Dyslexia: What Does It Mean?

Hello everyone, welcome and thank you for joining us this evening. My name is Corinne Hartunian-Koukian and I will be your moderator this evening. I'm a bilingual SLP with a passion for telepractice across the lifespan as well as professional— as well as a professional development enthusiast. As a current CE content consultant here at Parallel, I'm especially excited to be a part of this fall series in partnership with Sprout Labs, Reaching Every Learner: Strengthening Language and Literacy for Students with Reading Difficulties. Tonight's presentation, Dyslexia: What Does It Mean? Thank you for spending the next hour with us. At Parallel, we take pride in nurturing our professional community as well as the broader community by offering innovative, high-quality programming for clinicians and educators alike. Here's a few housekeeping items to highlight before we begin our presentation. This course is being offered for 0.1 ASHA CEUs and 1 NASP-approved CPD credit. If you wish to have us report CEUs to ASHA and/or receive a certificate of completion to obtain a record for your NASP CPD, please be sure to do the following. Attend the entire live webinar. Your attendance will be tracked through Zoom reports and no partial credit will be awarded. Be sure to have joined with the email address attached to your registration. Complete and submit a self-assessment evaluation within 3 business days of today's presentation. That would be next Wednesday. You will receive an email with the survey and resources by Tomorrow end of day, but do wait until Monday before reaching out to us. Sometimes we experience some delays. For ASHA CEUs, be sure to indicate that you want to receive ASHA CEUs and provide your ASHA ID number in the post-webinar survey in addition to your name and email address. We love and encourage questions from our participants. If you have any, please drop them in the Q&A. Our chat is closed, but you can feel free to comment in the Q&A, and we do expect our educational content to last about an hour this evening, and we would love to have you stay for an optional Q&A afterwards. And now please join me in welcoming Mary Kate DeSantis and Eileen Catanzoni. All right, so a brief introduction. If you can advance the slides, please. Eileen brings a deep passion for helping readers find confidence and success. She holds a master's degree in reading curriculum and instruction, is Orton-Gillingham certified, and an IDA practitioner, and has worked with hundreds of students who need that extra support to become successful readers. She also serves as a curator of curriculum, instruction, and professional development, And is the Sprout Labs literacy lead, where she helps educators strengthen literacy instruction and reach every learner. We're so pleased to have her with us today. Our 2nd speaker, Mary Kate, brings a unique blend of classroom experience and research expertise with more than 15 years as a special educator and reading specialist and a deep commitment to helping every learner thrive. She is currently a PhD fellow in educational psychology at the Neag— hopefully I said that correctly— School of Education and the founder of Left Side Strong LLC. Her research experience includes work with the Bridges Lab at Harvard Graduate School of Education, the SAIL Lab at MGH Institute of Health Professions, and COIN Lab at the University of Connecticut. She also serves as adjunct faculty member at Boston College's Lynch School of Education and Human Development. We're thrilled to have her with us today and look forward to learning from her expertise and perspective. And I apologize, I skipped over the learning objectives. If I could have you go back a couple of slides, I'm going to read them off for us. So today, participants will explain the updated International Dyslexia Association, IDA, definition of dyslexia, and discuss its implications for identification, assessment, and educational practice. Also, describe the characteristics of dyslexia and how it is diagnosed. And finally, criticize myths and misconceptions to promote accurate understanding and informed decision-making. And without further ado, I'd like to present our speakers this evening.

Thank you, Corinne. It's nice to be here, and I'm going to go back to the slides after the introduction, and I'm going to turn this over to Mary Kate.

Thank you, Eileen.

Thank you, Corinne.

I am so excited to be here. Before I even begin, I just wanted to say how much I absolutely love and adore SLPs. As a reading specialist, I would often rely on your knowledge and expertise in schools, and so I'm just Thrilled to be collaborating with you all today. So before we begin, our first poll, anonymous poll, is just to kind of get a sense of your comfort level around identifying students at risk for dyslexia. So at the present moment, how comfortable do you feel being able to do that? And then your options are, you know, you don't really feel like that knowledge is there just yet, it's a bit limited, Or kind of lack confidence, maybe somewhat comfortable, or you're very comfortable. All right. Okay, yeah, so we have a little bit of a mix. Which is great. I'm not sure I would definitely be lacking knowledge about speech sound disorders or something in your area there. So let's jump in and take a look. And this is a pretty lengthy definition, so I am gonna break this down a little bit. As I do, I wanna kind of preface that this is an updated definition as of recently, 2025. And so it's been over 20 years since a group of experts kind of got together and looked at the current and evolving science to say, you know, we need to take a look at what has happened over the last several decades. And what was really nice about this new definition is the people that got together— very, very lucky to know one of the co-chairs heading this new definition, Charlie Haynes from Mass General Institute of Health Professions, and Hugh Katz, And what they did was they really reached out to folks all around the globe, you know, linguists, neuropsychologists, neurologists, pediatricians, educators, parents, folks that spoke many different languages, right, to really kind of get that more diverse perspective around, you know, what this new definition is. And they also included feedback from the public, and they really wanted to make sure that everybody had a voice in this definition. And I think you'll kind of see that within the reflection. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna read this through, um, as I do, like, like I said, I'm gonna break it down, but I, I would be thinking about what words do stand out to you, what language kind of stands out to you, um, in your area of, of expertise, or maybe something that you're wondering about. So 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. So a lot, a lot there, but we'll break it down a bit to the next slide. So let's kind of take this apart a little bit and really kind of zero in on what are some of the changes. So for this first part here, I kind of bolded some words that are, you know, that have kind of changed a bit. So if we're looking at this first part around it's a specific learning disability, that has stayed the same, difficulties in word reading and/or spelling, that involve accuracy, speed, or both, one thing that was added was vary depending on the orthography, right? And so this really accounts for a variety of languages and kind of complex writing systems. So certain factors may look differently depending on the orthography and the spoken language. I think probably most importantly to this new definition is the continuum. So, um, this is not— unfortunately, as much as we wish things were a bit more black and white when it came— when it comes to kind of identification, um, this is not that, right? So the dyslexia exists on this continuum of severity, um, and really what that means is that it's not a distinct disability, it's more probabilistic. And so we really can't, you know, say that a certain kiddo has this level of dyslexia, right? What we're really looking at is their probability. So what is the probability of their severity? And notice that it actually notes as well, even with instruction that is effective for the individual's peers, and that's pretty important to get at that kind of persistent difficulty.

Mm-hmm.

And that also kind of leans a bit towards that rate of progress. Um, and so they did, they did keep, right, those kind of complex factors and causes. Um, they added that involved combination of genetic and neurobiological and environmental influences. Um, from that last definition, we weren't entirely sure about a genetic basis of dyslexia, and now we know there's about I think 175 genes that, you know, we can, we can see looking at fMRIs and doing kind of those, you know, large-scale, more invasive assessments. And so, again, the brain basis will always be there, right? But its interaction with those environmental influences is really important, and they wanted to make sure that that was included. Um, in the definition, because again, we don't have that definitive marker. Um, you know, Maggie Stolling likes to talk about how it's not like the chickenpox. You see that chickenpox and you know that that's exactly what it is, right? This is more like, um, okay, blood pressure, right? That exists a bit on a, on a continuum. Um, so that complex causes, um, although that might make our jobs a little bit more difficult, um, it certainly supports the fact that, you know, we also have to be looking at risk and resilience as well. Eileen, you can go to the next one. Perfect. So underlying difficulties with phonological and morphological processing are common but not universal, and that was really important just given that phonological processing has generally been the primary, you know, causal factor. Um, but it kind of goes back to it's not definitive, right? It can also be morphological processing. Um, And this is the part that is incredibly important, specific to SLPs, is that early oral language weaknesses often foreshadow literacy challenges. And I'm gonna kind of show you some statistics in a little bit, but including this was a really big component around detection and early risk. They moved a bit into secondary consequences as well, because again, this isn't something that goes away. And so as children, you know, get older and language, linguistic complexity increases, what they're hearing, what they're reading, what they're being exposed to, right, that, you know, can then lead to comprehension issues, therefore reduced reading and writing, which will further kind of impede their overall growth and achievement. And they also wanted to make sure that this time around they added that psychosocial component. So psychological well-being and employment opportunities. You know, I think we've had the data for years about, you know, kids that are in the juvenile detention center or that end up, you know, in that kind of prison pipeline, right? I think it was upward— last number was upwards of 82% of inmates have dyslexia, right? So Putting that in there, you know, we have more information on that now. And then lastly, 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. So that window of support is present now, right? It's stated that we really need to identify, screen, get to these kids early so that we can intervene as that window of effectiveness, um, you know, gets a bit smaller as kids get older. And so the primary shifts here is that what we've learned from the past, you know, 2 decades is that dyslexia is multifactorial in nature. Um, you're going to see many different characteristics, and it doesn't— it's not a one-size-fits-all. And that there is this real complex interplay of both that kind of biological, environmental, and environmental factors. So, you know, those contexts, right, both social, mental health context, right? These are some characteristics, right? Health issues, poverty, school-related anxiety, right? These are all things that impact the shaping of of dyslexia, and that effective instruction mitigates risk. And I think that's a really, really important one. I know as a reading specialist, um, I've been hearing all about our, uh, reading, uh, scores, uh, our nation's reading scores over the past several decades. And, and, um, you know, this makes me really hopeful that we're really finally talking about, um, you know, getting, getting those risk factors identified early so that we can Get that instruction, effective instruction going. This is a big one. This is, this is often, we want a number, right? How many kids are in my classroom, or how many kids is it that have dyslexia? And so, you know, I had the privilege of having a conversation with one of the kind of people that spearheaded this new definition. And again, because it's on a continuum, we can't really give that number. We can't definitively say 1 in 5 or 1 in 13, right? But what we can say is that because this, you know, the prevalence is better understood as, as this kind of distribution, right, this continuum. We can say that we don't have a fixed number. Around 7.1% worldwide was one figure that the literature does cite, I guess, consistently. But it's very much dependent on the group of children and on the individual child. All right, so here's where we really start to have that kind of literacy, emergent literacy lens and language lens kind of creeping, you know, into your areas of expertise here, because these are things that I'm sure you're incredibly familiar with when it comes to certain milestones. But these are also helpful in the sense that they're observable behaviors, right? So, you know, starting at 18 months, You know, we're really able to see whether kids are struggling to learn the nursery rhymes or the songs. They can't quite get that pattern down, or, you know, they've played with a little kid over and over again, but they can't remember their name. They can't, you know, no matter what, all the ABCs, they can't remember the letter sounds. Immature speech, right, that goes past the time in which it should be immature, right? And then as you get down the bottom there, around 18, over 18 months, around that kind of history or slow delayed speech development, right? So those that immediately showing a history, and which is why unfortunately it's this only exists really in the medical profession where we ask family history. My hope is that one day that will become normalized and that's something we can do in schools because that gives us so much much information. If we know a family's history around language difficulties or learning difficulties, um, and I oftentimes will ask families, and I won't use that word dyslexia because sometimes that can sound very scary at first, um, that right away tells us that the child is 50 to 80% more likely to have dyslexia. So we really, really want to make sure that when we can, when we feel comfortable, and when appropriate, to kind of get that, that history. As kids enter school right now, we're not necessarily as focused when we— hopefully, hopefully we still are. Hopefully we're still focused on oral language, but we very quickly, as kids get to school, start putting letters in front of them, right? Letters, sounds, um, and You know, the expectation now kind of nationwide is that children are reading as they exit kindergarten. And so some things that we might see are kids really struggling with that sound-symbol correspondence. They just can't seem to get that, or that their phonological working memory is so difficult, having such difficulty that they're unable to blend sounds together. You know, even a basic CVC word, you know, a kiddo that says you know, /k/, /æ/, /t/, and then when they blend together says daff, right? And you're like, wait, what do you mean? How can we do that? You just said all those sounds perfectly, right? Um, but again, that's holding on to, um, holding on to the sounds. So that's their phonological processing. Um, poor orthographic knowledge, right? So being able to kind of name those letters, um, and, you know, maybe even having difficulty recognizing their own name in print. That's definitely an indicator, especially as they're getting older, and that they're very reliant on visuals. Kindergartners, first graders, second graders, as soon as you observe children relying on pictures, and the books that they're reading will have pictures in them, right? That's what we're— that's what kids are reading. We don't want to take away those pictures, but if we're noticing that that's what they're relying on to read the words, That's an indication that they're trying to compensate for some lack of one of these skills, right? They're having difficulty sounding out or blending sounds together. They're unable to crack the code, and so they're reliant on these visuals. These continued difficulties, right, that you'll be able to see that all the way through. Other compensation strategies, as students get a bit older, you start to kind of see the behavioral impact, right? And so in schools, that's going to look like either some introverted behavior where we're maybe really shy, we don't want to read out loud, we kind of keep to ourselves, we don't want to work in groups, um, or extroverted behavior where, you know, a child will refuse to, to leave. I had a kiddo, every single time he thought that he was going to have to read, that he had to take— he went to— had to go to the bathroom. Right? So kids will find any way possible, right, to kind of protect themselves when they have difficulty with reading. Um, kids that have, you know, that lack of fluency— that says fluency, sorry about that, I gotta work on my spelling— but kids that aren't able to read automatically and it's really laboring for them, you can see in that definition they're probably going to read less because it's harder for them. And if they read less, then they have less exposure, right? Um, and so you'll also see that difficulty come out in, in writing, in their spelling. Um, but more importantly, and this is kind of the, um, soapbox I've been on for a little bit, although I'm in the right company, is that, um, because the shift in teaching children to read happens very quickly as they enter school, we're often really honed in on if a kiddo can decode or not. Um, but we also have to be looking out for kids that are struggling with those language-heavy kind of integration tasks. So when they're asked to read something or listen to something and then respond to it in writing, or turn and talk about it, right? All of those heavy language-based tasks, and they become more and more integrated as kids receive content area-specific information, we'll start to see kids really, really struggle with that. And then of course, that heavy social-emotional impact.

Thank you, Mary Kate. I really love that conversation about observable behaviors, and I think as a reading specialist or an SLP, When you're working with a student, being able to see those skill deficits in real time makes such a difference. So Mary Kay and I thought this would be kind of a fun activity. We're gonna go through those observable behaviors in reading one more time really quick. Let me also say that this is in your handout if you were able to download the handout before you joined us. And then we're gonna show you 3 videos. 3 short clips of students reading, and we're gonna talk through what actually can we observe that the student is doing, and how would we then go forward with remediation or instruction, like what information does that give us? So if you've got your handout, I'm looking at the whys of poor reading, and as Mary Kate said, poor phonological working memory. Hearing the sounds cat and then producing the word dat. Like, that's very common when students are low in phonology and not able to process those sounds. Some other things you would see, and I think one that is fairly common, is when they switch sounds within a word. So if they say something that I see common is felt and left, right? They take the L and the F and they switch that. It happens a lot with blends. So just knowing that, aha, that's a little clue into what more that student is going to need to help them be successful, is, is really powerful. Um, obviously limited grapheme-phoneme knowledge. So if they know the letter and they don't know the sound it makes, or they know the sound and don't know what letter to write, that's really important. Visual discrimination issues. Knowing when it's a B or a D. I've got some other letters on there that are fairly common, like H and N and M are all letters where students sometimes get those confused, and that's gonna show up in their reading. Poor orthographic mapping. So we heard Mary Kay talk about, like, if they can name, if they can recognize their name and everything else is picture-driven, They know their letters and sounds, but they can't put it all together. We see that sometimes when students are blending and they just can't get that continuous phonation, or they're still doing onset and rhyme and they're in the 2nd grade. So being able to map those sounds to long-term memory, knowing sometimes word families, pulling it out of retrieval, that can be something on its own that you you can actually work on in your small group or even one-on-one sessions. Limited decoding strategies, so looking at a student that's struggling and they don't have any strategies, right? They don't know how to tap it out or they're doing things like Mary Kate mentioned, they're looking at the pictures because they don't have any strategies to break the code. So that's something to look for. Predicting text rather than decode. I have to say I see this so much, right, when students are reading and they've got great background knowledge, great comprehension, knowledge of text structure, and they are actually not attending to the text, but they're using their knowledge of the storyline or the content to kind of guess at the words. They might take the first letter or what would make sense. We'll see some examples of that in the video, but knowing that that is something on its own and, you know, can be worked on again through intervention. And then lack of background knowledge or vocabulary, and I think this speaks greatly to the oral language piece of it, is if a student is trying to read content and they don't have any idea of the background knowledge, they don't know those vocabulary vocabulary words, it's almost like they're reading nonsense words, right? When we think about how hard it is to decode a nonsense word, because if I don't have the vocabulary, clearly those are all nonsense words. So we are going to look at 3 video clips. Each time we look at a clip, we're gonna pull this back up in a poll. Mary Kate and I are gonna talk about what we saw. You're gonna get to—

Vote.

Go through the poll and just check off what it is you saw in that clip. So I think it'll be a really fun conversation. So this is what it will look like. This is the poll. You'll get that in the regular poll format, and here's our first clip. So you can see up in this left corner is going to be the text that the student is looking at. So I'm going to play this clip and then we'll stop. Corrine will launch the poll and then you'll get to say what is it that you noticed. You also have a worksheet in your handout, so it's a separate handout called the worksheet that does have that poll listed. So if you want to make some notes as we go along and watch it, each clip is only about a minute, so it goes fast, but use that if you want to make some notes. So here's the first clip. It's a 6th grade student reading, as you can see from the text, a pretty low, maybe even like a Lexile 200 or so decodable text.

Out down the bank to see the— to the sea.

Excellent job.

Do you bring something to feed the Feed the sea.

You're doing great.

You're doing really well. Which word are you on right now?

Huh?

Goggles.

Yeah.

You want to go a little Gulls.

What?

Do you know what gulls is?

Nope. It's like bird, seabird. Brad said, just some steel buns.

Very good.

Okay, so Mary Kate, I'm gonna ask you first, and to our participants, you can go through your handout, kind of sketch out what you want to reply, and we'll launch the poll. And as we're speaking, feel free to pop your answers. It will be multiple choice. So what do you think some of the issues were with that student reading? So Mary Kate, I'll let you go first.

Yeah, and like I said, I didn't listen to these before because I wanted to hear the same with everybody else. So she was interesting. I think what she struggled the most with was that kind of limited— I don't want to say limited in the sense of she knew her letters and her sounds, but, um, she wasn't automatic, right? And so that limited accuracy led to limited automaticity, right? And that, that's that orthographic mapping process, right? Um, when we talk about difficulty with orthography, it's that connection between the sound to the letter and then to meaning. Um, really quickly you could tell, you know, she got really stuck on that word Feed. She kind of repeated herself a few times, paused, really needed some encouragement there. And then I noticed with that word gulls, that was really unfamiliar to her, which, you know, is an indication of background knowledge, vocabulary based off of the other sounds that she did know. She should have been able to kind of put that word together.

Mm-hmm.

Um, but her lack of vocabulary or kind of knowledge, um, prevented her from doing so. So there was a lot of different things that she was kind of struggling with, but I think the biggest takeaway for me is, um, how kind of laborious that was for her.

Yeah, I would agree with that. And I might even add, it was interesting how she decoded buns, right? So it was ba-bun-buns. Right, so that just spoke to how laborious it was for her and her lack of, you know, orthographic mapping and decoding. So let's see what our polls say, the audience. I would say there's probably no wrong answer, right? There are certainly a lot of things in there, but I would agree with many of these. How about you, Mary Kate?

Yeah, no, this is great. A little bit of everything, honestly, and to be able to to observe such behaviors in such a small clip and small amount of time. I think, you know, I'm someone that always has to be practical and thinking about caseloads and what is realistic when we say, you know, is this, you know, should we be listening for these things? Well, we were able to get all of that information just from 3 sentences. So it's, it's pretty—

Yeah.

Yeah, pretty amazing.

I think for me, that is the, the most rewarding part of doing this work, is to be able to identify skill deficits with just such limited information. And I would have to say, for me, out of these 3 pieces, that her limited background knowledge and vocabulary probably played a bigger role than anything, um, because she couldn't get through just based on the, the comprehension and, you know, the fluency Yeah, that's right. Great, okay, let's go on to the next one. So again, the same questions, you're gonna get the same poll, and I want you to think about the same things. And this is a student, 2nd grade, who's actually using the Sprout Reading World. I'll talk about that, I'll put a little plug in at the end about what this program actually is. It's developed for SLPs and reading specialists to help that carry-through. But we're going to listen to him read words in isolation, and I think that also reveals a lot about a reader when it's not fluent and not connected text, and what does it look like words in isolation. So as I play this again, look at your list and let's decipher what he's doing.

Pl-ain, plain. Suh-ide, side. Side. Sn, at, snack. N, aim, name. W, ip, whip. K, ape, cape. S, uf, stuff. D, r, ad, drag. P, id, P, pipe. T, aid, trade. D, ass, grass. S, sun, sun. T, ape, tape. P, plate. S, swish, slap. Aim. Game. B-I-T-E. Bite. T-R-O-S. Cross. S-I-T-E. Sit. D-R-I-F-T. Drift. L-A-K-E. Lake. F-A-I-M-E. Fame. B-L-A-C-K. Black. L-A-K-E. Lake.

Okay, Mary Kay, I'm gonna throw it over to you.

Yeah, I, I won't talk as much this time. I'm gonna give it back to you in a second. But one thing I noticed about this kiddo, um, is that he added schwa, um, after the first consonant and on— in almost all of the words, right? And so when you're looking at one-syllable words, um, he can get away with it a bit when he goes to blend. Um, but that, if that's not addressed instructionally, um, that's going to be a problem. So that's really his kind of phonological, um, you know, um, I guess discrimination there. But I mean, to say suh, it, say it, right? Um, he did that with, with quite a few of them. Um, what did you see?

Yeah, I noticed that, um, Visual discrimination, obviously B and D was hard. I saw that lack of phonological working memory when he said swish for wish, right? So he took the S and he brought it to the front. Not solid with orthographic mapping with short and long vowel patterns, right? So that was pretty obvious. We don't really get a sense of his ability to read connected words. But clearly you can see what you would need to do with this student just based on words in isolation. And for me, that's always the place where I'd like to start is what do they know and where is their skill level in decoding?

Yeah.

So let's poll our audience and see what they were thinking. Yeah, I would agree. And yeah, even some prediction, I would say, right? But just looking at the word and not really taking the time to sound it out.

I would say compensation strategy there for sure. I think the other thing too, and I want to make sure that we kind of address this around visual discrimination issues. So it, you know, when we talk about like dyslexia myths, for kids that are younger than 3rd grade, that BDQP reversal is not an indication of dyslexia as much as it is developmental. And so that's one that for years people would say, oh, well, he reads words, letters backwards. We just, we want to remember that dyslexia is language-based. It's not a visually-based disability, although as kids get older, it is concerning if they're still doing those reversals. And oftentimes that's just from a lot of lack of exposure, because at that point reading is very hard for them.

Yeah, yeah, good point to make. Okay, we have one more. So this is again the same format. This is a 3rd grade student that seems to be doing pretty well, but there were some outstanding and notable errors in this. So let's take a peek.

All cats are related. Tigers, lions, and the cats people have as pets. All cats are related. Have many things to come. Come on. They all have four toes on the front feet and four toes on their back feet. They all eat meat.

Okay, what are you thinking?

Um, you know, she, she did a bit better. I think what's tricky about this type of passage, um, is that it is in connected text, so that does allow some predictability, right? Like, I'd be curious to see if she were to read these words in, in isolation. Um, I think she had difficulty, um, more so with like maintaining the syntax of the sentence, right? They're a bit longer. Um, but let's see, they all have 4 toes on their front feet and 4— yeah, yeah, very choppy, right? Like you could hear she was reading at the word level and not the sentence level. I think that's what I meant by kind of that syntax component.

Yeah, I would agree with that. And I think you're right with the syntax when she made a mistake in some of the, the more Mm-hmm. Common trick words, like, they all have 4 toes on the front, that didn't set her up for making the connection to the next word, feet, right? So that was kind of an obvious one where she's trying to predict, but she's not able to because of her lack of being able to read those easier words. And I think it's really interesting that all have many things too. And yeah, you might look at that and think it's come on. So I mean, that was interesting. That might even be— she did— she never heard the word common, right?

Right.

So she did her best trying to sound it out. So I think that she's almost there. You know, it's pretty interesting to, to see just another perspective and again, how much we can get out of just that one little snippet. So let's see what our audience had to say in our poll.

And you know what, Eileen, that would also be an indication to me that I need a bigger sample. Like, I need more information on this kiddo. That, that wasn't one that I could observe so many things, so many red flags. I would want to dig into that a bit more and do more of a diagnostic for sure. But yeah, that reduced vowel sound, um, she wasn't able to, to quite get on that one.

Yeah, yeah.

And you just made a really good point for me is If we're using like a DBI model, right, and we are giving some intervention, sometimes we need more, right? We need to give another assessment, or are we going to give the CTOPP, or maybe an oral language assessment? So even just these little insights into how a student is reading can tell us what more do we need to know about that student in order for them to make gains and be successful. So that's a really good point to make.

Yeah. It'll never be one test that will show you everything, that's for sure.

Correct.

Okay. Oh, and a lot of people did pick up on that predicting the text rather than decoding. I would have to agree with that. This is great, and you can tell that the people that are watching us tonight are right in line with our thinking, and that's amazing. Okay, great. Let's move on to the next slide, and I'm going to pass it back to you, Mary Kate.

Yeah, so I just very quickly kind of wanted to come back to this definition and thinking about those 3 samples that we heard. And if we think about those kind of back to those observable behaviors, what you were listening for, you know, which parts of this definition kind of came came to life, right? If we really think about that, you know, if I were to give you that poll again, and we do not have to launch a poll again, but that would be one I think where you would be able to kind of check off almost every single component within this definition, right? Obviously, we cannot, you know, look into things like secondary consequences or whatnot, but, you know, the ways in which the kids were struggling you could really see in this definition. Wide, wide variety for sure. I also wanted to include this piece because writing is often left out, like, you know, the evil stepsister or something. But a writing sample can be so informative when we're looking at those observable behaviors and characteristics. This is a 3rd grader, and I typed what he was trying to say here. He was trying to write, I helped my brother Landon who got hurt. I'm paraphrasing here because his doesn't really make sense, but if I was just reading his, I helped my brother Landon who he got hurt. I got him ice for his boo-boo and he felt better. Then we settled down. So certain things for a 3rd grader, Um, we could say, okay, great, he was able to get, you know, some words here, some, you know, varied syllable patterns. Um, but overall, this is a really immature writing sample in terms of, you know, the subword level, his handwriting, right? You'll notice kind of right away kind of features of dysgraphia here. Um, that subword level component, correct written sequence, right? He you know, wasn't immediately who he got hurt, I got him. Um, and then spelling, lack of punctuation, lack of spacing. And one thing for this particular kiddo is when he's spelling his brother's name wrong, something that he has probably seen in print many times, and he used the word boo-boo. Um, and I think the reason why he used that is not because he was you know, immature in his oral language because this is not the kiddo that you would be talking to. You'd be stunned to talk to this kiddo. He had a much higher vocabulary, but he wasn't able to spell perhaps what he wanted to spell, right? I got him ice for, you know, his knee, his injury, a bruise, whatever it was, his elbow, right? So he replaced that word with something more simple that he felt like he could spell out. So that's, you know, Again, another compensation strategy. Um, I wanted to include this because I think it's really important to recognize when we're talking about dyslexia that SLPs have a lot on their plate already in the work that you do, which is why I started off by saying how appreciative I am for your work. And, you know, I was really fortunate to work as a full-time faculty under the wonderful Tiffany Hogan in her speech and language lab. And one thing that I always really appreciated what she would advocate for is that speech and language pathologists have such deep background knowledge around the form of language, um, that, you know, it is very much in your scope of practice, um, to be able to identify, you know, certainly the observable behaviors, but to be able to identify and kind of treat Um, dyslexia. And that doesn't mean that you take over for a reading specialist or the classroom teacher. Um, and, you know, one thing I always made sure that I did in any building I went into or worked in is that I would seek out the SLP as a reading specialist because our work aligned so much that it didn't put more work on our plate. We were able to work a bit smarter, um, and not, you know, much harder. Right? So, you know, I am sure there will be questions on whether or not, you know, it is something that you should be doing. I think that that very much depends on the context of your setting. But just kind of being confident in the fact that you have this wealth of knowledge and this other eye to be able to kind of identify. And that is just so critical. I recently— I'm located just outside of Boston, and I recently teamed up with a pediatric practice. Their pediatricians were looking for more information on dyslexia, and one thing that I really wanted to make very clear and share with you all today is that dyslexia frequently co-occurs with other conditions. And one in particular that you are all very familiar with is developmental language disorder, or DLD, right? And DLD has been known from many other terms— speech-language impairment, speech delay. We now know it as DLD. But if you look at these numbers— and Eileen, you can kind of go to the next slide because I zoom in here— these are really high numbers, high co-occurring conditions. which makes it difficult to identify what's the primary disability sometimes, and then it adds a layer of complexity in terms of treatment. But I think when we go back to that definition and we think about, you know, early speech delays or oral language difficulties, you know, that is giving us a flag around this kid is at risk And you can see it here, and I'm sure, you know, those of you that are particularly in school settings, I'm sure these numbers really come to life for you as they do for me. So, um, how can SLPs support dyslexia? Um, there's a variety of things here, um, and I think, you know, the, the biggest point— and I'm not going to read all of these off, to you, um, but it's really thinking about what you're able to see, um, based off of your knowledge and how you're able to collaborate and communicate that with a child's teacher, a child's family, their support person, their, you know, interventionists, um, you know, because you are able to support these kind of broad language skills that are necessary for word reading. Um, you know, really having an understanding of how, you know, what you're working on in, in speech therapy and how that, you know, is really supporting, um, you know, literacy and what parents can be doing at home, right? Um, supporting teachers when, you know, with your students that you service, you know, one-on-one or small group. Um, and certainly being able to, to look for those early signs. In terms of intervention, again, this isn't a and now you have to become, you know, a reading specialist as well. But I guarantee there's a lot of things that you're already doing in your therapy sessions that are supporting or that can support students with dyslexia. So, you know, anything that you're doing explicitly, you know, systematically, we move when we teach kids from simple to complex. We start with, you know, basic letter sounds before we move into, you know, um, polysyllabic words, um, that direct teaching of sound-symbol correspondence, right? Some of that kind of phonological components matching that actually with the letter. We know now a lot about phonological awareness and the importance of getting those letters and in front of kids as you're doing that. And really kind of, you know, being a— continuing to be an advocate for, you know, evidence-aligned instruction, particularly as kids get older, right? Those language interventions around vocabulary, syntax, story grammar, narratives, right? All those comprehension difficulties that might be more prominent in older students. Any, any support in that area, you are supporting them in literacy. You are supporting them in reading.

All right.

Thank you so much for such an informative presentation. This concludes our educational portion of the webinar for ASHA CEUs and NASP CPDs, but we would like to invite you to hang on for just a few extra minutes. As a reminder, you will be receiving a survey by email end of day tomorrow, but do hang on till Monday before emailing us. Please be sure to answer all the questions and complete the survey by the deadline. But before we end, we have a few more announcements and then a Q&A afterwards. I'll hand it back over to Eileen.

Thank you, Corinne. Something Mira-Kate said just now resonated with me, and it's how much the work of an SLP and a reading specialist overlap. And we were talking actually the other day saying how reading specialists, for maybe the past 5 years or so, have really had to incorporate things that were kind of not in our reading world or literacy world, but like phonological awareness and work around phonemes. And it felt very odd for us, and I think we've come to accept that these 2 worlds collide often, and we need to be aware of like what the other is doing. And we are so blessed to be able to go to the SLP in our school and, you know, ask them questions And get their feedback. And I think this is a great opportunity again for SLPs to do the same for our reading specialists. Like, we're collaborating, we're both working towards the same goal. And I think for, for me, and I'm probably speaking for Sprouts Reading World now, that's the space that we're in, is to help this collaboration and how can we both work towards the same thing. So that being said, I just wanted to touch base. Why are we doing this? Sprouts Reading World is a great way for you to get that carry-through to home. And I know as a reading specialist, I, in my practice, I give kiddos some instruction and I tell them to go home and practice and I give them papers and it never happens. And we know that with more practice they will get better. So we developed this product that takes you through a scope and sequence, really a phonics but it does incorporate oral language, vocabulary, comprehension. It's pretty thorough, and this should look familiar. This is one of those snippets that we saw in our real-world experience where students start off by revisiting the, the work that they already know, like what did we teach in the last session in the Sprout Reading World. We add instruction that is multimodal It's very visual. It's easy for a student with language delays to kind of get that instruction through engagement. So they read words at the word level, sentence level, and then pull it into a story so they're getting that connected text. It's a great opportunity if you want to share this with the students that you're already servicing or you yourself have an interest. We're really moving forward with helping to support the SLP copies out there in some of the work as they move into this reading space. If you are interested, feel free to pick up your phone right now and scan this QR code. You can email me, my email address is there, and as Corrine said, we'll be sending home some more information in the email that will be coming out soon. And over to Mary Kate real quick.

Here's me. I have nothing super fun and exciting to add, but I do have my website up there that has some good resources out there for families and educators that you might find interesting. But all of my information is there. I will be presenting at ASHA. I hope to see some of you there. And yes, please feel free to reach out. It was such a pleasure to be here.

Great.

And back to you, Corinne.

Here's my info. Feel free to connect with me if you'd like. I too will be presenting at ASHA, and we have a slide that will talk about that in just a second. You can go on to the next slide. So I did want to share about a little bit about Parallel at this time. So Sorry, so many things to talk about today. Um, so Parallel is still hiring for the 2026-27 school year. Parallel is always looking for talented providers, and if you're interested in exploring virtual teletherapy positions at Parallel, we'd love to meet with you. Pathway, Parallel's platform, makes it easy and efficient for providers to deliver engaging services write reports more efficiently, and track student outcomes. Parallel also offers flexibility to work remotely, ASHA and NASP certified CEUs and professional development opportunities like the one you attended today, a clinical provider support team with industry experts to support your work along the way. We encourage you to scan the QR code or click the link in the chat to learn more about what it's like to be a Parallel provider. And even if you may not be interested in a position, if you know someone who is, please share the link with a friend or have them visit Parallel's website. All right, I think we had one more. Yes, we have one more informative. So we at Parallel will be at ASHA as well. We'd love to meet with you if you're going to be there. Before we wrap up, I want to share that Our team is heading to ASHA this year and we'll be presenting 3 sessions live. If you're going to be at ASHA, we would love to see you in person, so please come find us and join us for any or all of them. If you're not going to ASHA, I'd still encourage you to sign up. Just note that these sessions are live and in person only, so there won't be a webinar or virtual option, and ASHA CEU credit is only available if you attend live at ASHA. That said, we're really proud of what we've put together, and everyone who registers will be sent the resources after the sessions. All provider types are welcome to register, so even if you're not an SLP, you are welcome to register. Everyone who registers will be entered to win our Sprout Labs giveaway, a 6-month Reading World scholarship that you can gift or share with someone who could really use it. And during ASHA, Parallel and Sprout Labs will have a free pop-up coffee station. More details are coming soon, but it'll be a great way to skip the lines, grab a coffee, and connect with us. So whether we see you in person or catch you, um, or you catch the resources afterwards, please register using the link on the screen. We'd love to have you. So there's 4 sessions, one from Mary Kate and 3 that we're offering through Parallel. Hope to see you guys there. I would love to now transition to our Q&A. We had some excellent questions come up, so I would like to start with the question on, is dyslexia comparable to autism in that there is a continuum of severity? Who would like to take that one?

Yeah, yeah, that actually, that's something that the committee kind of discussed as one way to kind of compare, right? That we're no longer kind of saying these are the set characteristics or this is the particular percentile a child has to fall under, but, you know, along this continuum across the distribution. Yeah, it is that you could compare it in that way.

And we can go ahead and take the screen share down so we can have more of an informal presentation here. Thank you so much. Also, there was a really good question, a lot of really good questions, but one that I think a lot of us have on our minds regarding when does a child, when is a child expected to start reading? And again, I guess combining it with the idea that When is it dyslexia versus a lack of instruction? Does that make sense? I am kind of asking 2 different questions, but I feel like they're related.

Yeah, um, so when is it dyslexia and when is there kind of a lack, lack of instruction? So, um, the biggest thing is you want to consider what are some of those risk factors, um, and that again is going to enhance that probability or, or decrease it. Um, in terms of the instruction, um, that one is going to be tricky, but really the question rather is their response to instruction. So we can't expect a child to be reading proficiently if they're not being taught to read the way in which we know works, um, and what's effective. Um, and so that question becomes, well, what kind of instruction is the child receiving? Um, what kind of programs are— or is the school using, right? So you'd have to dig a little bit more into that. But then also, you know, how are they responding to the instruction? Um, which is, you know, we, we, you know, maybe that's RTI, or maybe that's, you know, they're pulled for additional support. Um, but that one can be tricky to answer because if we're not teaching children to read the right way, we are raising kids to be dyslexic. And so asking those questions around how is this child being taught, for how long are they being taught, you know, and what does the screening process look like? I mean, right now we have 49 states that have passed, you know, enacted a dyslexia and early screening, you know, literacy legislation. So that's one thing. And I often point parents I don't know if that was included in the question. I'm not sure if I answered it in the way in which you were asking, but—

Mary Kate, I think that's actually a really important piece, is that we don't want to wait for them to fail the instruction, and we want to make sure that we are screening early enough so that we can identify the risk, right? Because that risk can really lend itself in so many ways to preventing the dyslexia from happening. So I think, you know, both of those need to be considered.

Yeah.

There's a question here specifically regarding strategies for older students with dyslexia, like high school students. Any comments on that?

Yeah, I mean, high school kiddos, that's hard. I've taught high school, I've taught middle school, taught them all. Um, there is certainly, um, uh, a lot more social-emotional components to kids that are in high school and are still struggling to read. Um, what's even more— can be even more difficult is that those kiddos might have really solid language skills, um, and they really feel that kind of like almost discrepancy when they're trying to read, even though they're, you know, they can understand the language coming in. Um, ultimately, and what we're kind of seeing in the research, is that as kids get older, um, reading instruction should include morphology, um, because those are the types of words that kids are going to be encountering in text as they get older. Um, and so as much as we want our older kids to have mastery of the foundation— foundational skills, it's a disservice to keep putting sentences like the cat laid on the mat, um, when they're in high school, and that's not what they're expected, um, to, to know how to read. Um, so I think, you know, it's always a delicate situation as kids get older. It's never too late, um, to support them, but you're looking to add in, you know, a lot more support in word meaning. So the semantic components of language, certainly syntax and comprehension, right? So if they're not accurate in their reading, most likely their comprehension is going to be impacted. And so that's something to, to certainly be thinking about as well. Eileen, do you want to add to that?

I would say there's even some research that says if they were never exposed to phonemic awareness or were That's right. That providing that instruction and practice helps build those neural circuitries so that they can continue those foundation skills and morphology as well. But, you know, we may think of that as a very early skill, you know, pre-K or kindergarten, but those are connections that have to be made in order to lay the foundation for reading. So it's never too late for that as well.

Is there still room for memorizing high-frequency words? There's a great question here about that.

Oh, well, um, I'd have to phone a neurologist friend or a neuroscientist here to tap into that cognitive working memory piece. Um, based on what we know on how to teach kids to read, That repetitive, almost like flashcard mentality is actually not helpful for them. That's not supporting that orthographic mapping process. What we now know is that when we're teaching these high-frequency words, we do want to point out the phonetic components in a word because a word is not entirely irregular. It's rare that we have a word that has no correspondence when one-to-one with a letter and a sound. Um, so for example, like the word said, right, that's considered a high frequency or a sight word. You know, I assume we're talking about the same kind of concept there. Um, you know, so that S and that D, um, you can sound those out, right? So it's lessening that, um, memory cognitive load to be able to say, actually, in this word, we're really just going to focus on the part that we do have to know by heart, which is that, uh, ed sound, the /æ/ sound in said, is actually written as AI.

Yeah, thank you. That was very helpful. I think there's still a lot of folks that are pushing the memorization of sight words, so that's an interesting way to look at it.

And kids would rather that, right? Because then that takes them away from that, you know, that sound-symbol correspondence. So some kids that have relatively decent working memory are Um, one, that's how they'll kind of survive in navigating some texts, but also they would prefer that, right? Because then they don't have to, like Eileen said, you know, be paving those neural circuits. Yeah.

Yeah, it's more work for sure. Um, there's also— I think this will be our final question. Um, there was a question regarding what assessments, uh, training certifications, um, are available to SLPs so they can become more skilled at assessing, treating dyslexia We know that it is within our scope of practice, but we do need some additional training here. Any, um, anyone want to take that one?

Eileen, do you want to start?

I'm not sure that this is in my wheelhouse, what SLPs would want to know. I would say from a reading specialist lens, it's always good to, um, get the, the newest kind of assessments. I know I know that at the time Early Bird was sold to Imagine Learning, they've got a great dyslexia screener. There are lots of screeners out there that show risk for dyslexia. As far as, you know, learning how to teach reading, for me, Orton-Gillingham, and getting a certification in that, it's pretty lengthy, but there's no better way to learn instruction in kind of a really nice scope that's beneficial to students with dyslexia. But Mary Kay, why don't you give us that SLP view?

Well, I think depending on how deep you kind of want to go, but one of the things to be thinking about is, you know, are you looking to include this in your SLP battery of assessments, or is this something you're maybe curious about, right? Because that's going to kind of depend on the level of assessment. Um, you know, so one thing just kind of right off the bat is, um, you know, some type of survey, like a phonics survey, right? Um, a Core Phonics survey, a Quick Phonics survey, um, you know, that you'll be able to kind of take a look at kids reading words in isolation. If they're really— if they're younger kids, right, maybe you're just doing the letters and the sounds. Um, DIBELS, Acadience, those are all free available tools They do require training, and you definitely want to go through their kind of training videos or webinars that they offer. But there are some free and available things out there. I actually, I have some included on my website as well. So it really does depend on how in the weeds that you want to get. And we could sit here for, you know, 5 hours and talk about assessments. But I think kind of starting there and familiarizing yourself with ones that are freely available.

Thank you. Well, that concludes our presentation and our Q&A. Um, I'm going to leave the chat open for a little bit longer if you want to grab that link to register for our coffee and more information about, um, our presentations at ASHA and how you can connect with us and Sprout Labs at ASHA. Also the link if you'd like to explore more about Parallel. I've I've also put in everybody's contact information. Again, special thank you to Mary Kate and Eileen for a really awesome conversation, very informative. I especially enjoyed the interactive polls and really looking and thinking about what each child was, was doing. That was very, very informative. Thank you so much and have a great evening, everybody.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. Those questions are great. Really, really great questions. So.