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To Help Children with Dyslexia.
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Dyslexia Defined
Dyslexia is a brain-based type of learning disability that specifically impairs a person’s ability to read. These individuals typically read at levels significantly lower than expected despite having normal intelligence. Although the disorder varies from person to person, common characteristics among people with dyslexia are difficulty with phonological processing (the manipulation of sounds), spelling, and/or rapid visual-verbal responding. Dyslexia can be inherited in some families, and recent studies have identified a number of genes that may predispose an individual to developing dyslexia..
Famous People with Dyslexia
Salma Hayek, Keira Knightley and Tom Cruise are some of Hollywood’s brightest stars – and they have dyslexia. Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Leonardo da Vinci, and Pablo Picasso possessed some of the greatest minds and talents in history and they were dyslexic.
Successful entrepreneurs like Richard Branson and Steve Jobs made use of their dyslexic brains to build billion-dollar companies, and George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and JFK left an indelible mark on history as presidents of the United States of America, regardless of their spelling ability.
No matter where you go in the world, you will find dyslexic individuals who have achieved success, despite experiencing early difficulties with reading and writing.
More on Dyslexia
An estimated 1 in 10 people have dyslexia, a specific learning difference that can cause problems with breaking spoken language down into its component parts, which in turn affects reading and spelling skills. It follows that ten percent of famous artists, athletes and political leaders will also experience language difficulties, even if their dyslexia is not center stage.
No two individuals with dyslexia are alike and symptoms can range greatly in severity. When dyslexia is mild, a learner may simply need to work harder than his or her peers to acquire decoding and encoding skills. In severe cases, reading and spelling may be completely interrupted if strategy interventions and appropriate accommodations are not put into place. Dyslexia is not an illness and people who are dyslexic are not less intelligent than others. They just handle language differently. Unfortunately, public education is not always set up to cater to dyslexic students. When a child begins school he or she will learn how to read. However, at a certain point the focus at school shifts from learning to read, to reading to learn.
