Parents should be mindful of their child's reading ability. Their vigilance can help detect problems that may not be obvious in a school setting. The following excerpt is taken from Overcoming Dyslexia by Sally Shaywitz and may be helpful as a handout for parents.
Just as a parent would not think of ignoring her child's scheduled physical with his pediatrician, every parent should regularly observe her child reading. Given the high prevalence of reading difficulties, it is more likely for your child to have a reading problem than almost any other physical problem for which he is being checked.
I recommend reading with your child as often as possible, at least several evenings a week. Part of that time should be devoted to hearing your child read to you. Listening to your child read prevents a problem from developing without your knowledge; moreover, it's fun...
Listen carefully as your child begins to read. For a first grader, is there evidence that he is trying, although imperfectly, to link letters with sounds? ... [Is he] matching sounds to letters in each position in a small word (beginning, end, and middle)[?] He should also be recognizing common letter groups [(blends, digraphs, etc.) and patterns (silent e words, adjacent vowels, etc.)].
By second grade his basic tools for reading should be in place. In particular, second grade should see the emergence of a child's ability to read easy multisyllabic words (such as rabbit, butter, and sleepy). This important step involves paying attention to the individual parts within the word... He is... [recognizing] the inner details of longer words as well... You should be concerned if your second grader is not yet sounding out words, is taking wild stabs at words, is not able to read new or unfamiliar grade-level words, has not yet penetrated the inside of a word when he is reading, cannot decode most single or some easy multisyllabic words, is not building a vocabulary of words that he can read fluently, or doesn't seem to enjoy reading...
As your child progresses through third and higher grades, your focus shifts from wondering if she is learning to read to wanting to know if she is learning to read a critical core of words fluently. Reading is changing in character now. Words are more complicated, and there are many more of them. In class the emphasis is less on teaching reading than on using reading to gain information. It is therefore easy to understand why reading problems are so often diagnosed for the first time in third grade. Since dyslexic readers often do not use a decoding strategy to identify a word and instead rely heavily on the surrounding context to figure out its meaning, you should notice if your child uses word substitutions; these replacement words make sense in the context of the passage, but do not resemble the pronunciation of the original word. For example, a child might read car for automobile. Making repeated substitutions is a sure sign that the reader is using context to guess at the meaning of words she has been unable to decode...
Pay attention to the overall rhythm of her reading. Is it smooth or hesitant? She should be reading most of the words on the page fluently... Slow or choppy oral reading with words omitted, substituted, or misspoken are important clues that a third grader is not on track for becoming a skilled reader...
Poor spelling is often a sign of dyslexia. Spelling and reading are intimately linked; to spell correctly a child relies on his stored representations of a word, and these are imperfect in dyslexia. Spelling difficulties may be an indication that the child is not paying attention to all the letters in a word and not storing that word correctly...
Handwriting [can] be an important clue to dyslexia. Children who are dyslexic frequently have abominable handwriting - a problem that continues into adulthood. I believe this difficulty reflects the dyslexic child's problem of appreciating the sounds that make up a word...
Bright dyslexic adolescents love to think, but for them it's hard to take in the raw material - the printed words - that serve as the source of inspiration for new ideas. They must devote their full concentration to decoding words instead of attending to issues of comprehension. Reflecting the lack of fluency, they read slowly... The lack of fluency causes significant problems for dyslexic adolescents as they try to cope with large volumes of written work. For example, homework assignments are often incomplete or take a great deal of time to complete. Fluency is what binds a reader to the text. If a child cannot effortlessly decode a critical mass of words on the page, he cannot engage the text. He'll be at odds with it...
Reading for [a dyslexic child] is fragile, and the process can be disrupted at any moment. Any little sound that draws his attention away from the page is a threat to his ability to maintain his reading... Dyslexic readers often require an extremely quiet room in which to do their reading or to take tests...
Persistent difficulties in learning a foreign language provide an important clue that a student may be dyslexic. . . .
One final clue to dyslexia in children and adults alike: ... they are in pain. Dyslexia inflicts pain. It represents a major assault on self-esteem. [Dyslexic students may have] a reluctance to attend school or moodiness or spoken expressions such as "I'm dumb." ...
The key to success and to avoiding much of this frustration is to recognize dyslexia as early as possible, even before a child is expected to begin to read... The clues you have just read about can alert you to the possibility that a person you know is dyslexic. The presence of several of these clues is a sign that you need to take the next step: consider a more systematic and formal evaluation for dyslexia.
Shaywitz, Sally. 2003. Overcoming Dyslexia. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 112-119 Medscape.com
One of the very first clues to dyslexia may be delayed language. Once a child begins to speak, look for the following problems:
In addition to the problems of speaking and reading, you should be looking for these indications of strengths in high-level thinking processes:
In addition to signs of a phonologic weakness, there are signs of strengths in high-level thinking processes:
If you think your student has some of the above problems, it is important to note how frequent they are and how many there are. You don't need to worry about isolated clues or clues that appear very rarely. For you to be concerned the symptoms must be persistent; anyone can mispronounce a word now and then, or confuse similar-sounding words occasionally. What you are looking for is a persistent pattern: the occurrence of a number of these symptoms over a prolonged period of time.