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Dyslexia and Multisensory Learning [Premium]

Dyslexia and Multisensory Learning [Premium]

by | Jun 1, 2016 | ,

“I myself am a very poor visualizer, and find that I can seldom call to mind even a single letter of the alphabet in purely retinal terms. I must trace the letter by running my mental eye over its contour in order that the image of it shall have any distinctness at all. – William James “Father of Psychology   Most dyslexia experts know that multisensory structured language instruction is the gold standard for teaching students with dyslexia, but most people don’t know exactly why. Many attribute the concept to Samuel Orton and Anna Gillingham, but actually the idea was recognized at least 30 years earlier by William James and Francis Galton, both of whom may have been dyslexic. From James’ classic book, The Principles […]

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Latest Research – Your Brain on Audiobooks [Premium]

Latest Research – Your Brain on Audiobooks [Premium]

by | May 23, 2016 | , ,

 This is pretty cool research. When we listen to stories, we maybe transported to a different place and time, living in the heads of characters, and immersing ourselves in another world. What does that look like in our brains? We have a clearer answer now from brain researchers in the Netherlands, and besides seeing how different areas “light up” or don’t, it now appears that there are often strong individual preferences among individuals as to whether they are “mentalizers” or “sensory-motor” listeners. In this research paper, mentalizers were defined as those who preferentially active ‘Theory of Mind’ areas associated with thinking about other peoples’ thoughts and beliefs, whereas motor listeners were most reactive to action descriptions. From previous studies, researchers learned that if you read the work […]

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Are Standardized Tests Making Kids Anxious? [Premium]

Are Standardized Tests Making Kids Anxious? [Premium]

by | May 23, 2016 | , , , , , ,

Florida Department of Education just released results of their Florida Standards Assessment  or FSA Test. 46% of all of the public school children who took the test were below standard and 20% are at risk for being held back in the 3rd grade. What are these tests that can force 3rd graders to repeat a year? A sample 3rd grade reading passage (with questions and answers) is provided by the Department. The passage was clearly developmentally appropriate for 3rd graders – and ridiculous for dyslexic 3rd graders who are likely to make up 15% of every classroom. But don’t take just our word for it. When we put the 3rd grade FSA practice reading passage through a readability tool, What was the passage appropriate for? […]

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New Research: Brain Scans Predict Cognitive Performance [Premium]

New Research: Brain Scans Predict Cognitive Performance [Premium]

by | May 13, 2016 | , , , ,

“This suggests that individual differences in many cognitive tasks are a stable trait marker.”   There’s a new Oxford research study circulating through scientific communities and around the world. From Science (Task-free MRI predicts individual differences in brain activity during task performance), Tavor and collegues applied machine-learning principles to test subjects in a “resting state” to see how they could predict their performances on various cognitive tasks. What was the result? They could predict subject’s responses in 46 out of 47 tasks (and maybe there’s a reason why the 47th one didn’t work…it involved more subcortical activity). Tasks included responses to mental math, sentence and story processing, but also higher order problem solving, social perception, and working memory. The data have a lot of ramifications in […]

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Why Students Hate to Write – A High School Teacher’s Reflections [Premium]

Why Students Hate to Write – A High School Teacher’s Reflections [Premium]

by | May 11, 2016 | , , , , ,

 “When students say that they do not like to write I ask them why. They typically respond with, “Because I hate it” … after incidents like this I cannot help but sit back and ask myself why I think they do not like to write…” One young teacher of high school students put her own assumptions to the test and her teaching has changed forever. Students with dyslexia often hate to write because there is such a huge gulf between the ideas in their heads and what they can get down on paper. At a recent talk to some student teachers, I asked the room what they thought they could do for a high school student who was very slow and having trouble getting their […]

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Discoverer of the Titanic – Dyslexic Ocean Explorer Robert Ballard [Premium]

Discoverer of the Titanic – Dyslexic Ocean Explorer Robert Ballard [Premium]

by | May 10, 2016 | , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“When I was a child, I wrote a letter to an oceanographic institution in California called Scripps (Scripps Institution of Oceanography UC San Diego). It was a Dear Santa Claus letter. “Dear Scripps, I want to be an oceanographer.” I’m sure I misspelled it, because I’m dyslexic. They gave me a scholarship.” – Robert Ballard When I was seventeen, 56 years ago, I went on my first expedition. We got caught in a storm, hit by a rogue wave, and I thought that was so cool. I was too young to be afraid. I just fell in love with adventure with a purpose, where you go out there and overcome the obstacles that you’re always faced with, and then you find this secret, whether it’s a shipwreck […]

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Dyslexia in the General Classroom – YOU DECIDE : 2nd Grader and Reading [Premium]

Dyslexia in the General Classroom – YOU DECIDE : 2nd Grader and Reading [Premium]

by | May 6, 2016 | , , , , , ,

YOU are a 2nd-grade teacher in a busy public school classroom. You just learned that Teddy, a student in your class has been tested and found to be dyslexic.  Teddy already gets pull-out instruction with multisensory learning to help him read. What can you do to help Teddy make more progress in reading? ************     1. Alliteration,  Rhyming, and Singing – All students can benefit by alliteration and rhyming. New readers will find the books easier to read and reinforcing in terms of the patterns of sounds and printed word families, but good readers can also use alliteration and rhyming as a prompt for poetry and humorous writing. Here is a nice graphic organizer for alliteration:  (click here for more). This teacher created alliteration spinners to […]

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This is Your Brain on Words [Premium]

This is Your Brain on Words [Premium]

by | Apr 28, 2016 | , , , , ,

In breaking research from UC Berkeley, researchers have found a complicated filing system when it comes to how we process words that we hear. While listening to stories, individual words triggered tiny activation explosions all over the brain associated with word associations – “Words were grouped under various headings: visual, tactile, numeric, locational, abstract, temporal, professional, violent, communal, mental, emotional and social.” So a well-working human brain responding to stories functions more like a wall filled with stickie notes rather than a linear filing cabinet?  Which sounds more like the dyslexic way of wiring?  Check out the video explanation below. The finding certainly points out the fallacy of viewing language in simple right-brain-left brain terms, but it does support the complexity of language and the right-left […]

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Shakespeare and Dyslexia – Making Words Physical [Premium]

Shakespeare and Dyslexia – Making Words Physical [Premium]

by | Apr 23, 2016 | , , , , , , , , , , ,

Today is National Shakespeare Day, and dyslexia and Shakespeare have been on our minds. We recently mentioned that Lloyd Everitt (yes, he’s dyslexic) is the youngest actor to play Othello at Shakespeare’s own Globe Theater. But we’ve also been thinking about Shakespeare recently because, on our trip down to California, we had the pleasure of stopping by the Oregon Shakespeare Company’s Rebecca Carey, the head of Voice and Text. Rebecca has  an accomplished career that includes acting herself as well as teaching and consultant roles with the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Oxford School of Drama, Broadway, and American Repertory Theatre. Rebecca is also co-author (with her husband, David Carey) of The Shakespeare Workbook and Video, a brilliant practical course for actors that includes such topics […]

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How to Accommodate or Modify Assignments and Tests for Students with Dyslexia and ELLs [Premium]

How to Accommodate or Modify Assignments and Tests for Students with Dyslexia and ELLs [Premium]

by | Apr 20, 2016 | , , ,

Many teachers don’t realize that many dyslexic students need modifications in assignments and tests in order to accurately assess their knowledge. Some of these changes will also benefit other students in class including English Language Learners or ELLs. Homework and test questions are sentences that often present information out of context, so that the content is more difficult to read. CLASSROOM ACCOMMODATIONS / MODIFICATIONS FOR STUDENTS WITH DYSLEXIA AND ELLs 1. Less! Reduce the amount of homework to 1/3 or if a student needs to completely redraft work, eliminate assignments until the redrafting process is finished. 2. Be aware that your students may not be able to read word problems or instructions on assignments. 3. Highlight clues. 4. Reduce Choices. Eliminate “All of the above” […]

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Latest Research: Advances in our Understanding of Dyslexia, ADHD, and Giftedness [Premium]

Latest Research: Advances in our Understanding of Dyslexia, ADHD, and Giftedness [Premium]

by | Apr 7, 2016 | , , , , , , , ,

It’s long been known that Dyslexia and ADD / ADHD have high rates of overlaps or “co-morbidities”. Dyslexia and ADHD co-occur 30-50% of the time (Germano, 2010) and only 40% of children with dyslexia and 20% of children with ADD/ADHD have it in isolation (Wilcutt and Pennington, 2000). Science has progressed on many fronts over the past 5 years, and both attention and dyslexia are now known to be much more complex than originally suspected. It has long been known that dyslexia is associated with attention and working memory differences, and that reading, writing, and spelling difficulties are higher among children identified as having ADHD. Both Dyslexia and ADD / ADHD are associated with slower processing speeds and both seem to be connected with the […]

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What Works for Dyslexia? RTI and Tier 3 Intensive Reading Intervention [Premium]

What Works for Dyslexia? RTI and Tier 3 Intensive Reading Intervention [Premium]

by | Mar 31, 2016 | , , , , , ,

Response to Intervention or RTI has been adopted by 1/3 of US states, although the details of its use and requirements varies considerably in terms of how it addresses the needs of dyslexic students. At its best RTI is a multi-tiered approach to the identification and support of students with different learning and behavior needs. At its best RTI provides high quality, scientifically-based classroom instruction, ongoing student assessment, and tiering of instruction to students who require differentiation or individualization. At it’s worse, RTI has been criticized as a “wait to fail” program where student neither get adequately assessed nor provide with appropriate instruction. Wrightslaw’s article The RTI Hurdle  begins with “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” Certainly vigilance and advocacy on the part of […]

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