With DD9, her stuggles really began to be apparent in third grade. She cannot decode words, she cannot sound any word out and she struggles with rhyming. Her spelling is atrocious and she makes classic dyslexic reversals (b and d, most notably). She reads well above grade level when she is reading novels and long passages where it is okay if she just skips by the words that she does not know. In an isolated sentence or test questions, her difficulties are blazingly obvious. Her memory has enabled her to memorize thousands of words, yet she does not 'read' them in the classic sense... she recognizes their shape instead.
In my reading on the subject, it seems that there can be differing presentations of strengths and weaknesses within the disorder, but that there are hallmark symptoms. Two resources that I HIGHLY recommend:
http://www.brightsolutions.us/Take the time and watch these videos!!
Overcoming Dyslexia by Sally Shaywitz
The best book about dyslexia that I found thus far.
