I was taught to re ad with what you call sight words, and I am not dyslexic.No one I went to school with and grew up with is dyslexic. So I wonder what you are talking about
Apparently, the more verbal kids always figure it out. They may lose a year. But they are okay.
Sometimes all it takes is a comment from grandmother, “That’s a B, say buh-” From that point on, the kid sees a B and knows he’s on safe ground if he tries buh-. Basically, at that point he is reading.
But in many whole word classrooms, the children were never taught the alphabet and never taught the sounds. Now suppose a kid has a facility with visual objects and he actually memorizes several hundred sight-words. Now he’s trapped. Because the next several hundred sight-words are going to overwhelm him. He’s trying his best to do exactly what he was told to do. But each month his life gets worse. And then they say he has AHDH or dyslexia or something, and he needs Ritalin.
(A large percentage of children can never master even 100 sight-words. So you can imagine if a kid is not one of those who makes the jump to phonics, he is basically finished, destroyed. Federal testing of fourth graders says that only one-third are proficient or above. Two-thirds are below proficient. They are the victims of sight-words.)