Topic: Dyslexia.

Topic: Dyslexia.

10-second review: Dyslexia Defined. "Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurobiological in origin. Characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities. Deficit in the phonological component of language that is unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities."

Source: Shaywitz and Shaywitz. 2003. Quoted by RF Hudson, et al. Reading Teacher (March 2007), 507. A publication of the International Reading Association (IRA).

Comment: Now that’s a mouthful. In other words, the dyslexic is a bright student who has trouble reading and the problem seems to be an inability to decode words fluently.

A personal note: I once had a “mini-stroke.” It occurred in probably less than a minute. Afterwards, I could not decode the words I had written or the words in the newspaper without much laboring over just recognizing each word, let alone putting them together into sentences with meaning. I began to understand what a dyslexic goes through. I was furious at my inability to read as I normally had and I understood how dyslexics could become combative and angry at the world. I was lucky. My ability to read slowly, in about a day, was restored.

The two or three dyslexics I have encountered in my teaching of writing had excellent minds. They could talk using an outstanding vocabulary. They could express connected ideas orally. They could not put on paper any kind of connected discourse.

What did I do? They wrote for ten minutes a day. I rewrote their ten-minute essays, putting the ideas into order. They rewrote my corrected copy. They did this every day for a school year. At the end of the school year, they could write in sentences and they could connect the sentences into paragraphs. I don’t know what would have happened if I had been allowed to continue to work with them in this way for another year. Rays.