Dyslexia is a phonological processing deficit.  That means that those with dyslexia have trouble isolating and manipulating the sounds (phonemes) in oral language.   It turns out that this skill is crucial for reading.  Why?  In order to read the word “cat” I need to know that each of the little squiggles that we call letters actually represents a sound. I then need to connect the letters to their sounds and be able to blend those sounds into a big sound that we call a word. 

What is dyslexia? The International Dyslexia Association defines dyslexia in the following way “Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurobiological in origin. It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities. These difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language that is often unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities and the provision of

What is reading? Reading is an extremely complex process, and there have been many theories about how people learn to read.  In 1997, the U.S. government commissioned a study that is called The National Reading Panel.  The goal of the study was to analyze all of the available research to determine what, if any, practices were effective in teaching children how to read.  In the decades since the National Reading Panel, its findings have been expanded on, but every major study