We were asked: How can I modify the curricula for dyslexic students without compromising standards? MODIFICATIONS VS. ACCOMODATIONS Usually, when 504s or IEPs are discussed, accommodations are mentioned more often than modifications. Accommodations refer to...
Public Education is General, Make Your Education Specialized [Premium]
I had been re-reading Taylor and Vestergaard’s Developmental Dyslexia: Disorder or Specialization in Exploration? and reading more of the background studies that led the authors to suggest that dyslexia was a cognitive specialization with evolutionary advantages. If that is the case, it seems more important than ever to specialize education to nurture abilities that build on how dyslexic minds are optimized. Successful human problem solving groups often exhibit different types of “intelligence” and the importance of explorers can be seen in many different types of problem solving groups. For instance, studies of groups addressing crises have shown that groups that insist on consensus may develop decision inertia or persist in using solutions that worked in the past although current crises involve new problems. The […]
Auditory Processing and Remote and Hybrid Learning
"Children with dyslexia often exhibit increased variability in sensory and cognitive aspects of hearing relative to typically developing peers." - Hornickel et al., 2012 PNAS There is a long research history establishing auditory processing difficulties among...
SELF-ADVOCACY: Common Accommodations and Modifications
KNOW! One of the first steps in advocacy is knowing which accommodations and or modifications you need. ASK! Here's a nice list from the state of CT. There's a reason this article is filed under "Self-Advocacy". Students should be aware that they...
Dyslexia and Foreign Language Learning [Premium]
“…reading, writing, listening and speaking skills in foreign languages are all significantly affected by weaknesses in linguistic coding skills even when the native language has been been well-mastered…” – Elike Schneider and Margaret Crombie in Dyslexia and Foreign Language Learning Because of the significant challenges that dyslexic individuals face with the matching sounds and letters of language (phonology / orthography), working memory, retrieval, sequencing, and rote memorization, it should not be surprising that foreign language is a significant challenge facing bilingual students and college-bound dyslexics facing 2 years of foreign language classes to enter higher education. For moderate to severe dyslexics, foreign language waivers are usually granted; however, for all those in-between, there are strategies that build on dyslexic strengths in visual and multisensory […]
DROPPING OUT BECAUSE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE [Premium]
At Harvard University in the 1970s, a clinical psychologist made a startling discovery. Intending to study the emotional problems that caused students at one of the world’s elite universities to drop out of school to drop out, he found out instead that the most common reason students dropped out of their degree programs was that they were unable to satisfy Harvard’s foreign language requirement. “Dinklage described three groups of students who were otherwise, bright, gifted, and highly motivated, but who remained unsuccessful in the foreign language classroom. He reported that these students were not helped by merely improving study habits or by adjusting to postsecondary demands.” The 1st group of students demonstrated problems in written language that were most apparent in “the student’s reading […]
[PREMIUM] Latest Research: Dyslexia, Sequential Memory, and Seeing the Big Picture
“My mind doesn’t work like a train track. It’s more like a web page with lots of hyperlinks.” – dyslexic honors college student. It’s refreshing to see that more researchers take an interest on dyslexia beyond reading. In this recent paper from Belgium and Missouri, the challenges of remembering sequential information for dyslexics and non-dyslexics was reviewed. Both working memory and sequencing were examined. Working memory is a type of short-term memory necessary for keeping information ‘in mind.’ Sequencing is remembering the order that things are said. It’s activities such as this that that can make something like following classroom instructions or remembering computer passwords easy or hard. Several interesting observations were made from their review of the research literature: – Dyslexic children and adults tend […]
[Premium] What to Do If a Reading Curriculum Doesn’t Work
It happens to everybody. You research a curriculum thoroughly or it gets through several levels of a review and then you put it into action and… it just doesn’t connect. What do you do? There are several common reasons why a curriculum doesn’t connect with a particular student – and so some trial and error and modification need to take place. The most common reasons that certain curricula fail for a particular student include: 1. Going Too Fast Because there can be difficulty registering information accurately (sounds, letters, words), a student may need to slow the pace down considerably if the lessons aren’t sinking in. It may seem counterintuitive if you feel a student is slipping farther behind, but reducing work and simplifying as much as […]