| Reading disabilities: Overview | 3859.00000000000 | Reading disabilities: Overview | Reading disabilities: Overview | R | English | Developmental | Preschooler (2-4 years);Pre-teen (9-12 years);School age child (5-8 years);Teen (13-18 years) | NA | NA | Healthy living and prevention | Adult (19+)
Caregivers | NA | | 2020-03-03T05:00:00Z | | | | | | 11.6000000000000 | 39.8000000000000 | 1396.00000000000 | | Health (A-Z) - Conditions | Health A-Z | <p>A reading disability is when a child has significant challenges with reading. Learn about reading disabilities, their symptoms, and how they are diagnosed and treated.</p> | <h2>What is a reading disability?</h2><p>A reading disability is a specific type of
<a href="/Article?contentid=653&language=English">learning disability</a>. Children with reading disabilities have average to above average intellectual abilities but experience a lot of trouble with reading. These difficulties affect how they perform in school, and their achievements fall well below what is expected for children of their age, grade, and intellectual ability.</p><p>Reading disabilities may include problems with:</p><ul><li>Phonological processing—the ability to break up words into sounds</li><li>Reading fluency or speed</li><li>Reading comprehension</li></ul><p>A child with a reading disability has a problem with reading words accurately and/or quickly, or with understanding what they are reading.</p><p>Another general term for reading disabilities is <a href="/Article?contentid=307&language=English">dyslexia</a>. Children with dyslexia may have difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition, as well as poor decoding and spelling abilities.</p> | <h2>Types of reading disabilities</h2><p>In general, there are three types of reading disabilities. A person may experience one, two or all three:</p><ul><li>Problems with phonological processing</li><li>Problems with reading fluency</li><li>Problems with reading comprehension</li></ul><h3>Problems with phonological processing</h3><p>Children with problems in phonological processing have difficulty processing the sounds of language. Phonological processing difficulties include problems with <a href="/Article?contentid=1896&language=English">phonological awareness</a> (rhyming, deleting sounds, blending sounds), phonological memory (remembering sounds in words), and rapid word retrieval (coming up with words or naming objects and symbols quickly). Problems with phonological processing can lead to problems with spelling and to a limited vocabulary, which can also affect a child’s reading comprehension.</p><h3>Problems with reading fluency</h3><p>Reading fluency happens when a reader can recognize many words by sight, and quickly decode unfamiliar words. Reading fluency is important because it gives the reader more time to think about the meaning of a passage or story. Some children can decode and recognize words accurately, but have problems with orthographic processing (remembering the rules of letter order and combinations). These children have difficulty recognizing words they already know and rely heavily on sounding out common words. As a result, it takes a longer time for them to read passages or stories, and they tend to read in a choppy and forced way. Because so much effort is put into reading the words, they also struggle with reading comprehension (the overall meaning of what they are reading).</p><h3>Problems with reading comprehension</h3><p>When a child has difficulty understanding what words mean after reading them, it is called a disability in reading comprehension.</p><p>Children who can read fluently but who still have problems with comprehension often have trouble with:</p><ul><li>Grasping the overall meaning of what they are reading</li><li>Monitoring their understanding</li></ul> | <h2>Key points</h2><ul><li>Reading disabilities are learning disabilities that can include problems with phonological processing, reading fluency or speed, and reading comprehension.</li><li>Children who are diagnosed with a reading disability often show early signs of speech and language difficulties.</li><li>Reading disabilities are often diagnosed with a psychoeducational assessment.</li><li>Reading disabilities can lead to problems with spelling and limit a child’s vocabulary.</li></ul> | | <h2>Early signs of reading problems</h2><p>Children who are diagnosed with a reading disability often show early signs, such as:</p><ul><li>Indistinct, garbled speech after three years of age</li><li>Speaking in phrases or sentences later than normal</li><li>Difficulty learning words to songs or nursery rhymes in preschool</li><li>Difficulty learning the alphabet and the sounds of the letters</li></ul><p>However, not all children with these signs develop a reading disability.</p><h2>Signs of a reading disability</h2><p>Once your child reaches school age, signs that they might have a reading disability include:</p><ul><li>Trouble learning colour names</li><li>Trouble learning letter names</li><li>Trouble rhyming or isolating sounds in words</li><li>Trouble blending sounds together</li><li>Difficulty recognizing a word after having seen it many times in many different contexts</li><li>Frequent letter or number reversals by the end of Grade Two</li><li>Consistent omission or reversal of letters in words; for example, "gril" instead of "girl"</li><li>Choppy, slow reading</li><li>A limited sight word vocabulary</li></ul><p>For a list of typical reading milestones achieved by children at different grade levels, see <a href="/Article?contentid=651&language=English">Reading and writing milestones</a>.</p> | | | <h2>Diagnosis of a reading disability</h2><p>If your child’s reading abilities are substantially below the expected level for their age, intellectual abilities and education, they may have a reading disability.</p><p>If you suspect your child might have a reading disability, it is important to share your concerns with your child’s teachers. They will be able to observe your child’s learning, and identify available resources and strategies to help improve your child’s reading skills. If the resources and strategies provided by the school do not help improve your child’s learning, your child might benefit from a formal psychoeducational assessment.</p><p>A psychoeducational assessment can identify your child’s strengths and learning challenges, and diagnose learning, developmental or attention-related disorders, as well as giftedness. The assessment will get to the root cause of your child’s academic issues, and identify a plan for solving them.</p> | <h2>Treatment</h2><p>Reading disabilities can be treated with two main approaches—accommodations and interventions.</p><p>The earlier a child with a reading disability receives an evidence-based reading intervention over a reasonable period of time, the more likely they are to catch up with their peers.</p><h3>Accommodations</h3><p>Accommodations are changes made in the classroom to help students work around their weaknesses. Accommodations can help some children succeed without direct intervention. Accommodations for a reading disability might include:</p><ul><li>Providing lessons and presentations on audio recordings</li><li>Providing a designated reader</li><li>Allowing answers and assignments to be given verbally or dictated to a scribe</li><li>Allowing frequent breaks or more time for tests</li><li>Providing a space with minimal distractions</li></ul><h3>Interventions</h3><p>Interventions help students address their areas of need so that they can overcome them. Interventions teach children <strong>how</strong> to learn, and allows them to succeed as independent learners. Interventions for a reading disability typically include addressing the core learning difficulties (speech, language, phonological deficits) through direct instruction. Direct instruction teaches skills in a targeted, well-organized way. Through drills and repetition, it provides children with opportunities for guided practise and cumulative learning.</p> | <h2>Association with spelling and vocabulary</h2><h3>Spelling problems</h3><p>Spelling is often challenging for children who have a reading disability. Spelling and reading rely on the same underlying knowledge: phonological processing and visual memory. Since many children with reading disabilities struggle with phonological processing, they will also have difficulty breaking down words in order to spell them correctly.</p><h3>Vocabulary problems</h3><p>Vocabulary is important in both learning to read and in reading comprehension. Children develop their reading vocabularies faster when they are reading words more advanced than the words they say when talking. Young children who read well are quickly exposed to all sorts of words that they would not hear when talking to an adult or on television. This exposure helps a child’s reading vocabulary to grow, and it makes it easier for the child to read advanced material.</p><p>Children who struggle with reading lag in vocabulary development because they read less. The feedback between reading vocabulary and comprehension helps to explain why poor readers fall behind in vocabulary and general knowledge. It is important to intervene early, before this performance gap widens.</p> | <h2>How to help your child with a reading disability</h2><p>Below are some suggestions for how to work with your child at home if they have a reading disability:</p><ul><li>Read to your child above their own reading level, ensuring that their vocabulary and knowledge about the world grows.</li><li>Watch documentaries on TV and discuss them with your child.</li><li>Listen to audio books with your child. You can do this in the car too.</li><li>Read and say rhymes and rhythms aloud with your child.</li><li>Read graphic novels or joke books with your child. These are fun and engaging media that include bite-sized segments of text, which are easier for your child to follow.</li><li>Have conversations with your child about things you have recently read, watched on the news, or discussed with others.</li><li>Have you child read media in the world around them, like signs, labels and recipes.</li><li>Foster curiosity. Wondering about the world helps keep a child’s love of learning from being worn down by frustration.</li><li>Help with your child’s schoolwork plan, agenda and online scheduling platform (e.g., Google Classroom). When are projects due? When do they have a test? What evenings will they study?</li><li>Help your child build non-academic skills, such as athletics, hobbies, music, or group activities.</li></ul> | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | https://assets.aboutkidshealth.ca/AKHAssets/Reading_disabilities-Overview.jpg | | | | | | | Reading disabilities: Overview | | False | | | | A reading disability is a specific type of learning disability. Learn about the symptoms of a reading disability, diagnosis and treatment. | | | | |
