Dyslexia

What Is dyslexia?  We find this question difficult to answer because dyslexia is not a cookie-cutter condition. Every child looks very different. The severity of dyslexia varies from child to child. What one dyslexic child can’t do, another can, and vice versa. We love to define the word simply at first:

Dys = difficulty with

Lexia = language

Dyslexia = difficulty with language

While this may seem simplistic, I want you to ask yourself: Do I know someone who has difficulty with language? Most likely, you do, which is why you’ve sought out Locomotion Learning in the first place.

The definition for dyslexia provided by the International Dyslexia Association (IDA) is: “Dyslexia is a specific learning disability characterized by difficulties in word reading and/or spelling that involve accuracy, speed, or both and vary depending on the orthography. These difficulties occur along a continuum of severity and persist even with instruction that is effective for the individual’s peers. The causes of dyslexia are complex and involve combinations of genetic, neurobiological, and environmental influences that interact throughout development. Underlying difficulties with phonological and morphological processing are common but not universal, and early oral language weaknesses often foreshadow literacy challenges. Secondary consequences include reading comprehension problems and reduced reading and writing experience that can impede growth in language, knowledge, written expression, and overall academic achievement. Psychological well-being and employment opportunities also may be affected. Although identification and targeted instruction are important at any age, language and literacy support before and during the early years of education is particularly effective” (IDA, 2025).

Samuel T. Orton (1879-1948), a neuropsychiatrist and pathologist, was the first to coin the phrase dyslexia. A professor at Columbia University, he was a pioneer in his day, drawing attention to reading failure and language-processing difficulties. We’ve known about dyslexia for 100 years. We’ve had a method for remediating it—the Orton-Gillingham approach—since the early 1930s, when Anna Gillingham (1878-1963), an educator and psychologist, joined forces with Orton to develop instructional materials to help children learn to read.

So why are American schools filled with children who do not know how to read? We think that’s a reasonable and poignant question. If we understand how to help these children, why aren’t we utilizing the Orton-Gillingham method in every preschool, elementary school, and classroom across

America? It seems there are three reasons.

First, there has been a dispute about how best to teach people to read. You may have heard about The Reading Wars, pitting meaning-based instruction against code-based instruction. Meaning-based instruction encourages children to guess using 3-cueing, balanced literacy, and whole language learning programs. On the other hand, code-based instruction is grounded in the science of reading, a body of research that explains how we learn to read, spell, and write. Based on the science of reading research, structured literacy is a systematic approach to teaching reading, spelling, and writing. It focuses on phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension.

The second reason we have failed to utilize Orton-Gillingham in every school and classroom across America is that it’s primarily seen as a one-on-one instructional model. The truth is, children can be explicitly taught structured literacy using multisensory techniques individually, in small groups, or to the whole class.

The final reason is that we are not doing an adequate job of identifying children with dyslexia. One in five children has dyslexia: that’s 20 percent of the classroom. These children are bright and creative individuals who know how to work hard and are often excellent problem solvers (no, we don’t mean math problems — real-life scenarios). Because children with dyslexia are bright, they go unidentified, even though their reading ability is not at par with their peers. They are often told that they need to mature first, and then they’ll be able to catch up. Every year, these students fall further and further behind. They need explicit reading instruction.

We at Lighthouse to Literacy welcome dyslexia. Come on in. Our doors are open. You can sit anywhere you like. We have worked with 17-year-olds reading at a first-grade level, and often see 15-year-olds reading at a kindergarten level. No case is too profound. No child is too far behind. We know it will take hard work and determination from both the educator and the student. We’re here to help you. We want to be a light of hope to those students drowning in a sea of reading failure. We want to help you get these students on track to reading success. Thank you for taking up the banner to help us do just that.