Abstract

ANDRADE, Olga Valéria Campana dos Anjos; PRADO, Paulo Sérgio Teixeira do  and  CAPELLINI, Simone Aparecida. Developing pedagogical tools for early identification of students at risk for dyslexia. Rev. psicopedag. [online]. 2011, vol.28, n.85, pp.14-28. ISSN 0103-8486.

PURPOSE: The development and application of collective pedagogical activities to assess phonological skills in pre-readers and beginning readers and could serve as potential screening tools to help in the early identification of students at risk for dyslexia. METHODS: The FAE tasks ("alternative tools for educators") were built on classical phonological tasks known as "sound categorization" and in the Protocol for Cognitive-Linguistic Skills. FAE tasks basically consisted of matching pictures as well as pictures to spoken words according to their phonological similarity in the onset (alliteration) or rhyme and were given to 45 students on the first grade, of both genres and 7.3 years old on average. RESULTS: The protocol proved to be effective, confirming that phonological awareness, verbal working memory and rapid naming abilities constitute the main risk factors for dyslexia, and to which the FAE tasks were more strongly correlated jointly with the phonemic discrimination. FAE tasks were also strongly correlated with literacy skills. CONCLUSIONS: Students at risk for dyslexia can be efficiently identified through scientifically developed pedagogical tools, adapted and tested for the Brazilian's educational reality. This is a promising research field with the potential to help in avoiding the currently excessive number of students mistakenly labeled as having learning disabilities and improperly referred to specialized public services, as well as to indicate the more appropriate theoretical-empirical framework to guide our educational policies.

Keywords : Evaluation; Reading; Learning; Dyslexia.

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