Many students and adults attribute difficulties in math to memory problems, but probing these difficulties further often leads to the realization that it’s not a simple matter of remembering or forgetting, but rather trouble defining, organizing, then retrieving what has been learned. PROBLEMS DEFINING AND UNDERSTANDING ‘WHY’ First of all, if a student is struggling […]
On Writing: A Guest Post
Recently, a bilingual teacher in my Dyslexia for Teachers class shared his experiences being a dyslexic writing in both English and Chinese. With his permission, I am sharing some of his reflections: "Under an educational system that attaches great importance to...
Q & A: Bilingual and Dyslexic [Premium]
Question: Our 9 year old son is bilingual and also dyslexic. We have decided to allow him to attend a bilingual school with his older sister for cultural and family reasons. Will this harm his educational development? The school seems supportive, but does not have teachers trained to remediate dyslexia. There are many reasons why […]
Question: How to Help with Reversals [Premium]
Question: My middle grade student still has trouble with reversals. What can I do to help? Answer: Reversals can occur in different contexts, so understanding the different causes can help determine the best solutions. PERSISTENT LETTER REVERSALS Reversals can be a normal developmental finding up until the age of seven years. After that, severe difficulties […]
Text-to-Speech is Getting Better [Premium]
If you haven’t been using text-to-speech lately, you’ll be in for quite a treat. Innovations in voice generation and cloning have made many free and premium (pay) voices better than ever. If you haven’t visited our Dyslexic Advantage online library lately (HERE), you may not know that we’re adding audio players to all our articles. […]
Visual Learning [Premium]
Two of the strongest differences seen in our survey of 12,291 members of our Dyslexic Advantage community were answers to questions below: LEARNING THROUGH PICTURES, DIAGRAMS, AND IMAGERY “I generally prefer diagrams or pictures to written instructions or explanations.” 70% of definitely dyslexic people strongly agreed with this first statement compared to just 7% of […]
What’s the Connection between Auditory Processing and Dyslexia? [Premium]
It’s not uncommon when we speak to groups about dyslexia that someone asks why we are mentioning auditory processing when they (mistakenly) believe dyslexia is only about reading. In fact, there is substantial research literature about dyslexia and auditory processing difficulties – sometimes the problems can present with difficulty in learning phonemes, but other times […]
Tom Cruise Performs the Greatest Stunt in Cinematic History
This is a mind boggling stunt if you haven't seen it. Tom Cruise of Top Gun and Mission Impossible fame rode his motorcycle off a cliff in Norway - not once, but six times in 1 day...and at the age of 60. ...
Where Classroom Reading Fluency Practice Can Go Wrong
Reading fluency is defined as an ability to read texts with accuracy, a good rate, and good expression (sometimes the latter two are referred to as automaticity and prosody). Strong reading fluency is a goal that all children should have on their path to becoming...
New Ways to Hack Learning [Premium]
Almost every structured literacy program uses letter tiles and flashcards. The reason for this is that there are so many word parts and whole words to learn and the use of tiles and cards can give students visual support as they focus on various letters, letter groups, and their sounds while building up reading fluency. […]
Florence Welch + The Machine Singer-Songwriter [Premium]
“Being a creative person and getting older, and wiser, has been an awakening. The older I get, the more self-assured I feel and the more confident I feel in my work and in life.” — Florence Welch Florence Welch is an English singer-songwriter who writes and sings songs that are steeped in folklore and […]
On Education with Dr John Lienhard IV [Premium]
“I couldn’t read and write, could barely scrape through school…” — Dr. John Lienhard IV, emeritus mechanical engineering professor, founder of Engines of Our Ingenuity Recently, I had an opportunity to talk with a remarkable polymath (he prefers the word gadfly), John Lienhard IV, an emeritus professor of mechanical engineering. I had come across […]