There are a variety of terms used to described individuals with dyslexia who have challenges decoding text but then evolve over time to those who can read silently with good compensation. These people can succeed in the highest levels of education and work, but still have non-reading-related challenges (for instance spelling and writing fluency, tip of the tongue word retrieval issues) that persist. We coined the term stealth dyslexia some years ago because in this setting dyslexia could fly under the radar of detection, but others have used terms like compensated or resilient dyslexia to characterize many of these individuals. IS THIS THE GOAL? If you have a student who is still in the throes of learning effective decoding, getting to the the compensated or […]
Your “Mini-Me” and Bullying [Premium]
English singer-songwriter Robbie Williams recently shared that he was saddened after learning that his 10-year old daughter who is like a “mini-me”, dyslexic also with musical abilities, was rejected by a friend who decided she didn’t want anything to do with her after learning that she was dyslexic. “I tried to make it clear to her that sometimes you just have to let other people go, that you should let them go – but without sacrificing your self-esteem in the process…This girl did not deserve her love and friendship…I speak from experience.” Because many adults today discover that they are dyslexic only after their children are identified in school, this reliving the school and social-emotional stresses as their own children try to navigate their lives […]
The Benefits of Creative Writing [Premium]
It’s that time again – the Karina Eide Young Writers Awards are open for submission. Encourage a young person you know to submit a little story or poem. We’ll be giving away over $1000 in awards as well as some non-monetary awards. Submissions will be evaluated on storytelling, humor, and voice, and not spelling, grammar, or handwriting. Creative writing and storytelling is often a strength for dyslexic people and taking the time to write or dictate creative stories can build resilience and strengthen one’s awareness of strengths and value. “…writing can provide…a way to solve problems, capture feelings and inner experience, exercise power and freedom, and know one’s own voice.” – Genevieve Chandler, 1999 (A Creative Writing Program to Enhance Self- Esteem and Self-Efficacy in […]
Revised and Updated The Dyslexic Advantage: Q & A with Dr. Brock Eide
* MIND is an acronym from the first edition of Dyslexic Advantage. It stands for Material Reasoning, Interconnected Reasoning, Narrative Reasoning, and Dynamic Reasoning. Q: It's been 11 years since the first edition of The Dyslexic Advantage was published. Why is it...
Memory Problems and Math [Premium]
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 with remembering new information, it’s best to check and see if the definitions, procedures, and the why of procedures are clear. In fact, it may be a flipside of a strength in long-term memory that contributes to dyslexic students’ confusion with ambiguous terms. A good example of this James Tanton’s blog post: When fractions are introduced as pieces of pie, 3/5 + 1/5 makes sense to equal 4/5, but what […]
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...
Dyspraxia More than Dyslexia [Premium]
Dyslexia is known for its high co-occurrence with other neurodevelopmental conditions. Numerous studies have documented the high overlap (for review of the literature visit Brimo et al., 2021), but be aware that the literature is messy with different definitions of dyslexia and dyspraxia (sometimes referred to as developmental coordination disorder or DCD). A large percentage – 25-40% – of dyslexic individuals also have a neurodevelopmental conditions such as dypraxia (motor difficulty), ADD, or dyscalculia. Interestingly, the presence of dyslexia is negatively correlated with autism spectrum-related inflexibility, a finding supportive of the hypothesis of Williams and Casanova (2010) which suggested that dyslexia and autism may have opposite features based on cortical structures. The focus of this article is dyspraxia in the context of dyslexia. Even when […]
Strengthening Executive Function Skills [Premium]
“Reading isn’t the most challenging part of dyslexia. It’s the executive function…” Executive function consists of different sets of processes in the brain that act like executives in business. Executives supervise all the activities and resources – organizing and prioritizing activities, developing plans, and making sure actions are properly executed. CHALLENGES AMONG CHILDREN AND ADULTS Executive function challenges that are commonly reported among dyslexic children and adults include limitations in working memory, task monitoring, inhibitory control, set-shifting, and organization (read more here). What that pattern also often means is that learning and working efficiency is at its best when information and tasks can be processed in smaller bits, a system is developed for checking and double-checking work, non-distracting learning and work environments are essential, and […]
California Teachers Union Reject Dyslexia
“It is reprehensible that California is one of 10 states that doesn’t screen for dyslexia,” said Portantino. “The issue isn’t going away. Every year we don’t screen first-graders is another class lost. Shame on us.” Despite some high hopes this past year, a bill for...
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. After 160 issues (newsletter and premium combined), we have a tremendous library that we’ll be converting to playlists for those of you who prefer to listen. If you access the audio on our web pages, you can also adjust the speed. If you or your student had trouble with listening to text-to-speech in the past, you might want to retry text-to-speech apps or programs. They have improved dramatically and if […]
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 definitely not dyslexic people. And look at the different profiles in response to this question: “When I think of historical facts or events, I see “scenes” or images in my mind, rather than just recalling verbal descriptions. 64% of definitely dyslexic people strongly agreed with this statement, compared to just 8% of definitely not dyslexic people. Think about the implications for schooling, but also workplace communication! No wonder clashes are […]
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 it may affect sensitivity to auditory distractions, trouble listening to rapid or foreign speakers, and problems hearing in the presence of background noise. People who are dyslexic themselves or live with people who are dyslexic may know all about this. It’s a good example of how simplistic definitions can confuse rather than help. There’s been extensive work about auditory processing differences found in dyslexic vs. non dyslexic groups. The figure […]