying to sound out a word. They often scramble words or letters not paying attention to punctuation. They lack expression, and often pause more than other readers. Because of this, it is difficult for students to recall main ideas when asked to recall the story.

Difficulty copying material off the board is sometimes a sign of dyslexia. They might miss entire lines or words when writing an assignment or notes. They take more time than other students.

Students with dyslexia may find it difficult distinguishing between words that have transposed letters such as board/broad, diary/dairy, form/from. Sometimes they drop a letter in a word creating another word they are familiar with. Example, drivers might be called divers.

A dyslexic student is more likely to switch out vowels when reading a passage even with simple words. Cap might be Cop, or Cup. Many times they are just guessing the word.

As a student gets older and the words longer, dyslexic students might delete or add entire syllables. This is especially true when reading unfamiliar words such as parking, park or parked.

When students have difficulty recognizing base words, the suffixes become confusing. A simple word such as buried isn’t identified as having the base word bury.

Past, present, and future tenses often confuse a dyslexic student. Since the concept of before and after are confusing, so are the tenses. Ring, rang and rung for example would be used interchangeably.

Adding an s for more than one item or forgetting to read the s is a common error. Horse, and horses often are interchangeable to a dyslexic student.

Many times a dyslexic student will completely miss their error or they will try many versions of the same word trying to find one that sounds correct.

Because of poor decoding and having to sound out words that should be familiar, a dyslexic student might pause incorrectly, ignoring punctuation. This can change the meaning of the sentence. Example: “Some frogs live in trees. Some even live in the desert. Frogs can be found all over the world.” It might be read as, “Some frogs live in trees. Some even live. In the desert frogs can be found all over the world.

Written expression is a challenge. Their oral story telling usually is exceptional, but writing it down is difficult. Coming up with the spelling of a longer word most likely has a dyslexic student replace it with a simple one syllable word for easier spelling. Their frustration leads to avoidance behavior.

It is common for a dyslexic student to have very messy writing even after outgrowing awkward gripping and fine motor skills. The root cause is generally a way to hide their lack of spelling ability and punctuation.