In the Under the Couch book series, seven-year-old Justin has just finished first grade and is excited about second grade. Except for one problem: he can’t read.
Justin is bright, curious, funny, and creative. He is also clever enough to find almost any excuse to avoid the daily reading his mother requires him to do with his nanny over the summer. He would rather do just about anything than pick up a book.
For a teacher, that kind of resistance can be easy to misread. It can look like laziness or lack of effort. Or disinterest … even defiance. But sometimes, a child who tries to avoid reading is a child who struggles with reading.
Dyslexia is one possible reason—and recognizing the signs early can make a profound difference in the life of the student.
Early Identification Matters
Some children pick up reading very fast, and even read at a very young age. Some struggle learning to read but then somethings clicks and they catch on. But for other children, the struggle never stops. That child doesn’t simply grow out of reading issues. Dyslexia, specifically, does not disappear with time, and waiting for a struggling reader to “catch up” can lead to more frustration, dislike for reading, and possibly negative self-esteem.
The International Dyslexia Association describes dyslexia as a language-based learning disability that affects reading and related language skills. Importantly, dyslexia is not a reflection of intelligence, motivation, or effort. With appropriate instruction and support, students with dyslexia can become successful readers.
That is why early identification matters. The earlier teachers recognize that a child may be struggling with the underlying skills needed for reading, the sooner the child can receive appropriate instruction and support to help replace frustration with progress.
What Should Elementary Teachers Watch For?
Every struggling reader is different, and no single behavior means a child has dyslexia. But there are patterns teachers can watch for.
1. Avoidance, Frustration, or Big Emotions Around Reading
This is one of the easiest signs to misinterpret.
The child who suddenly needs a drink or to visit the bathroom when it’s time to read.
The student who becomes silly, disruptive, shuts down, or gets difficult.
Or the child who feels insecure and believes they are not as smart as everyone else.
These behaviors can be signals that a child is struggling with reading and potentially experiencing repeated failure or frustration.
Sometimes avoidance is not a refusal to learn. It is an attempt to avoid feeling embarrassed or unsuccessful. The distinction matters.
2. Difficulty Connecting Letters to Sounds
A student may have trouble consistently connecting letters and letter combinations to the sounds they represent.
They may learn a sound one day and forget it the next. They may guess at unfamiliar words rather than sound them out or have difficulty remembering common spelling patterns.
When these struggles persist despite instruction and practice, they are worth documenting and discussing with a reading specialist.
3. Difficulty With Rhyming and Word Sounds
Long before children become fluent readers, they are developing an awareness of the sounds within spoken language.
A child who consistently struggles to rhyme words, break words into syllables, identify beginning or ending sounds, or hear the individual sounds within a word may be having difficulty with phonological awareness. These skills are important building blocks for learning to decode words.
4. Reading That Remains Slow and Effortful
Early readers naturally read slowly. The concern is when reading continues to require enormous effort long after instruction should be helping it become more automatic.
A child may read a simple sentence word by word, lose their place frequently, sound out the same familiar word repeatedly, or use so much energy decoding that they have little left for understanding what they just read.
Teachers should note when reading remains exhausting rather than gradually becoming easier for a student.
5. A Noticeable Gap Between Speaking and Reading
Some of the children who struggle most with reading are also the children who are easiest to overlook. They may be articulate, curious, funny, and knowledgeable. They may have an impressive vocabulary and be able to explain complicated ideas—but struggle to read relatively simple sentences independently.
Justin was one of those kids.
In the Under the Couch series, Justin uses humor to hide how much he struggles with reading. That was true of the real Justin, too—the person the character was based on.
When his class took turns reading aloud, Justin didn’t want the other kids to laugh at him when he struggled with his assigned section. So, he would deliberately get words wrong to get the kids to laugh at his cleverness before he could get them wrong for real.
If the class laughed, he could make it look like the mistake was intentional. What might look like silliness, disruption, or a lack of effort was actually a lower school student’s attempt to protect himself from embarrassment. The child who makes others laugh may be the child who doesn’t want anyone to know they are struggling.
When a child’s oral language, reasoning, and personality seem considerably stronger than their reading skills, don’t assume the child isn’t trying. Look at the possibility that their strengths—and sometimes their coping strategies—are masking a reading difficulty.
6. Difficulty Remembering Previously Learned Words
A student may successfully read a word during one lesson and then seem not to recognize the same word the next day. They may rely heavily on pictures or context to guess unfamiliar words rather than decoding them. They may also have difficulty remembering spelling patterns or sequences of letters.
For the real Justin, it became more apparent when he was trying to learn algebra. He would seem to understand when you explained it to him. When I did the problem for him, he seemed to understand. When I helped him solve it, he sort of got it. But when he tried the next problem on his own, he was lost. He couldn’t retain what we just covered. It was as if the information hit a barrier in his brain.
These difficulties can be particularly frustrating for both the student and the parent or teacher, but they can also provide valuable information about how the child is processing written language.
What Teachers Can Do
Teachers are not expected to diagnose dyslexia. Rather, you can notice patterns, document what you see, communicate with families, and connect the student with the appropriate professionals and support.
Keep notes about specific reading behaviors. For example:
- Which letter-sound relationships are difficult?
- Can the student segment and blend sounds?
- How does the student approach an unfamiliar word?
- How much support is needed to read a passage?
- Is reading becoming more fluent over time?
- What happens emotionally when reading is introduced?
Share those observations with your reading specialist and the child’s family.
And importantly, protect the child’s confidence while you address the reading difficulty.
A struggling reader still needs opportunities to experience books as interesting, funny, exciting, and worth reading.
Choose high-interest material. Read aloud. Let children listen to books that are above their independent reading level. Give them opportunities to talk about stories, make predictions, ask questions, and connect reading to their interests.
Reading intervention and a love of stories do not have to be separate.
Look Beyond the Reading Level
One of the most important things a teacher can do is separate the child from the reading difficulty.
Justin is not a bad reader because he doesn’t want to read.
He doesn’t want to read because reading is hard.
That distinction changes the question.
Instead of asking, “Why won’t this child try harder?” we can ask, “Why is reading so difficult for this child—and what can we do to help?”
That shift can change everything.
The Takeaway
A child who struggles with reading may not look like what we expect a struggling reader to look like.
They may be bright and creative. They may excel in science, art, building, storytelling, or problem-solving. They may have an enormous imagination and a thousand questions.
And they may still struggle to read.
In the Under the Couch series, Justin’s reading struggles are only one part of who he is. He is dyslexic, but his nanny continually reminds him that struggling with reading does not define his intelligence or his potential.
Justin’s story is a reminder that a child’s reading level tells us something about their current skills—not their potential.
And sometimes, what a struggling reader needs most is a reason to keep trying.
That is why the Under the Couch series was written specifically with reluctant and struggling readers in mind. The books are filled with fast paced adventure, mystery, and humor—content appropriate for all ages—while keeping the reading level accessible at approximately a second-grade level.
The books are designed to be read in order, so students can follow Justin and his older brother Spencer through their adventures while building confidence and developing a positive relationship with books along the way.
Because the goal is to help children discover that they can be a strong reader.
For more resources and ideas for supporting struggling readers, visit our Teacher’s page.
You can also read about our family’s firsthand experience with reading struggles on our Reading Issues page.