By Edith Mariscal

NE Campus students learned about the difficulties of dyslexia and building an awareness of self-advocacy during a presentation Oct. 31.

Amy Montemayor, literacy intervention teacher leader for Grapevine-Colleyville ISD, talked about dyslexia’s characteristics and accommodations students can receive while in school.

“Dyslexia is not poor vision or hearing or letters jumping around on a page,” she said. “Dyslexia is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities.

“Our goal is to create and implement a comprehensive development plan to significantly increase the quality of dyslexia services.”

Students learned about accommodations that can be available such as audiobooks, text-to-speech and speech-to-text through various technology such as iPads, Chromebooks and laptops.

“An accommodation does not alter what the student is expected to learn,” she said. “An accommodation makes learning accessible to the student and allows the student to demonstrate what they know.”

Tonya Fleming, board member of the International Dyslexia Association, introduced students to opportunities and assistance for students with dyslexia.

The IDA offers assistance and opportunities by hosting conferences, webinars, books, hotline and scholarships.

“Our organization is committed to promoting literacy for individuals with dyslexia and related disorders through advocacy, education and support,” Fleming said.

“We envision a world in which dyslexia and related disorders are not a barrier to literacy.”

NE student Andrew Henderson said he learned from the presentation.

“I have dysgraphia, so this event really helped me notice the difference between the two,” he said.