What Reading Speed Has to Do With Leadership: Nothing
Many leaders succeed because of their dyslexia, not in spite of it. President Trump stirred up a hornet’s nest when he suggested that Governor...
Storytelling as a Dyslexic Strength
Storytelling is not simply a language skill. It is a form of reasoning. Recognizing these strengths helps shift how we think about writing instruction and creative expression.
Rethinking Auditory-Only Phonemic Awareness Training for Reading in the Early Grades Does Not Work
A new study reported on in Education Week found that a widely-used phonemic awareness program (the oral-only Heggerty curriculum) did not improve gains in word reading or oral reading fluency, although it did significantly improve phonemic awareness skills.
Free Back To School Reading Apps
Some of the most common free apps that dyslexic students use for school.
Beyond Behavior: Attention, Working Memory, or Something Else?
The problem with trying to diagnose with behavioral checklists is that behavior can result from many different sources. If you have a 3rd grader...
Math Difficulties Common with Dyslexia
Although the pace of research into dyslexia beyond reading proceeds very slowly, there is some welcome recent research into some of the...
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Severe Dyslexia Reading [Premium]
Q: My daughter is severely dyslexic and is having trouble making progress reading. She is homeschooled. How can I help? A: Ideally, the best person to provide specific information about your student’s dyslexia is the professional who performed a comprehensive assessment. The following information is not specific to your daughter, but more general information in the hopes some of it may be helpful to you. Many severely dyslexic children have trouble perceiving or remembering sounds, sound-letter associations, or the letters that comprise the different spellings of words. If a student has significant working memory limitations, she or he may also have to learn in little bits which may add to the time words are mastered. RE-LEARNING AGAIN AND AGAIN If the problem is that a […]
Emotions: Name Them to Tame Them
One of the most neglected issues in the field of dyslexia is the topic of social and emotional health. We now know that as a group, dyslexic people are more emotionally sensitive than non-dyslexic people and because emotion memories may be so strong in dyslexic...
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Um.. Trouble Finding the Right Words [Premium]
A young filmmaker, Lauren, interviewed for our movie shared that she had trouble putting her ideas into words. After the camera had shut off, I told her that many people over the years shared exactly the same thing. Lauren shared that when she reads a book, she gets vivid images of characters, events, and places. When she plans out a movie, she can visualize everything. We know that not everyone has that ability – and her visualization strengths are ideal for what she does today – make films. But there is considerable evidence that what might make you strong at generating pictures and other sensory images, may be balanced by weaker or at least more effortful generation of words. When we surveyed dyslexic […]
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Teaching Math with Visual Models [Premium]
One way to teach to students’ strengths is to build on nonverbal reasoning and experimential – multisensory learning strengths in math. What does that mean? It means not being in a hurry to have students work through math problems before a strong foundational understanding and technical math meanings are established, and building on math reasoning before diving into math problem-solving involving symbols and technical language. Room to Discover has an excellent post on Visual Models. With five representations of mathematical ideas, why is there so much focus on verbal and symbolic work? The creator of Room to Discover also runs workshops and publishes manipulatives and other resources to his store. The Room to Discover site focuses on graphic representations – but a related […]
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Asynchronous Development [Premium]
Asynchronous development refers to an unevenness in development which may include wide differences in various aspects of cognition, physical development, and emotional development. The unevenness in these different aspects of development can create paradoxes (being ahead in some abilities as well as behind) and opportunities as well as stress. Asynchronous development was first introduced in the academic and educational literature in the context of gifted children – children who showed wide discrepancies between strengths and weaknesses and who were sometimes referred to as being “twice exceptional”. In the figure below, an example of score variations is seen in a gifted student with dyslexia. Where the standard scaled score for age is 100, this student had strengths in verbal comprehension with a score of […]
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Should I Help with Homework? [Premium]
“His mother had read everything to him and in medical school his wife was reading aloud all books and references…there was some opposition to his continuance in medical school on the part of the dean and one other faculty member, but the opposition subsided… After his graduation a report came from a distant medical school hospital stating that this man was the best intern they had had for some time. He passed his American boards in internal medicine and became the head of a group practice clinic in a large city…” — Lloyd Thompson, Reading Disability Should you help with homework? The answer is YES. There is a qualifier on that – you should help but only to the point that you’re helping your student […]
Chat with College Coach Kara Matejka
"It is incredibly common for students to get to college and just question everything. That's when all the wheels fall off...What am I even doing here? " — Kara Matejka, College Coach When all the excitement of arriving at college for the first time, getting to...
My Child Won’t Go to School: What to Do About School Avoidance
By Dr. Dan Peters of Summit Center "Things were fine last year and now he wakes up with a stomachache and says he doesn’t want to go to school. It takes me forever to get him out the door. We are often late. He ends up screaming at me and telling me I am the...
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Discovering Strengths [Premium]
How do I develop my strengths? How do I develop my strengths in my kids? We get asked these two questions a lot. It does seem that if you ask people how they found their careers or life’s passions there are twists and turns and there seem to be serendipitous events that make a person take one path vs. the other. But it probably is a good idea to have more conscious thought involved with careers or it may be more likely that you (or your child) could end up in an unsatisfying and poorly fitting career. HOW DO MIND STRENGTHS FIT INTO THIS PICTURE? Dyslexic MIND strengths were the result of surveying this community and comparing them to non-dyslexics. It doesn’t mean […]
Super Teen Sophia Transforms Dyslexia Awareness in Oregon
"Just knowing the reason why you're having these issues makes a difference psychologically...that alone was kind of refreshing..." — Sophia, 16 Energized by her own recent identification of dyslexia, homeschooled teen Sophia decided to spread positive awareness of...
Building on Strengths in Math
Up to 70% of dyslexic people also have dyscalculia (specific math disability), although specific math supports or interventions are rarely a part of public school IEPs or 504's. Part of the reason there is less support for math among dyslexic students in the US is...
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Helping Your Student with Intensity [Premium]
“Challenging behavior is just a signal, the fever, the means by which the kid is communicating that he or she is having difficulty meeting an expectation. “ — Ross Greene, The Explosive Child The difference between the experience of one student and his or her dyslexia can vary a great deal depending on temperament. In psychology, temperament refers to consistent differences in emotional disposition and behavior that are biologically-based and relatively consistent over time. Temperament is part of a person’s personality, which also includes intelligence, humor, interests, and talents. Among the various temperamental differences, certain “difficult temperamental traits” may make some school experiences (like remediation or pull-out) difficult to accept. Examples of difficult temperamental traits include: negative responses to new people or situations, slowness to […]
AI Voices Make Listening Easy [Premium}
With AI, artificial voices for book reading are getting better. People who struggled with electronic voices in the past, may find themselves pleasantly surprised as AI-voices develop more natural voice pauses and even emotional tones that make listening more enjoyable and easier to keep in mind. The latest addition to free AI-read audiobooks include thousands of books in Project Gutenberg’s Open Audiobook Collection thanks to Project Gutenberg, Microsoft, and MIT. You can listen to the books on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Google Podcasts. If you’re new to electronic voices, check these out – they’re quite good. One of the benefits of getting used to these voices is that they’re very predictable once you get used to them (compared to human readers) and then it […]
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Redefining Dyslexia [Premium]
In the past year, there have been some remarkable papers published in the field of dyslexia. By and large, the changes seem to be good news and more inclusive of the diverse ways that dyslexia presents – including gifted individuals with dyslexia. But change is likely to be messy – and schools and educational and research groups are likely to different and present different information to students and their families. THE PENDULUM SWINGS AGAIN ON DISCREPANCY Although the earliest professional accounts about dyslexia recognized the unexpected connection of high intelligence with difficulties in reading, writing, and spelling, the dyslexia field has been involved in many warring opinions about whether cognitive tests are worthwhile. Without pointing fingers, many researchers and educational leaders over the years questioned […]
The Beautiful World of Jarrett Camp
“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 […]
Now What? Beyond the Simple Dyslexia Screening
College Support: Interview with Tabitha Mancini of Winston in College Online
Recently, I had the pleasure of talking to Tabitha Mancini, Director of Winston in College Online. Winston recently became a sponsor of this Dyslexic Advantage community, but I've known Tabitha for over a decade. She's been active in the learning support of...
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Q: What If My Professor Rejects My Accommodations Request? [Premium]
Q: WHAT IF MY PROFESSOR REJECTS MY ACCOMMODATION REQUEST? A: You haven’t said what accommodation you are seeking, but the Americans with Disabilities Act or ADA requires that postsecondary institutions must provide “reasonable accommodations” to participate in courses, programs, and activities. From the American Psychological Association: “These accommodations can be in the form of academic adjustments or modifications such as extended time for test taking or completing course work; substitution of specific courses to meet degree requirements; modification of test taking or performance evaluations so as not to discriminate against a person’s sensory, speaking or motor impairments, unless that is what is being tested. Accommodations can also take the shape of auxiliary aids and services such as qualified sign language interpreters, note takers, […]
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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 […]
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