What You Should Know About Dyslexia

Dyslexia, which is a Specific Learning Disorder in reading skills, is a disorder  that makes it difficult for a child to decode words, usually due to difficulties with phonological awareness. A diagnosis of dyslexia typically involves a team of professionals and normally happens when a child is school age.  However, we are able to identify risk factors for dyslexia, including difficulties with phonological awareness, as early as in preschool aged children. We use both formal standardized assessment measures when possible, and informal assessments to help us identify those children who are at risk for difficulties with reading.

Early intervention is key in preventing dyslexia and improving the reading skills of already struggling readers. We understand the link between speech & language disorders and later reading difficulties and work with your family to help prevent these difficulties through our therapy methods.

For more information on the SLP’s role in working with children with dyslexia or reading difficulties, check out our blog post by clicking here.

Lively Letters

We offer Lively Letters, an evidenced based program, to work on those phonological/phonemic awareness skills that often lack in children with reading difficulties. Our therapists are specially trained in this program as a type of multisensory and clinically proven reading program. In their research studies, students have shown an average of 1.5 to 3 year grade level gains in as little as 6-8 weeks, and an average of 4 year gains in older students (Grade 5), in phonemic awareness, phonics, and oral reading skills. The children LOVE learning about the Lively Letters, singing the songs, and making words with this program.

For more information on how this program works, click here.

Visualizing & Verbalizing

Although some children struggle with the actual decoding part of reading (sounding out the words), others struggle with understanding what they are reading or what is read to them. This is where the Visualizing and Verbalizing program comes in. For those kids that the information seems to “go in one ear and out the other,” this program helps them create images in their mind to go with what they hear, which has been proven to help children increase their comprehension skills. For the fastest results, this program has been used to gain years worth of instruction in weeks through a model of intensive intervention 5 days a week, for 4 hours a day for 80-100 total hours to see the difference. It can also be implemented throughout therapy with slower progress seen. However, for the intensive therapy sessions, parents often choose this option during the summer time.

For more information on how this program works, click here.