"It wasn't until I became a college professor myself that a friend and fellow teacher figured out that I had dyslexia... I go out in the world and learn through experience, such as talking to astrophysicists and neuroscientists in their laboratories." - Rebecca...
“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 children and adults who are dyslexic. What may be confusing to non-scientific people is that auditory processing is not simply “hearing”. It relates to the complex networks in the brain that interpret what sounds are heard.
Auditory processing difficulties in dyslexic people don’t present with abnormalities on simple screening hearing tests; instead, the difficulties present in tests that examine the effect of listening over background noise, for instance, or processing of rapid sounds. The reason it’s important to be aware of this is that auditory processing […]
Shelley Wear, a long-time volunteer on our Dyslexic Advantage editorial team shared these pandemic hacks for her classroom. Thanks Shelley! “The struggle is real to make sure students understand what you are saying with a mask on. I purchased a personal amplifier (small box with microphone headset) and it has been a game changer for my classroom. Students are much more attentive and I believe it has really helped. I am also using a multisensory approach to decoding, teaching Visual Phonics. The paras have overheard students talking about how fun it is when kids are in the hallways and think no one is listening. I am relieved, because I have limited access to middle school materials to teach decoding and a large percentage of my […]
From Chalkbeat’s story, “NYC plans to screen nearly 200,000 students in the early grades to uncover struggling readers. Then what?” “In a massive bid to gauge reading skills following COVID-related learning disruptions, New York City’s education department is introducing literacy screening for its nearly 200,000 children in kindergarten through second grade… While the education department’s screeners aren’t designed to identify students at risk of having dyslexia, which is the most common learning disability, they are able to identify learning gaps in skills that are often associated with dyslexia, literacy experts say. But many also note that screening alone will not address systemic issues that contribute to widespread literacy deficits across the city, such as uneven curriculum and inadequate teacher training. The success of the […]
![Johnpaul Jones: Native American Architect [Premium]](https://www.dyslexicadvantage.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Johnpaul-Jones-Native-American-Architect-400x250.png)
“Where Native people come from, everything’s not in straight lines.” – Johnpaul Jones Johnpaul Jones is one of the world’s leading architectural architects and landscape designers, and he is also dyslexic. He was the lead design consultant for the National Museum of the American Indian, the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial, The Southern Ute Cultural Center and Museum, Vancouver Land Bridge, Mountains to Sound Greenway Plan, Oregon Zoo Educational Center, Longhouse Educational and Cultural Center, and Gorilla Conservation Research Center, among many, many others. He has said that his aesthetic was inspired by his Choctaw – Cherokee mother’s four world perspective: natural animal, spiritual, and human. Johnpaul describes his early life as being a “bad boy” and “dyslexic.” He struggled in school, and […]
![Understanding Conceptual vs. Procedural Knowledge in Math [Premium]](https://www.dyslexicadvantage.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/conceptual-math-400x250.png)
With math scores lagging tremendously due to pandemic-related school, many of us may suddenly find ourselves responsible for supervising (if not tutoring) math. If that’s the case, it’s important to keep in mind the big picture of math learning. Of course the issue of conceptual and procedural learning apply to all subjects, not just math, but it especially becomes relevant when problem solving can become complex; symbols and abstractions must be used, and multiple steps for problem solving are necessary. There’s an especially nice description of the differences between conceptual and procedural knowledge in math from Ruthie Sloan’s Teach Math Literacy blog. Many of us learned math only through procedural learning. We didn’t learn “why” we did certain steps like “flip upside-down and multiply,” […]
![Reading Fluency for College [Premium]](https://www.dyslexicadvantage.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Reading-Fluency-2-400x250.jpg)
Recently we were contacted by a student who wanted to improve his reading fluency before attending college. He had completed a full course of “Wilson and Orton-Gillingham” yet his reading was still slow and effortful. He asked, “Is there anything I can do to improve my reading to help me be successful in college?” ANSWER: First of all, good for you for looking ahead and preparing yourself for college. It is possible to get through college with slow effortful reading, but probably only if you’re competent with assistive technology and can listen to all of your books instead of reading them traditionally. Although most colleges and universities are required to make “reasonable accommodations,” schools and individual faculty members can vary, and practical issues – […]
![I Never Thought I’d Be Homeschooling… [Premium]](https://www.dyslexicadvantage.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/I-Never-Thought-Id-Be-Homeschooling-2-400x250.png)
We never thought we would be homeschooling when we started almost 2 decades ago. What our family can say today, is that looking back, we’re so grateful for our entire homeschooling journey – even though initially homeschooling chose us rather than the other way around. Today there are so many reasons to homeschool and ways that homeschooling can also be a good fit for dyslexic students, so take heart in the adventure ahead of you and may the coming year be one good surprise after another. WHY HOMESCHOOLING CAN BE A GOOD MATCH FOR MANY STUDENTS Schooling at an Individual Pace The first reason why homeschooling can be a good match for many students is that traditional schooling can be a […]
![Math: Multiple Representations [Premium]](https://www.dyslexicadvantage.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Math-Multiple-Representations-2-400x250.jpg)
If you have a lot of ground to cover for the coming school year, consider the use of multiple representations to improve the efficiency of learning. First, as a person who is math-challenged herself and was tasked at one time with tutoring one of our kids with similar math difficulties, I am sympathetic to people who are tasked with teaching math. The truth is, I wasn’t good at it myself, so I found myself getting frustrated when my student didn’t understand. I had little flexibility between math representations – and as a result tended to teach math the way I was taught it…rote memory of sequenced steps – which I was to find was the last thing my student should have been trying […]
![Dyslexia and Mapping Out the Mind [Premium]](https://www.dyslexicadvantage.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Dyslexia-and-Mapping-out-the-Dyslexic-Mind-1-400x250.png)
When Dan Pink wrote his book about the world needing more skills of the Conceptual Age, many in the dyslexia community couldn’t help but notice that his list looked a lot like common lists of dyslexic strengths: – Artistry – Inventiveness – Big-picture thinking – Pattern recognition – Empathy The implications for education and careers were straightforward. The goals of education and satisfying work should not be mere mastery of information, but a mastery of concepts that could be used flexibly to solve problems and create things that are new. Pink is not a neuroscientist; he is a popular author and observer of trends. Where are we now in our understanding of “dyslexic thinking”? There are many interesting lines of thought coming together these […]
![Dyslexia and Dysgraphia: What Does Writing Look Like? [Premium]](https://www.dyslexicadvantage.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Dyslexia-and-Dysgraphia-4-400x250.png)
What does the writing look like in students with dyslexia and dysgraphia? IMPAIRED AUTOMATICITY, CAPITAL LETTER INTRUSIONS, and SPELLING ERRORS Students who struggle with handwriting automaticity show irregular shapes and sizes of letters. For example, look at the letter ‘e’ in the spelling test at right. They are very different from one another, showing that the student has not ‘automated’ writing of the letter ‘e’. The more variable the letters are, the more arduous to write anything by hand. Working memory is easily overloaded, and students may be exhausted after writing a few words. The spelling test also shows capital letter intrusions (capital ‘D’), likely to avoid confusing lower case ‘d’ with ‘b’, irregular spacing, and phonological as well as sight word errors. When […]
![Foreign Language Learning [Premium]](https://www.dyslexicadvantage.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/foreign-language-400x250.png)
Q: HOW CAN I IMPROVE MY FLUENCY WITH A SECOND LANGUAGE? Recently, a member of this community asked about how to improve his fluency with a foreign language. He mentioned that he’d been trying to learn for the past 30 years, but only recently started making more progress with the app Yabla because it was visual and didn’t rely on audio alone. Yabla is an interactive video approach to foreign language learning that provides two channels of captions that can be shown or hidden and TV shows, music videos, documentaries, and interviews. A: I can see how Yabla can help with improving speed of listening. The videos provide context and the scenes may make the dialogues more memorable than if they were read […]
