MATH: When Words Get In the Way [Premium]

MATH: When Words Get In the Way [Premium]

by | Aug 18, 2017 | , , , , , , , , ,

  For dyslexic students, the language of math can confuse and obscure. Teachers, tutors, and parents should be aware that language could be interfering with math performance and not mathematics itself. From Dyslexia and Mathematics: Here is an example of a dyslexic student’s sharing of how she becomes confused by what a teacher is saying. The capital letters indicate words that required her to stop and think. Teacher: “We are going to TAKE 25 FROM 61. WRITE DOWN 61 first (I sometimes wrote the first figure I heard before the second one). WRITE DOWN 25 UNDERNEATH it. Put the 2 UNDER the 6 and the 5 UNDER the 1. Draw a line UNDERNEATH. Start at the bottom on the RIGHT. Take 5 AWAY FROM 1. […]

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Dyslexia and Foreign Language Learning [Premium]

Dyslexia and Foreign Language Learning [Premium]

by | May 17, 2017 | , ,

  “…reading, writing, listening and speaking skills in foreign languages are all significantly affected by weaknesses in linguistic coding skills even when the native language has been been well-mastered…” – Elike Schneider and Margaret Crombie in Dyslexia and Foreign Language Learning Because of the significant challenges that dyslexic individuals face with the matching sounds and letters of language (phonology / orthography), working memory, retrieval, sequencing, and rote memorization, it should not be surprising that foreign language is a significant challenge facing bilingual students and college-bound dyslexics facing 2 years of foreign language classes to enter higher education. For moderate to severe dyslexics, foreign language waivers are usually granted; however, for all those in-between, there are strategies that build on dyslexic strengths in visual and multisensory […]

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Let Them Listen – Audiobooks and Dyslexia [Premium]

Let Them Listen – Audiobooks and Dyslexia [Premium]

by | Feb 28, 2017 | , , , , , ,

 Let Them Listen! “The objective of the present research study was to understand what benefits the use of audiobooks (both school-books and books of various genres, recorded on digital media) could bring to preadolescents and adolescents with developmental dyslexia. Two groups, each consisting of 20 adolescents, were compared. The experimental group used the audiobooks, while the control group continued to use normal books. After 5 months of experimental training, the experimental group showed a significant improvement in reading accuracy, with reduced unease and emotional–behavioural disorders, as well as an improvement in school performance and a greater motivation and involvement in school activities.” – Milani et al., Dyslexia (journal)  It’s surprising how often we continue to hear that dyslexic students are denied the use of audiobooks […]

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WHAT YOU CAN LEARN FROM A CHILD’S WRITING [Premium]

WHAT YOU CAN LEARN FROM A CHILD’S WRITING [Premium]

by | Feb 28, 2017 | , , , , , , ,

There are many skills that are required to write by hand. Besides having an idea and being able to organize it into words, there’s remembering the motor, kinesthetic, and visual sequences of letters and words and being able to discern similar and dissimilar sounds (auditory processing, phonemic awareness). No wonder it’s hard to write! What do you see in the following writing?  Mix of capitals and lower case letters,  irregular spacing, sight word error (plaid instead of played), phonemic error (chr instead of tr), elision / dropped sound or attention / working memory mistake (chis instead of chips).     This student would benefit from working with an alphabet strip of lower and upper case letters in view as well as a spelling or writing […]

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STRATEGIES FOR THE MOST COMMON SPELLING MISTAKES: THE SCHWA [Premium]

STRATEGIES FOR THE MOST COMMON SPELLING MISTAKES: THE SCHWA [Premium]

by | Feb 13, 2017 | , , , , , , , , , ,

Once you learn how to recognize the ‘schwa’, you’ll start recognizing them everywhere! In linguistics, the schwa sound is represented by an upside-down ‘e’ and the mouth position is a lot like the ‘uh’ sound in ‘butter’. It contributes to lots of misspellings in dyslexic students (and actually non-dyslexic students too) so recognizing the patterns can significantly improve all-round spelling performance. STRATEGY 1: EXAGGERATE / MISPRONOUNCE THE SCHWA One surprisingly easy strategy is to exaggerate and deliberately mispronounce a word in order to remember the correct spelling. For instance, the-thee reminds you that the schwa is spelled with an ‘e’. Look at the following 3 objects: monitor, computer, and calendar. To remember -or, -er, and -ar, a student can pronounce monitor as mon-i-TOR, exaggerating the […]

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Latest Research: Repetition As a Poor Way to Teach Dyslexics [Premium]

Latest Research: Repetition As a Poor Way to Teach Dyslexics [Premium]

by | Dec 22, 2016 | , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

In groundbreaking research, researchers at MIT or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reported that dyslexic children and adults have “a diminished ability to acclimate to a repeated input in their paper titled “Dysfunction of Rapid Neural Adaption in Dyslexia.” Like many research papers, dyslexia is seen through a negative lens (‘dysfunction’) and the take-home points through university press releases, similarly so, however the findings are interesting ones and fit with an evolving picture of dyslexia as a learning difference (rather than disease or disability) that extends beyond reading and has ramifications for many aspects of education. “It’s a difference in the brain that’s not about reading per se, but it’s a difference in perceptual learning that’s pretty broad,” says John Gabrieli, who is the study’s […]

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[PREMIUM] Latest Research: Dyslexia, Sequential Memory, and Seeing the Big Picture

[PREMIUM] Latest Research: Dyslexia, Sequential Memory, and Seeing the Big Picture

by | Nov 14, 2016 | , , , , , , , ,

“My mind doesn’t work like a train track. It’s more like a web page with lots of hyperlinks.” – dyslexic honors college student. It’s refreshing to see that more researchers take an interest on dyslexia beyond reading. In this recent paper from Belgium and Missouri, the challenges of remembering sequential information  for dyslexics and non-dyslexics was reviewed. Both working memory and sequencing were examined. Working memory is a type of short-term memory necessary for keeping information ‘in mind.’ Sequencing is remembering the order that things are said. It’s activities such as this that that can make something like following classroom instructions or remembering computer passwords easy or hard. Several interesting observations were made from their review of the research literature: – Dyslexic children and adults tend […]

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Memory: Why Drill Can Kill – and What to Do Instead [Premium]

Memory: Why Drill Can Kill – and What to Do Instead [Premium]

by | Nov 9, 2016 | , , , , , ,

It would almost seem without question that repetition should be helpful for learning, but researchers have found that if  repetitions are too much and too long (longer than 10 seconds in one paradigm), further repetition caused poorer memory and word retrieval rather than better! From one of the papers below: “Both Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated a striking and clear violation of the memory benefits typically associated with repetition. Specifically, increasing the rehearsal time of a word did not yield a straightforward monotonic increase in performance on a later free association test; rather, it led to a nonmonotonic effect, with performance initially increasing, but then declining with longer repetition durations.” The reason for this effect is currently being studied, but the researchers speculated that the increased forgetting […]

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Research: Classroom Culture Matters – Effects on Reading Performance [Premium]

Research: Classroom Culture Matters – Effects on Reading Performance [Premium]

by | Nov 5, 2016 | , , , , , , , ,

In the latest issue of the Journal of Learning Disabilities, researchers from Harvard and Greece found that classroom culture, and in particular LD students’ perceptions of their classrooms motivational framework had sudden, significant, and unpredictable effects on reading performance and students’ emotional state. From the authors: “The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the proposition that a classroom’s motivation discourse exerts significant influences over students’ achievement in reading.” The two conditions that researchers compared were: #1. Mastery (internal standard) – “In our class trying hard is important” #2. Performance (external standard) – “In our class, getting good grades is the main goal.” Their brief conclusions: “…the results confirmed the research hypotheses concerning the role of mastery and performance goals. The form (mastery) had a […]

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Dyslexic Advantage Premium – Issue 11 Organizing Creativity [Premium]

Dyslexic Advantage Premium – Issue 11 Organizing Creativity [Premium]

by | Oct 29, 2016 | , , , , , , , , ,

 Premium Issue 11 October 29, 2016 Organizing Creativity, Stealth Dyslexia, Dyslexia and Self Image, Memorizing for School, What Worked for 2E Gifted Dyslexics, Art Therapy for Dysgraphia, Hands-On Math for Fractions, More Interactive Reading Strategies, Mastering Foreign Languages and More This issue has memory strategies that seem to be helpful for a majority of dyslexic folk – whether it’s history facts, science vocabulary, or foreign languages. Subscriptions support Dyslexic Advantage.     [/wcm_restrict]

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Math Strategies for Arithmetic – Number Flexibility [Premium]

Math Strategies for Arithmetic – Number Flexibility [Premium]

by | Oct 10, 2016 | , , , , , ,

“Everybody could rock through their multiplication tables and I could do my ones and my twos and my zeros and my tens, and that was about it.” – Jack Laws, naturalist I’ve been enjoying a book, Mathematical Mindsets written by Stanford Professor Jo Boaler. It’s great stuff. She’ll help a lot of dyslexic students if they adopt her approaches to teaching math. The first concept is deceptively simple, but resonates with me after seeing over a decade of dyslexic students work math problems in our clinic. There is a high degree of overlap between dyscalculia and dyslexia although there is also a significant number of dyslexics who are solid or even outstanding mathematicians. The weak ones almost invariably struggle with basic math facts and require […]

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