This is a tough topic.

On the one hand, there is a huge range of "normal" for reading, including among gifted kids.

On the other hand, there are lots of gifted dyslexics who can easily look "grade level" - or more - but are able to mask just how hard they are struggling to keep up as the reading expectations escalate.

And just to complicate things, a large minority (US research suggests 40%) of people will not read easily or fluently without explicit, structured instruction in decoding. Most are not dyslexic, but they need the same kind of teaching to make reading automatic instead of a lot of work. Unlike speech, reading is not a natural activity our brains are programmed for.

So I have become a serious proselytizer for more explicit instruction, sooner, whether they're dyslexic or not. It helps so many and doesn't hurt anyone.

There are many people on this board who are themselves, and or their kids, both gifted and dyslexic and excellent readers. It is possible to read primarily by sight reading - memorizing words - rather than by decoding and with automaticity. A few here can do so with very high levels of fluency, speed and comprehension. But most dyslexics, gifted or not, can't. Reading without automaticity tends to demand vastly more brain resources than it should, and so crowds out other thinking, comprehension, analysis of what's being read. Reading is also just harder and more tiring than it needs to be.

So phonemic weakness is both extremely common and easy to fix. And in many ways, I have come to think of dyslexia itself as the wonder LD - there is so much you can do to actually remediate, not just work around, not just live with it. I'll grant you, if you have to afterschool remediation, it's not fast or painless, but it's remarkably effective. And the sooner you start the more it helps. Ideally, every kid should be properly taught how to read in the first place, rather than waiting until they fail to learn it because we never actually taught them how to do it.

Yeah, this is a bit of a sore spot of mine, how did you guess? 40 years, and the reading wars are still going strong. sigh.

Another thread of interest:
http://giftedissues.davidsongifted.org/BB/ubbthreads.php/topics/161965/all/Still_not_reading.html