“I use my dyslexia as a form of artwork. When I create a composition of a piece, usually there’s another piece upside-down.” — Jarrett Camp Jarrett Camp is an award-winning fine artist based in Los Angeles. He is a stipple artist who creates large works that may take months to complete. He has been chosen to be a contributing artist to the NBA’s In the Paint program and he is represented by the Band of Vices art gallery. Jarrett’s work, Comatose (below) is work where he tried to present “right” and “left” brain related differences. Jarrett: ” This piece, actually upside down is another piece which tells the same story….how sleep works from the left brain and the right brain. The left brain […]
Getting into Film and TV with Isla Mcdade-Brown
“I think that dyslexia is hard. And I think that it’s OK to admit that it’s hard…and also admit that sometimes it does really suck…but I think that when you find your niche, and that can only really come from taking random opportunities…it really helps you find your thing.” — Isla McDade-Brown, Filmmaker It’s hard not to be enthusiastic about Isla McDade-Brown, because of all her her resilience and pluckiness filming Brock at Cambridge University when he traveled to Britain. Isla had first contacted us about her film dissertation on dyslexia and although there were some challenges organizing logistics along the way, she traveled down from York (with her film partner Ella Clements) to film him. One of the unexpected challenges they had […]
Understanding Dyslexia as an Adult [Premium]
When I listened to music, I used to get really frustrated because I could never understand the words of a song that I had just heard for the first time… then I reread my report: “Isla struggles with auditory processing.” Now, I understand…that makes a lot of sense, something that I hadn’t thought about, which is why I think it’s so important.” – Isla McDade-Brown When Dr. Brock Eide was in England, he met up with young filmmaker Isla McDade-Brown from the University of York who was filming a documentary for her final Film and Television dissertation. Isla was identified with dyslexia at the age of eight, but now as a final year college student, she was reading her assessment as an adult and reflecting […]
The Importance of Guided Repeated Oral Reading in Training of Skilled Readers
By Brock Eide, MD MA, co-founder of Dyslexic Advantage and Neurolearning SPC In recent years, research on reading development has revealed that truly skilled reading requires two kinds of skills: the ability to quickly and accurately decode or “sound...
What About Audiobooks? Interview with Dyslexia Kit’s Yvonna Graham
“Audio books, turned out to be the most powerful tool I had in my toolkit.” – Yvonna Graham, MEd., author Dyslexia Toolkit Despite the widespread availability of text-to-speech and audiobooks, it’s only a small percentage of people who discover and use these tools. Parents and teachers may feel ambivalent about the use of audiobooks, especially if they believe that students need to practice reading, but the downside of withholding audiobooks or assistive technology in general is that they may deny individuals a tool that could really accelerate their reading progress. Recently, I sat down with author and dyslexia tutor Yvonna Graham to learn how she uses audiobooks and how they can accelerate reading progress rather than hamper it. Audiobooks are not a replacement for […]
Dyslexia: The Changing Landscape of College Entrance Exams
FEWER COLLEGES REQUIRING STANDARDIZED TESTS If you or your students struggled with standardized tests, there is good news on college admissions as increasing numbers of schools no longer require tests for admission. This fall, over 80% of four-year colleges...
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 presence […]
The ‘Why’ of Accommodations: Motor, Language, Speed [Premium]
Although dyslexia is typically defined in terms of its effect on reading, research studies have established much broader effects on motor systems, language, and speed of processing. If professionals are not aware of these differences, they won’t request accommodations for the students who they test, and as a result, these students will miss out on supports that help them in higher education and beyond. MOTOR AND LANGUAGE – WRITING There are motor difficulties associated with dyslexia that are unrelated to reading (Turesky et al., 2023), but rather than being a difficulty affecting speed or coordination, it is more subtle – affecting automatic learning. If you are able to sign your name without thinking about all the twists and turns your fingers make for […]
Chief of Design at Nike: John Hoke [Premium]
“I’m dyslexic, so my first real language was drawing,” he said. “Even at the youngest age I can recall, I wasn’t necessarily interested in the essay or the text, I was graphically designing the header. I doodled everything. That was the way I communicated.” — John Hoke From Fast Company: “My father was an engineer and I used to only run in the waffle trainer cause that was my shoe. I had to have it. It was the best. And when I was done, I would bandsaw the shoe in half and I would look at the two halves of the section and I’d look at my air mattresses, my pool, my bike tire or my bike tire inner tube. I was like, why can’t […]
Question: Can the Strengths of Dyslexia Be Affected or Minimized by ADHD?
This question came through our webinar last month and I thought we could respond to it in more detail in our newsletter. There can be a high degree of overlap between individuals diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia. Both dyslexia and ADHD can run in families and both can be associated with creativity, giftedness, and lower working memory. Dyslexia is usually identified through a “clinical diagnosis” with a professional looking at gaps between certain measures of IQ – like verbal reasoning and comprehension, and lower than expected single word or pseudoword reading (fake words that need to be sounded out and so reflect phonological awareness), naming speed, oral reading accuracy and speed, spelling, and impaired automaticity with writing by hand. An entire book can be […]
The Mind Map in Your Brain [Premium]
Among professionals who work with dyslexic students, there have long been recommendations to mind map ideas. In recent basic neuroscience research, there’s been a growing understanding why. Neuroscientists have long studied how knowledge seems to work in the brain with schemas -or patterns that can form a flexible reference base that helps us understand new or existing knowledge or make decisions for how to act. But these schemas have largely been studied in a context of verbal memory – with only more recent insights into “the other schemas.” As it turns out there are a lot of other schemas and processes involving schema-making. They are non-verbal and spatial – and that is where the implications for dyslexic people may come into play. If you are […]
Question: Third Grader with Severe Dysgraphia and Moderate Dyslexia [Premium]
Recently we received a question about severe dysgraphia and moderate dyslexia. The dilemma was how to prioritize limited resources for therapy (if any). There is a high overlap between dyslexia and dysgraphia, but severe handwriting difficulties in the early grades often suggest dyspraxia (a disorder of fine and gross motor coordination) as well. The practical dilemma many parents and students face is that the amount of support that students receive for dyspraxia or dyslexia may be far below what they need; also intervention may take years – and health insurance may not cover any outside therapy whether it’s pediatric occupational therapy, speech therapy, or specialist dyslexia intervention. There is no simple answer. Decisions about priorities depend on the severity of each, but also on the […]
