Second to 3rd Grade
In addition to the previous clues, we often see these difficulties in second and third grades:
- Very slow progress in acquiring reading skills
- Lack of a strategy to read new words; wild guesses or relies on context in story
- Inability to read small function words such as "that", "an", "in", etc.
- Letter/sound confusions or reversals past the end of 2nd grade
- History of difficulty pronouncing words (i.e. busgetti for spaghetti, mawn lower for lawn mower)
- Stumbling on reading multisyllable words
- Fracturing words; omitting parts or vowels as if someone bit a hole in the middle of the word
- Difficulty spelling phonetically (by sound)
- Reads dysfluently (choppy and labored); terrific fear of reading out loud
- Oral reading that lacks voice and inflection
- Speech that is not fluent; pausing and hesitating, lots of "ums"
- Use of imprecise language; using "stuff" or "things" instead of the proper word
- Not being able to find the exact word; saying volcano instead of tornado, lotion instead of ocean, etc.
- Needs extra thinking time to summon an oral response
- Difficulty remembering rote pieces of information (rote memory), such as times tables