The Hidden Dyslexic

As students get older many will try to disguise their difficulties.  As I know from my own experience it is all about trying to control our environment and to avoid stressful situations.  Noone wants to be embarrassed or thought badly of by their teacher or peers.

Many students try to compensate for their poor written work by using their stronger verbal skills.  They will be keen to share their general knowledge or their understanding of concepts to try to impress their teacher and class mates.  They then frustrate or puzzle their teachers by not translating these ideas into writing.

Strangely many dyslexic students will volunteer to read first in a class situation. There are several reasons for this. This gives time to rehearse the text while the teacher introduces the lesson. It also means everyone will be fooled into thinking you like reading. The teacher will think you are an eager student and hopefully leave you alone for the rest of the lesson. You also have some control of what you are reading rather than being called upon to read when you have lost track of where the class are up to.

Working with a partner in another good strategy as you can contribute your ideas and look like you are very involved in the lesson. But you have someone help with any tricky reading and either do the writing if it is a joint task or you can largely copy if you have to do your own writing.

On the negative side many children end up opting for avoidance strategies, chatting to friends, joking around, taking frequent toilet breaks and  pretending that they don't want to do the task rather that they can't do the task.

Below is a longer list of characteristics to look out for.  It is so easy for older students to be misunderstood and mislabelled.  Often attitude and behaviour can hide a vulnerable student who is trying to cope with the demands of school without the skills to succeed.

*Eager to answer questions

*May volunteer to read first

*Memorises texts

*Good decoding but no automatic recall of words

*Copying from others

*Sentences disjointed

*Immature handwriting

*Only uses words they can spell or are in the text

*Lack of punctuation

*Leaves out small words and suffixes

*Verbally good but may give long answers because of words finding difficulties

*Poor concentration

*Always wants to work with a partner

*Difficulty copying from the board

*Badly organised

*Can not remember messages

*Behaviour difficulties: due to anxiety, frustration, comments from peers

*Doesn’t play football

*Clowning around

Do you recognise any of your students or even your own child? Then it is time to take action and support them in their difficulties.