Related to the issue of digital portfolios is project-based learning. On the opposite page, there are quick reviews between learning through projects and true project-based learning or PBL. With PBL, the students assume a central role in the direction of the project and the end goal is to publish the project to the real world and not fill in checklists and answer to questions designed by a teacher. As it turns out, project-based learning is often a great fit for developing dyslexic MIND strengths (Material Reasoning, Interconnected Reasoning, Narrative Reasoning, Dynamic Reasoning) and as Kyle mentioned is a good fit for deep big picture thinkers who have the potential to ask good questions and see problems from multiple perspectives. Project-based learning also puts the focus […]
Learning Doubles to Boost Math Facts Fluency
Learning doubles math facts can help with number flexibility. After learning how to count and "count on", doubles may be the next skill to learn. Origo Education has a nice post about how to introduce and practice doubling facts with students. First, students look for...
Reversals and How to Help [Premium]
“The ability to recognize objects from various view-points has advantages in perceiving one’s environment, allowing one to identify a potential threat from many different views…(however) this trait of the object recognition system is disadvantageous for reading….” Blackburne et al., 2014 MIT When neuroscientists used neurophysiological techniques to study brain-based correlates of letter reversals, they were surprised to find how slowly children’s brains matured into the final adult pattern. Even when children were no longer writing letters backwards, their brains hadn’t matured to final “adult” pattern. Most researchers working in the area of reversals believe the letter reversal issue is related to how to recognize objects from different perspectives. We can recognize our friend if we’re standing right in front of them, to the side, at […]
HOW DID I NOT KNOW?
"I'm a teacher. I'm his mother. How did I not know? " - Maggie Harr Maggie just wrote a wonderful post at Love What Matters. “Smart. This was the first word that people would use when they met my son Aiden. He was precocious and funny, assertive and confident,...
PUTTING A NAME ON IT: Dyslexia, Dysgraphia, and Dyscalculia
The school year begins and then there's a lull. The first days of excitement and change are past and now teachers are trying to figure out their students and students are trying to figure out their teachers. Now is a good time for students to talk to their teachers...
Teacher of the Year Again, CHAD BEAM
"My teachers loved me first and taught me second..." - Chad Beam 3x Teacher of the Year Chad Beam has won Burns High School's Teacher of the Year for the 3rd time in 2019. From the Shelby Star: "That floors me. I'm the dyslexic kid. I'm teaching what I...
The Reading Wars: Will Dyslexic Students Be Helped?
"Over the long term in reading, the lowest performing students – those readers who struggle the most – have made no progress from the first NAEP administration almost 30 years ago..." There are discouraging reports from the 2019 NAEP Reading Assessment. NAEP stands...
Dyslexia | How to Choose Books | Premium
How Can We Help Dyslexic Students Choosing Books? Here are a Few Tips… Say Yes as Often as You Can Dyslexia by its very nature presents with a gap between intellectual or conceptual ability and reading, so it’s like that sometimes student will want to choose a book much higher than his or her reading level, whereas at other times, surprisingly pick a book much lower than their intellectual ability would predict. What your student is doing is selecting a book for a particular purpose. Higher level books feeds their intellectual hunger, while the lower book helps them skill build – for students who want to really master reading not just get the gist. Preview Books and Read Together If the book is a reach book, then consider previewing or chatting about […]
Too Much Homework for Dyslexic Students [Premium]
Teaching Common Core Academic Vocabulary to Students with Dyslexia [Premium]
Academic Vocabulary are words that usually appear in higher educational settings or advanced texts rather than everyday conversational speech. Before the Common Core, most language arts programs had little emphasis on explicit teaching of academic words, but direct instruction is often very important for students with dyslexia because it contributes significantly to test performance and reading comprehension of complex texts. In addition, lack of mastery of complex vocabulary can hold students back from pursuing advanced degrees and success in academic vocabulary text-heavy STEM careers like science and engineering. Why Academic Vocabulary May Be Hard for Dyslexic Students to Learn There are several reasons why dyslexic students may have greater difficulty with academic vocabulary: – many academic words are long and hard to read – many academic words […]
Helping Severe Dyslexia – Part 2 Word Learning and Vocabulary [Premium]
In our previous post on Severe Dyslexia, we talked about 6 steps required to read: 1. Seeing 2. Visual Recognition of Words 3. Matching Letters and Words to Sounds – Phonemic Awareness 4. Matching Words to Word Meaning 5. Saying Words 6. Comprehending Text In that post, we talked about how different readers may have difficulty with the visual aspects of reading, whereas others have trouble with sound. Other areas where children or adults can have trouble are in the areas of learning and remembering word meaning, speech output, and finally reading comprehension in text form. It’s important to be able to target these areas because it helps prioritize needs and also could explain while more progress isn’t being made. One student may need intensive remediation in […]
Executive Function: What Smart People Do Differently While Learning [Premium]
When researchers compared high IQ and average test subjects in a learning paradigm, the results were surprising. In some areas high IQ individuals work less, as might be expected by the idea that higher IQ people have more efficient brains for learning tasks, but in other areas, high IQ brains were working harder. When were high IQ brains working harder? Not prior or during the task, it seems, but when feedback was given and individuals were learning from their mistakes. From Graham et al. : “the Average IQ group failed to produce as much activation during feedback evaluation as did the High IQ group. These group differences are inconsistent with the neural efficiency hypothesis and instead suggest that the High IQ individuals were engaged in […]