The Boston Globe recently published an article saying that COVID-19 has been a wrecking ball for students struggling to read: "Instead of reading, we got websites and circle time.” "Daniel’s progress came to an abrupt halt after Medford Schools closed down in...
Reading and Mathematics [Premium]
“Mathematics texts are more conceptually dense than almost any other type of text…Additionally, reading mathematics often differs from other types of reading because in addition to reading left to right and top to bottom, students must jump around the page to associate text with tables, graphs, symbols, and vice-versa…” The subject of reading in math class often receives very little attention in explicit instruction, because most math teachers receive little training in the specific needs of dyslexic students; in some cases, neglect of these needs may the primary reason that students underperform in this important school subject. Math teachers get little or no instruction in teaching students with dyslexia, although dyslexic students are likely to comprise 1 in 5 of their students. “…many mathematics textbooks […]
STEM / STEAM: Dr. Doresa Jennings, Steam Chasers
Dr. Doresa Jennings is the author of an exciting book series that has positive role models for dyslexia and underrepresented minorities, and it's an exciting book with humor and amazing facts. From Doresa's successful Kickstarter: "Middle Grade readers (9-12 year...
Drawing Inspiration from MICHELLE OLLIE and COCO FOX
"My dad noticed I was reading the comics with no trouble. Soon there were comic books in the house and I was writing and drawing stories of my own. Instead of shame, I felt empowered." - Michelle Ollie Michelle Ollie is a cartoonist and co-founder of The Center for...
Typing for Students with Dyslexia and/or Dysgraphia
Typing is one of those tasks that every dyslexic person should master, but some students have difficulty fitting it into their already busy stressed-filled days. Some parents sign up their middle or early high school students for courses over the summer, but as almost...
Sneaky Ways to Help with the Dyslexia-Related Long Word Challenges [Premium]
It’s not your imagination – it’s much harder for most children and adults with dyslexia to learn long words – and it has nothing to do with intelligence. The sneaky reason is that for most dyslexic people, learning a random sequence of sounds puts more demands on those phonological processing pathways in the brain that once made it hard to learn to read. It’s good to be aware of this difficulty and also know that it has no relationship to things like creative insight or problem solving ability, which might be sky high. It does mean that for certain subjects – like science vocabulary, geography place names, long people and place names in literature, and foreign languages, extra care and time may be necessary to […]
Dyslexic Advantage in Translation
We received inquiries about Dysexic Advantage from India and Italy. Our book The Dyslexic Advantage is now translated into Spanish, Chinese (coming), Japanese (coming), Korean, Polish, and Dutch, but also our ENTIRE DyslexicAdvantage.org website can be...
READING WITH COMICS
"Dyslexics like myself can’t learn anything without a narrative to hold on to. Why am I being given this information? What does it do? What is it relevant to? What similar thing should I store it next to in my head?" - Jay Stringer, Book Riot Jay Stringer has a a...
MAKE GOOGLE DOCS WORK FOR YOU
Every operating system has its text to speech, but many people like Google Docs' Voice Typing system for its simplicity. Like many text to speech programs, you still need to speak the punctuation, like saying, "comma', or "period." Some errors do occur, but the system...
Expressive Language Difficulties & Dyslexia? [Premium]
Perhaps because dyslexia is already woefully under-identified in today’s schools, the expressive language aspects of dyslexia have taken a back seat in the schools as well as by researchers. Yet, on a daily basis, it may be helpful for dyslexic children and adults to know that expressive difficulties they may indeed be associated with dyslexia. In fact, knowledge about oral expressive language difficulties and dyslexia dates back at least to Samuel Orton in 1925. For those who would like to read more about this point from speech language pathologists, read HERE. A typical pattern is for preschoolers to have some mild noticeable difficulties in speech intelligibility. Error patterns may be corrected and a student is discharged from speech therapy. By the time a student reaches […]
Why Printed is Better Than E-Books – College Students
Dr. Jean-Luc Velay was kind enough to share his paper called E-book reading hinders aspects of long-text comprehension for adults with dyslexia. The paper's an important read as there is substantial evidence that reading on a screen and reading a printed book is not...
READING FLUENCY: Phrase Cueing [Premium]
Once students have made significant progress with single word decoding, reading fluency practice can be rolled into reading practice with phrase cueing. HERE is a nice review of reading fluency approaches that includes a discussion of phrased reading. Phrase scooping or cueing involved the drawing of scoops underneath groups of words that go together in parts of a phrase. Combining scooped words with choral reading or echo reading can help students get practice with both reading and listening for phrases. Intervention Central has a Phrase Cued Text Generator, but it’s so-so. It’s better to break sentences into 3-6 word phrases to increase the ease of reading. From Steve Peha, check out the example below: Of course these shorter phrases also help with reading on a […]