Why are you suspecting dyslexia? It is not at all unusual for 5 year old's to be unable to read at this age. I have known gifted children who didn't 'read' until they were 7, and then learned to read at an extremely rabid pace.
It is possible he has dyslexia, but at this age it's probably hard to tell unless you see an expert. Public schools probably wouldn't be worried about a 5 year old even one they consider gifted. My school district won't test for LD's until 2nd grade.
How are you 'teaching' reading? There are a number of different methods and not all methods work for all children.
I definitely understand that this could be developmental (and it would be great if it was!). There have just been a lot of little things that when I bring up among other parents, quite a few have said that it turned out to be early signs of dyslexia in their child. These things are knowing the sounds of the letters since he was 3, but not being able to blend, not being able to rhyme at all ("Bed and led rhyme. Can you think of something else that rymes with bed?" "Yes! Jacket!"), randomly guessing at words based on the first letter, and other little things like that. One or two on their own wouldn't worry me as much, but putting them all together just seems to indicate something more. Additionally, his test scores showed very high visual-spatial scores, which seems to be a profile more associated with dyslexia than other types (and having the positive traits listed in the book Dyslexic Advantage).
A friend who was a special education teacher before taking time off said that it does sound like a definite possibility, as does another friend who's a school psychologist. I've put in a phone call to the school district about testing, but I think that they wouldn't normally test this early. And this is normal. But everything I'm reading about dyslexia says that it's best to catch it this young and start remediation before the child falls too far behind, that even when kids start to get help in 2nd or 3rd grade, they never catch up with kids who were better readers early on.
We've mostly been doing phonics based work, extending the type of things that he was doing in his Montessori. He's been very frustrated with this, though, because he's just not getting it and he doesn't like things that "make him feel stupid". More recently, though, I've tried changing things up a bit, using techniques that I've found on Pinterest for dyslexics, as I read through the book Overcoming Dyslexia. I figure, even if he's not dyslexic, using different techniques can't hurt.
ETA: We've also been working on reading Japanese and that's going much better. Though there are more "letters", everything about the "alphabet" is phonetic and there aren't the variations you see in English.
