Backwards Letters (research article 1)

One topic of concern that many parents and teachers may have with young students learning literature, is appropriately addressing if a child is dyslexic. Knowing if a child has dyslexia can be confusing for many parents and teachers most of the time. I think it is important to understand as a teacher when to detect dyslexia when working with students. After reading the article "Backwards Letters: Could it be Dyslexia?" by Julie Williams, I started to grasp a better understanding of the many myths of dyslexia.

In this article the first myth discussed is,"you'll know its dyslexia when a kid flips letters or misspells a lot". I had always heard of this statement and assumed that was true, however I began to question this myth after spending time in a kindergarten classroom last year. I noticed that most of the students in the beginning of the year flipped the letters such as "b",  "d" and "P", but after the second half of the year I noticed a huge improvement in the students writing. There were still three or four students who continued to confuse writing the letters "b"and "d" however those students would pronounce the word correctly. Even while the student would write "bog" instead of "dog", they would still pronounce it with the "d" sound. I assumed because the student was still writing the letter backwards that they were  dyslexic. However, I learned from this article that "backwards letters alone do not cause worry...In Kindergarten, dyslexic kids will have trouble in several related areas, such as not making the all-important connection between letters, sounds, and the word meaning". As a result, writing words with backwards letters is not the only issue when looking at dyslexia. There is a combination of many factors that play into it.
Another common myth discussed in this article is "You can't really diagnose dyslexia until a child is seven or eight".  According to this article, it is best to intervene as soon as possible, "early intervention is key, the longer you wait the more problems grow".  This reminded me of the reading from "catching readers before they fall" because both articles emphasize how the earlier you intervene for writing and reading, the more teachers can prevent a student from falling behind. I don't think there is a specific time frame for intervention because it should be applied the first moment a student shows signs for falling behind.


Source:
Williams, Julie. 2008. Retrieved online. http://www.education.com/magazine/article/Kinder_dyslexia_warning_signs/