If you suspect that a pupil has undiagnosed dyslexia, there are a number of things you can do to make sure the child gets the assistance they need.
You can either speak to the senior leaders at your school if you are surviving high school with dyslexia, another way is talk to your teacher who has experience with dyslexic children if you feel comfortable doing so.
Phonological awareness
Phonological awareness is the ability to recognize that words are made up of smaller units of sound and that changing those sounds can create new words with new meanings. This is a key symptom of dyslexia and helps to identify whether a pupil has dyslexia (a special need that requires reasonable adjustments to be made) or is struggling academically for another reason.
A child with poor phonological awareness may not be able to correctly answer the following questions:
What sounds make up the word “hot”, and are these different from the sounds that make up the word “hat”?
What word would you have if you changed the “p” sound in “pot” to a “h” sound?
How many words can you think of that rhyme with the word cat?
Teenagers and adults
Sometimes, dyslexia goes undiagnosed in a pupil until secondary school or even into adulthood. Some of the symptoms of dyslexia in older children and adults can include:
Poorly organized written work that lacks expression
Difficulty planning and writing essays, letters, or reports
Difficulties revising for examinations
Trying to avoid reading and writing whenever possible
Difficulty taking notes or copying
Poor spelling
Struggling to remember things such as a PIN or telephone number
Struggling to meet deadlines