My 16 year old thinks she is dyslexic, as her first grade teacher suggested. What are symptoms of dyslexia in a high schooler who has never received any treatment or evaluation? She is an honors student but sometimes gets a 0 grade because she cannot recall anything she read on six pages of crowded font text. I noticed she cannot read new words: She only reads the first and the last letter and then she plays lottery with the letters in the middle (this is not new, and has done it since she started reading in first grade).

In order to meet deadlines for ELA, she uses audiobooks. She is gifted in spatial intelligence and drawing, but needs to think hard which one is left or right. I requested an IEP when she was in 6th grade, but the school evaluation team just said there was not any problem with her because her grades are fine.

I am sorry that your daughter is struggling. I must say that it is not unusual for me to hear about a bright student who is struggling with the reading and writing tasks at school, and for the school team to think that the student is fine based on grades. Many bright students with dyslexia succeed, in large part, because of their extraordinary effort and parent support. We can also see older students who were making it “okay” in the lower grades, but as the reading and writing demands increase, they begin to falter.

When working with a student with dyslexia, we specifically target reading comprehension strategies, and this is paramount in the older student. These students need to learn how to be active readers — to know their purpose (typically the teacher’s purpose) and keep that in mind while reading/doing an assignment, to preview the text, to engage their prior knowledge before reading and while reading, to make predictions while reading, to pause and check-in with their understanding while reading. Good readers don’t just read without thinking about what they are reading. So, your daughter will need to learn to actively use strategies.

In regard to her looking at the beginning letter of a word and guessing, she also needs to learn to read the full word carefully — and not guess! This is probably something that she will have to be “un-taught.” Listen to Emily Hanford’s excellent podcast, Sold a Story to learn how students have been taught to guess a word based on the initial letter and the picture or context — this is NOT what a good reader does. Unfortunately, it can be a very hard habit to break. Your daughter would benefit from some concentrated study to learn how to tackle longer words in a systematic way.

According to the literature, the font has not been shown to make any difference. There is no data to support one font over another — it comes down to preference. Audiobooks, on the other hand, are a GREAT resource, so your daughter should continue with those.