There are millions of school children struggling with math at school. Does it matter if a student’s math struggles are identified formally as a math disability or dyscalculia? 40% of dyslexic people are likely to also have dyscalculia, but because dyscalculia is rarely assessed in schools, few individuals ever receive that designation. Does it matter? In the short term, some school professionals might say it does not matter much – because students who need help in math will get it if their scores qualify. What do we believe? Having a math LD formally identified can be helpful – although we realize that testing may not always be easily available. If you are a testing professional, consider adding the WIAT Math subtests to routine comprehensive battery […]
Public Education is General, Make Your Education Specialized [Premium]
I had been re-reading Taylor and Vestergaard’s Developmental Dyslexia: Disorder or Specialization in Exploration? and reading more of the background studies that led the authors to suggest that dyslexia was a cognitive specialization with evolutionary advantages. If that is the case, it seems more important than ever to specialize education to nurture abilities that build on how dyslexic minds are optimized. Successful human problem solving groups often exhibit different types of “intelligence” and the importance of explorers can be seen in many different types of problem solving groups. For instance, studies of groups addressing crises have shown that groups that insist on consensus may develop decision inertia or persist in using solutions that worked in the past although current crises involve new problems. The presence […]
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...
What to Do This Summer?
Summertime tends to be a great time for dyslexic students. The grinding schoolwork routine is gone - and school, if at all, has fewer time commitments and less time in a seat. TAKE A BREAK First, especially if your student has had a difficult school year with heavy...
Question: Can the Strengths of Dyslexia Be Affected or Minimized by ADHD?
This question came through our webinar last month and I thought we could respond to it in more detail in our newsletter. There can be a high degree of overlap between individuals diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia. Both dyslexia and ADHD can run in families and...
The Mind Map in Your Brain [Premium]
Among professionals who work with dyslexic students, there have long been recommendations to mind map ideas. In recent basic neuroscience research, there’s been a growing understanding why. Neuroscientists have long studied how knowledge seems to work in the brain with schemas -or patterns that can form a flexible reference base that helps us understand new or existing knowledge or make decisions for how to act. But these schemas have largely been studied in a context of verbal memory – with only more recent insights into “the other schemas.” As it turns out there are a lot of other schemas and processes involving schema-making. They are non-verbal and spatial – and that is where the implications for dyslexic people may come into play. If you are […]
Virtual Learning is Here to Stay
(Guest post from Stacy Scofield from sponsor Commonwealth Learning) More than three years have passed since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. And now, with little pomp and circumstance, the Public Health Emergency Declaration is over. We made...
Question: Third Grader with Severe Dysgraphia and Moderate Dyslexia [Premium]
Recently we received a question about severe dysgraphia and moderate dyslexia. The dilemma was how to prioritize limited resources for therapy (if any). There is a high overlap between dyslexia and dysgraphia, but severe handwriting difficulties in the early grades often suggest dyspraxia (a disorder of fine and gross motor coordination) as well. The practical dilemma many parents and students face is that the amount of support that students receive for dyspraxia or dyslexia may be far below what they need; also intervention may take years – and health insurance may not cover any outside therapy whether it’s pediatric occupational therapy, speech therapy, or specialist dyslexia intervention. There is no simple answer. Decisions about priorities depend on the severity of each, but also on the […]
Managing Test Anxiety
It's that time of year again - either time for standardized tests or end of year exams. Test anxiety includes a variety of physical and emotional symptoms that include feelings of nervousness and hopelessness, fear, self-doubt, irritability, shortness of...
What I Know Now About Learning a Foreign Language [Premium]
When I came across a remarkable article titled, “Dyslexia and Learning a Foreign Language: A Personal Experience,” I knew that I wanted to talk to the author. Charlann had the unique perspective of being both dyslexic and a speech language pathologist. She dodged the college level foreign language requirement by getting a bachelor’s degree in speech and theater and master’s degree in speech language pathology. “I no longer tell the truth about how long I have studied French because people cannot comprehend how I could have studied (for seven years) and…still struggle so severely with spoken and written language. I could not fluently retrieve basic structures or pronunciation patterns to communicate my thoughts in classroom discussions, so I tended to speak in sentence fragments and […]
Unanimous Supreme Court Decision for Students with Disabilities
In a unanimous Supreme Court decision in the case of Miguel Perez vs. Sturgis Public Schools, the courts ruled that students aren't required to exhaust the IDEA procedures before seeking relief (for instance money damages) under the ADA. The case involved a deaf...
Teaching the Schwa [Premium]
What is the schwa? The schwa sound is the most common sound in English and symbolized by the upside-down e in International Phonetic Alphabet and is pronounced like “uh” in words like “the”. It’s a maddening sound because it’s not really associated with any specific letter of the alphabet…and that affects spelling as well as reading aloud. Sarah’s Snippets Literacy Nest has a nice series of post on teaching the schwa. Emily recommends starting with “a” words like “alike”, “panda”, “soda”, or “Alaska” that say “uh” instead of the long a sound. Add a little kinesthetic action like thumping the table to make recognizing the schwa more memorable. Students may need to master stressed and unstressed syllables first; The Call […]