Despite the suggestion that dyslexic students who are strong in math use a different approach for doing basic mathematical operations, it’s surprising how little formal research has been done to figure out how math-gifted dyslexic individuals do what they do. At Georgetown University, neuroscience researchers were surprised to find
HOW THEY DO IT! University Students with Dyslexia [Premium]
Fortunately, there’s been growing interest from educational and scientific researchers for understanding how people can compensate for some of the academic challenges of dyslexia. POSITIVE FACTORS AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS WITH DYSLEXIA A recent study by Drs. Rebecca Wiseheart and Lori Altmann (Int J Lang Comm Dis 2017) had a nice review of compensating factors as well as providing some new research data about oral fluency among college-attending dyslexic students. Background “In recent years, dyslexia has been reconceptualized as the combined sum of risk factors and protective factors. A number of protective factors have been investigated including verbal intelligence, vocabulary knowledge, morphological awareness, executive functions, and social-emotional resilience…Vocabulary knowledge has been implicated as a protective factor that allows some individuals to achieve good reading comprehension, despite […]
Non-Linear: The Path to Life Success [PREMIUM]
From our experience, nonlinear development is more often a rule than an exception when it comes to dyslexic kids growing up. As a result, parents, teachers, tutors, and guidance counselors should avoid making predictions about ‘tracks’ that students should be on (or potential) because it’s likely that they’ll be wrong. In Margaret Rawson’s remarkable Dyslexia Over the Lifespan, a Fifty-Five Year Longitudinal Study (alas, the book is now out-of-print and quite expensive), beloved educator Margaret Rawson described the outcome of the children under her tutelage at the Rose Valley School. Margaret had the distinction of living to 102 years old and she kept in touch with many of her students for decades after graduating. In Margaret Rawson’s remarkable Dyslexia Over the Lifespan, a Fifty-Five Year […]
DYSLEXIA AT WORK: New Skills
Q: I'm working full-time and also am a mom. My employer recently told me that I need to learn new skills to earn a higher salary. My reading and writing aren't the best. A: Sounds like you're carrying a full load! Without knowing the details of your occupation,...
MATH: What Errors are Due to Dyslexia? [Premium]
Since Henry Winkler sat for a Geometry exam 8 TIMES before passing, one would hope that more progress has been made in understanding and anticipating what math difficulties arise with math problem solving, but few teachers (and perhaps fewer students!) receive explicit instruction in this area. Some of the math difficulties are due to language, but others are due to calculation errors, reversals, sequence, and direction, place value, as well as errors of verbal labeling and working memory which impact regrouping or carrying numbers. Miles and Miles have pointed out the confusion that results when dyslexic students are introduced to algebra. Math language is different from standard or conversational language. Ambiguous terms and symbols are best taught explicitly. For instance, Miles and Miles recommend explicitly […]
[PREMIUM] Forgetting Can Make You Smarter
In a viral video shared on our Facebook feed, Truth Theory shared the gist of a recent research report in the prestigious journal Neuron. There may be good reason why researchers’ new understanding of memory might make sense for many dyslexic people and why it may explain the perplexing memory challenges that many dyslexic students experience in school although their ability to grasp the deeper concepts and patterns may put them way ahead of classmates. From Science Daily, “two University of Toronto researchers propose that the goal of memory is not to transmit the most accurate information over time, but to guide and optimize intelligent decision making by only holding on to valuable information.” “It’s important that the brain forgets irrelevant details and instead focuses […]
GETTING PAST ANGER
If you meet Henry Winkler today, one of the last words to come to mind would be the word "anger." Yet anger is what Henry battled with for years because of his experiences in school before dyslexia was recognized.... Henry wasn't allowed to graduate with his class at...
How to Help With the Social and Emotional Side of Dyslexia
Dr. Michael Ryan is a Michigan Clinical Psychologist who developed one of the first clinical programs for LD students at Colorado State University and he spoke at our first Dyslexic Advantage conference. From his writing at LDOnline and the IDA: How can parents and...
Dyslexic Innovation: GOOGLE (X) CAPTAIN Astro Teller [Premium]
Many of the world’s greatest innovators are dyslexic. These creators with a capital ‘C’, more often than not, arrive at their conclusions through wild leaps of their ideas rather than incremental, step-by-step invention. This pattern, which appears in so many accomplished people in every type of field and discipline, should be telling us what to look for in its raw form in young people, and what the end goal of the educational process should really be. A great case in point in Google’s X Lab Captain of Moonshots, Astro Teller. Astro doesn’t talk a lot about his dyslexia, but he did relate this story about his dyslexia at an educational conference: “As a student in school, I fell into the habit of doing things […]
[PREMIUM] Realistic Confidence
We know that confidence can make a huge difference in course of people’s lives, but the question is how to avoid the extremes of underconfidence, which might lead to avoidance and underachievement, and overconfidence, which can also result in going off the rails. It was Albert Bandura, a founding father of scientific psychology who found that the best predictor of an individual person’s success is whether or not they believe they will succeed. But there’s an important caution here. There’s a difference between believing you will succeed and believing you will succeed easily…or to put it another way, there’s a difference between an unrealistic optimist and a realistic optimist. A realistic optimistic (or what some call a pessimistic optimist) anticipates that the path to success […]
Screen Children with Reading Problems for Hearing Difficulties
Children with dyslexia should be screened for hearing problems, says a UK researcher, after her research team found that 1 in 4 students had significant hearing problems that were not suspected by parents. Their study also found that 1 in 3 children with a hearing...
Nobel Prize Winner Carol Greider
Dr. Carol Greider was folding laundry at home when she got the call in 2009 that she had won the Nobel Prize in Medicine. She decided to wake up her kids and tell them. "Do we have to go to school?". "No you don't," she said, and she took them in to work with her...