The NHS definition of Dyslexia states -“Dyslexia is a common learning difficulty that mainly affects the way people read and spell words”. The term ‘Dyslexia’ is derived from the Greek for ‘difficulty with words’. It is currently believed that approximately 10% of the UK population display elements of Dyslexia, of which 300,000 are children of school age. It is known that the treatment of dyslexia is most successful the earlier it is identified. Therefore it is important to identify a child’s needs and act upon supporting them as soon as possible.
Information processing is the key area that is affected, which results in the dyslexic person having greater or lesser difficulty in both processing and recalling information that is normally acquired from what they see and hear. Dyslexia is recognised as a specific learning difficulty, which is frequently found to have links with other specific learning difficulties, these being Dyspraxia, Attention Deficit Disorder and Dyscalculia. Despite the obvious difficulties experienced by individuals with dyslexia, their skills in other areas such as creative, problem solving and visual, are often found to be much stronger than found in ‘non-dyslexic’ individuals.
One model that attempts to explain dyslexia is Ehri’s four stage model of Normal development
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Toe-by-Toe was named after the process used in the method. The student takes small steps at a time to make progress from the start of implementing the method. The method employed is that of teaching the phoneme sound using nonsense words called ‘polynons’. This is also applied to multi-syllabic words, which in turn causes the student to read. This method of developing reading skills is sympathetic to and links strongly with Ehri’s four stage model with the learning of and memorising of