Could it be GRAMMAR? [Premium]

Could it be GRAMMAR? [Premium]

Hidden grammar difficulties can be common reason why older students with dyslexia hit a plateau with reading, writing, and even testing. The problem is so subtle at times that many difficulties may be missed for years if not for their entire academic careers. One of the reasons that the problem is difficult to detect is that even many standardized tests that are commonly used for assessing the possibility of dyslexia either don’t test for it or they don’t pinpoint the problems that cause the student to struggle. In the early grades, students who have “overcome dyslexia” by the mastery of decoding, may find they hit a plateau as sentences become longer and more complex. In the middle and high school years, unrecognized grammar problems may […]

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Processing Speed & Writing [PREMIUM]

Processing Speed & Writing [PREMIUM]

Question: I know my son’s processing speed is slow from his testing, but how slow should his speed on something like writing take? My son has slow processing speed, dyslexia, dysgraphia, and a loose attention control system – but how long should it take him to write a 5 paragraph academic paper… after which the paper still needs revisions? It takes him hours to complete assignments.  This is a great question…but of course, the answer depends on a lot of individual factors regarding your student. When essay or paper writing takes so long, it’s good to try to troubleshoot ways to make the process quicker. If the delay occurs at the beginning, before any ‘writing’ occurs, then maybe he doesn’t have a template in which […]

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Dyslexia at College: THE CHALLENGE OF WRITING [Premium]

Dyslexia at College: THE CHALLENGE OF WRITING [Premium]

As dyslexic college students are entering 2- and 4- year colleges in increasing numbers, questions arise as to the impact of dyslexia-related challenges on essay writing. The National Longitudinal Transition Study-2 had found that although a majority of LD students in high school requested accommodations (91%), only 17% requested accommodations in college. A problem with this situation is that the net result is that written work (especially timed written work) will typically substantially underestimate a student’s fund of knowledge and understanding. A recent study at Oxford Brookes University showed that college students with dyslexia matched their non-dyslexic peers in terms of word diversity, ideas, organization, sentence structure, and even grammar. The tasks in which they scored lower than their peers were so-called “low-level transcription skills” […]

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The Curious History of  Mirror Writing [PREMIUM]

The Curious History of Mirror Writing [PREMIUM]

“As a researcher, working over two decades with hundreds of children and adults with dyslexia, I’m convinced that Leonard Da Vinci was dyslexic.” – Dr Maryann Wolf, author Proust and the Squid Mirror writing occurs commonly in dyslexic and non-dyslexic children between the ages of 3 and 7 years, however a subset of children will have persistent difficulties with letter reversals – and these children (or adults) will be more likely to have significant dyslexia or other LD. It at least one study, mirror writing was thought to occur in only ~ 10% of dyslexics, but its been estimated to be 30% of lefties. Even if mirror writing is only a significant problem in a minority of dyslexics – this rate is 16-fold higher than […]

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Gifted with Dysgraphia [PREMIUM]

Gifted with Dysgraphia [PREMIUM]

For many, the most frustrating aspect of dyslexia is writing. Writing gets better over time, but it may remain effortful and some will find non-verbal outlets for expression such as drawing, film, building physical objects or managing teams more expressive. Because dyslexic thinkers often have strong associational minds and personal memories, writing difficulties are more likely to be due to difficulty getting information down on paper rather than not having something to say. Common obstacles to writing can be many – narrowing ideas, putting selected ideas into order, putting emotions, complex feeling or perceptions, and experiences into words, then harnessing the physical writing steps and visual memory of words (spelling) to get them down on paper. Students with dysgraphia can be helped by first dramatically reducing […]

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Precis Writing … or when less is more

Precis Writing … or when less is more

“English A was ‘a disaster and French was like medieval torture. To sit down with a blank piece of paper and write was the most traumatic thing that had ever faced me in life. I had ideas in my head, but I could not get the stuff down. It was a crushing time.” – Charles Schwab “It will be particularly helpful if they give themselves practice in precis writing, paraphrasing, and note-taking. If one has to write a precis one is forced not only to think out carefully what are the key ideas in a particular passage but also to express them concisely, accurately, and clearly. Paraphrasing makes similar demands and also forces one to consider the style of the original and to be critical […]

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

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

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

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

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] What to Do If a Reading Curriculum Doesn’t Work

[Premium] What to Do If a Reading Curriculum Doesn’t Work

It happens to everybody. You research a curriculum thoroughly or it gets through several levels of a review and then you put it into action and… it just doesn’t connect. What do you do? There are several common reasons why a curriculum doesn’t connect with a particular student – and so some trial and error and modification need to take place. The most common reasons that certain curricula fail for a particular student include:       1. Going Too Fast   Because there can be difficulty registering information accurately (sounds, letters, words), a student may need to slow the pace down considerably if the lessons aren’t sinking in. It may seem counterintuitive if you feel a student is slipping farther behind, but reducing work and simplifying […]

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Understanding Processing Speed and Dyslexia [Premium]

Understanding Processing Speed and Dyslexia [Premium]

When families come together to discuss test scores, no group of scores surprises them as much as “Processing Speed.” Processing Speed scores on psychometric exams might mean Coding and Symbol Search scores on the WISC intelligence exams or Visual Matching and Paired Cancellation on the Woodcock Johnson. Processing Speed scores on these subtests are typically lower for dyslexic students, but on other tasks like Decision Making and in real life, these students may be quite quick and even quicker than their peers at various tasks such as insight-based problem solving or situational awareness (helpful for athletics, for instance). Understanding the true significance of Processing Speed Difference in Dyslexia, then is important not only for recognizing when accommodations may be appropriate school, but also for identifying […]

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