Seeing to read at school

Throughout primary school, the demands placed on children in the classroom are great. However, no task is more challenging in those early years of school than learning to read.

There are many skills required for reading

Reading requires children to use all of their language, decoding, phonetic, and visual skills accurately to successfully recognize words and gather meaning from the written text. Unfortunately, about 20% of school-aged children struggle to read. Some of these children suffer from learning disabilities or dyslexia, the inability of the brain's verbal language or auditory processing centres to decode print accurately or phonetically make the connection between the word's written symbols and their appropriate sounds. However, a number of children struggling to read are not dyslexic at all; their phonological awareness and language processing skills are fine. It's their visual perception that is interfering with their ability to read.

Good vision is necessary to read print

Vision plays a vital role in the reading process. First of all, children must have crisp, sharp eyesight in order to see the print clearly. School vision screenings routinely check children's sharpness of vision at distance--measured by the 20/20 line on the eye chart--and refer children for glasses if they have blurry far-away vision and can't see the board from the back of the room. Unfortunately, this is all school vision screenings are designed to check, and children's vision involves so much more.

Other essential visual skills for reading

For success in school, children must have other equally important visual skills besides their sharpness of sight, or visual acuity. They must also be able to

    * coordinate their eye movements as a team
    * follow a line of print without losing their place
    * maintain clear focus as they read or make quick focusing changes when looking up to the board and back to their desks
    * interpret and process accurately what they are seeing

What happens if there's a problem

If children have inadequate visual skills in any of these areas, they can experience great difficulty in school, especially in reading.

Children who lack good basic visual skills often struggle in school unnecessarily. Their "hidden" vision problem is keeping them from performing at grade level, yet teachers and parents often fail to make the connection between poor reading and the child's visual perceptual skills.

Problems affecting reading performance include

    * Eye teaming
    * Eye tracking
    * Eye preference
    * Focussing
    * Vision perception
    * Visual motor integration

Your GP can do a simple vision check and refer you on to a developmental optometrist if necessary.