Identifying and remediating dyslexia in the Reception year, a new possibility?

Abstract

Research has shown that dyslexics have an inability to establish soundsymbol correspondence, phonological awareness and alphabetic knowledge by the normal teaching methods used in schools. In new research with Reception year children, ages 4 and 5 years, it was found that 90 per cent on entry to 8 Reception classes had not established sound to symbol correspondence. Five months later, despite the normal daily teaching of reading and writing skills, one third of children had still not 'cracked the alphabetic code'. Reports were sent to the teachers identifying each child's level of skill in handwriting and spelling with suggestions for specific interventions to promote the learning of sounds and their symbols. On entry into Year 2, in a 10 minute writing test, it was found that all the shildren had now developed sound-symbol knowledge. At the end of Key Stage 1 the national SATs results showed that the disadvantaged groups in the project schools had raised their performance by 30 per cent in literacy above previous years and the already high perfoorming group had improved by 10 per cent. One dyslexic was identified in the Year 2 test by a need for word-building teaching.

Identifying and Remediating Dyslexia in Kindergarten and the Foundation Year

“…These went from scribbles and lines to letters and words carrying a decipherable message although not quite with traditional spelling. Occasionally there were cases of 5-year-olds entering school or Kindergarten who had learned to read and write self-taught, and they were not necessarily those with the highest of IQs [14].…”

“…The spelling scale was established by scrutinising all 175 scripts in the F1 cohort and placing them in a rank order from random marks and scribble through to more or less correct spelling. A similar process was used to develop a handwriting checklist, but clinical items were included [5,14]. The strategy was to identify the statement that most typifies the writing sample and award that 'score' or rank.…”