“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
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 […]
Stealth Dyslexia
From the first edition of our book, The Dyslexic Advantage: "Early in school most—but not all—dyslexic children will show obvious struggles with reading and spelling. (A few, whom we’ve elsewhere called stealth dyslexics, have problems so subtle or “stealthy” that...
AI for College Admissions [Premium]
With more colleges and universities waiving standardized tests for admissions, many college advisors are recognizing the importance of college application essays in the process. Rightly or wrongly, AI is also having considerable impact on college applications. For students who struggle with writing and writing about themselves, having a way to start the essay can greatly ease the stress on the application process. It is possible to use ChatGPT to help you build a professional sounding resume, but also use it to personalize an essay, tailor it to particular schools, and give different versions that help students choose the best fit to what they want to say. In one video, a tutor explains how she would chat to ChatGPT to generate different possible answers […]
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...
Question: Multilingual Dyslexic Adult: How Best to Learn English Grammar [Premium]
A multilingual member of this community (who is also dyslexic) asked us for advice about improving grammar in English. Grammar is something that non-dyslexic people may pick up effortlessly and without conscious awareness as they read and listen to native speakers (Implicit Learning). Unfortunately, grammar cannot be learned in such a passive way by most dyslexic people. As a result, it must be learned explicitly and likely with multisensory strategies. Rule-based learning of English grammar is difficult and inefficient for many dyslexic learners. It is possible that pairing with a dyslexia tutor who has expertise writing and grammar for dyslexic adults (including those in higher education) may be able to help you in a step-by-step fashion addressing complex sentence structure. I do know […]
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 […]
