What is Dyslexia?
Dyslexia affects the development of literacy skills.
It is characterised by difficulties with processing sound, rapid naming, working memory and processing of information.
Current evidence suggests that these difficulties arise from ineffective language processing, which occurs in the left hemisphere of the brain. Dyslexia is more common than people realise and affects approximately 10% of the population.
Common symptoms:
- Difficulties decoding words (matching letters to sounds)
- Phonemic Awareness – identifying individual sounds in words
- Difficulties with reading comprehension and reading fluency
- Difficulties with sentence structure including a tendency to omit punctuation
- Avoidance of reading
- Difficulties rhyming and spelling
- Skips over words when reading
What is Dyspraxia?
is an impairment in the way the brain processes information.
It is a brain-based condition which makes it hard to plan and coordinate physical movement. Dyspraxia is associated with difficulties in gross and fine motor skills, perception, memory, attention and social skills. Even though many people haven’t heard of dyspraxia, it is fairly common.
Children with dyspraxia tend to find balance and correct posture difficult. They may seem ‘clumsy or ‘out of sync’ with their environment.
Symptoms
- Avoids playing with construction toys and puzzles
- Often bumps into things
- Trouble learning to jump and/or skip
- Difficulty with buttons, zippers etc
- Finds playing and interacting with others challenging
- Difficulty writing quickly and has poor letter formation
- Trouble with pencil grip
- Slow and messy handwriting
- Struggles with hand-eye coordination
- Trouble following instructions and remembering them
- Trouble riding a bike or throwing a ball
What is Dysgraphia?
Dysgraphia and dyspraxia are very similar, but with key differences.
Dysgraphia impacts written language and is usually due to a language-based weakness.
It is common for children to have other learning issues in addition to dysgraphia, such as dyslexia and dyspraxia. ADHD is also commonly associated with dysgraphia.
Symptoms
- Difficulty organising thoughts and putting them down on paper
- Slow and laboured writing
- Odd spacing
- Poor spelling and grammar
- Lack of sentence and paragraph structure
What is Dyscalculia?
Dyscalculia is a condition which affects the ability to acquire mathematical skills.
Dyscalculic learners may have difficulty understanding simple number concepts, lack an intuitive grasp of numbers and have problems learning number facts and procedures. Even if they produce a correct answer, they may do so mechanically and without confidence (DfES, 2001).
Symptoms
- Difficulties learning to count and order numbers
- Difficulties recognising patterns and having poor number sense
- Difficulties learning and recalling basic number facts
- Struggles to identify math symbols and use them correctly
- Challenges in visual-spatial representations
- Difficulties understanding place value
- Difficulties with mathematical operations such as fractions, measurement and estimation