UC Irvine Professor Roxanne Varzi is a creative anthropologist, filmmaker, and mystery author. She shared her dyslexia journey in a previous interview HERE. In my interview below, I learned that Roxanne was drawn to the field of cultural anthropology by its...
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...
Great Reading and Audiobook Apps for Summer
If you or your student haven't tried audiobooks or e-books, summer is a great time. You can get a public library card for free, and have access to thousands of e-books, audiobooks, comics and graphic novels, and movies and magazines from the convenience of your...
Remote Learning and Dyslexia: Certify Your Students – Free Ebooks and Discounted Audiobooks
Although much uncertainty still remains for the near-future and fall in regards to school closings, perhaps the single most important thing you can do to avoid your student falling behind this summer and fall is to qualify them for free audiobooks and ebooks that can...
Q: Why Doesn’t My Dyslexic Student Like Audiobooks?
You're not alone. Some dyslexic students may prefer to read silently rather than 'read' all their books by ear. Reasons for this vary, but usually these students have significant auditory processing weakness or trouble with sustained auditory attention. At younger...
How to Help a Dyslexic Student in a General Education Classroom
From the Connecticut Longitudinal Study, up to 1 in 6 students are dyslexic, but only a minority of these students will be found in special education classrooms. What does this mean for regular classroom teachers? 1. Get Basic Facts about Dyslexia - Dyslexic students...
Multimedia Learning Best for Dyslexics But How to Introduce Audio? [Premium]
“To optimize learning, it is more efficient to provide children with dyslexia with extra audio.” In a recent multimedia learning test of 11 year olds and typically-reading peers, dyslexic students were found to learn most efficiently if they were provided with text + audio or audio only, rather than text-only. How often is this happening over the course of every school day? To smoothly integrate audio in classroom learning and boost a child’s efficiency of learning preparation it’s necessary and audio should already be a friend. Summer is a great time to introduce audiobooks if your kids haven’t tried them before. 1. START WITH A FAMILIAR BOOK – Start with a familiar book or book series to smooth the entry of audiobooks. It’ll be much […]
The Remediated Student – WHAT TO EXPECT [PREMIUM]
For the overwhelming majority of dyslexics, early intervention helps with the decoding step of reading. Usually 2-3 months of intervention is enough to see a measurable difference, and at least in our experience, 1-3 years to bring most children from failing their grade to being able to keep up in diverse subjects at grade-level with appropriate accommodations and sometimes modifications in place. What Should a Teacher Expect with a Remediated Student? Remediated students can vary a great deal depending on whether they are gifted, dysgraphic, dyspraxic, dyscalculic, have attention or working memory difficulties, or English as a Second Language. In general, though, students who have successfully been remediated are able to decode text on grade-level, but may still have slow and inaccurate reading, difficulty reading aloud, […]
Let Them Listen – Audiobooks and Dyslexia [Premium]
Let Them Listen! “The objective of the present research study was to understand what benefits the use of audiobooks (both school-books and books of various genres, recorded on digital media) could bring to preadolescents and adolescents with developmental dyslexia. Two groups, each consisting of 20 adolescents, were compared. The experimental group used the audiobooks, while the control group continued to use normal books. After 5 months of experimental training, the experimental group showed a significant improvement in reading accuracy, with reduced unease and emotional–behavioural disorders, as well as an improvement in school performance and a greater motivation and involvement in school activities.” – Milani et al., Dyslexia (journal) It’s surprising how often we continue to hear that dyslexic students are denied the use of audiobooks […]
Choosing the Right Reading Level Books for Students with Dyslexia [Premium]
It’s often told to parents that a “Five Finger Rule” can help you choose whether a book is at the right reading level for a student. The rule states that if a student misses five or more words, it may be too hard, no words and it might be too easy, and three words and it’s ‘just right’. The problem for dyslexic students is that the “Five Finger Rule” may prevent them accessing print information at their intellectual level and if reading aloud is the guide for the rule, then it’s possible they may never be granted access to higher level books even if they are university professors! In fact, pioneering work by Rosalie Fink (see research paper below for Premium members), showed that accomplished […]
Latest Research – Your Brain on Audiobooks [Premium]
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 […]