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 […]
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 […]
How a Dyslexic Author Wrote a NYTimes Bestseller about Joy
"...He explained that there is a Tibetan saying that it is the painful experiences that shine the light on the nature of happiness... The Archbishop added that that “nothing beautiful comes without some suffering,” and he mentioned how our muscles need resistance to...
Why It’s Hard to Proofread and Read Fluently [Premium]
It can be maddening. You look and look you just don’t see it. Later you pass your work along, you see all the thing you hadn’t seen the first time round. What’s going on ? You’ve experienced a ‘trick’ of perception. In our clinic, when trying to explain the phenomenon to children, we often use the analogy of optical illusions…when you see something that’s not there or you miss something – that later you can’t believe you could see at the start. These tricks of perception are what adds to the time needed for many dyslexic students on classroom and standardized exams. It accounts for why some teachers may be flabbergasted by a student’s need for extended time, when they seem so quick with problem solving […]
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 […]
[Premium] Examples of Dysgraphia and Dyslexia – What to Look For
After dyslexic students make progress in their ability to decode words, parents, teachers, and students themselves may begin to breathe a sigh of relief; however, another monster challenge may be looming on the horizon – the other D…. Dysgraphia. The National Institutes of Health definition of Dysgraphia includes the following: “Dysgraphia is a neurological disorder characterized by writing disabilities. Specifically, the disorder causes a person’s writing to be distorted or incorrect. In children, the disorder generally emerges when they are first introduced to writing. They make inappropriately sized and spaced letters, or write wrong or misspelled words, despite thorough instruction. Children with the disorder may have other learning disabilities; however, they usually have no social or other academic problems. Cases of dysgraphia in adults generally […]
Top Back to School Apps for Dyslexia [Premium]
EARLY READERS Endless Reader by Originator – Free to try; $5.99-11.99 bundles. iPhone and iPad Great for visual learners. Animations and characters help with sight word learning. Orton Gillingham Card Deck by Mayerson Academy FREE. iPhone and iPad Multisensory card deck with consonants, single vowels, consonant digraphs, vowel teams, vowel + r, short vowel signals, VCe, and common suffixes. Auditory drill. Record and playback to hear pronunciations. Video see and hear sounds. Great phonics practice. Sight Words by Little Speller – FREE Iphone and Ipad All 220 sight words, no-frills program that allows you to create your own sight word lists – lower case or upper case letters. Can allow hints. Sight Words Reading and Spelling by Edoki $3.49 Android. Includes 320 sight words (Fryes + Dolce). […]
Dyslexia Journal Club – Spelling Strategies – What Does Research Say? [Premium]
In a recent paper from Montreal, research tested dyslexic students ages 9-11 to see which spelling strategies were more effective. The most common strategy children use to spell is phonological, whether they are or aren’t dyslexic. The other common strategies children use for spelling are visuol-orthographic, analogy, and backup. The phonological strategy used phoneme-grapheme correspondence. Analogy was based on the use of known words to spell that share orthographic similarities . Visuo-orthographic strategy involved visual and specific properties of words. A backup strategy was defined as using a personal mnemonic device for one specific word. In this research study, students were tested in tests that included spelling to dictation, and written narrative (summary) after being read a story. Spelling words were classified on the basis […]
Why Students Hate to Write – A High School Teacher’s Reflections [Premium]
“When students say that they do not like to write I ask them why. They typically respond with, “Because I hate it” … after incidents like this I cannot help but sit back and ask myself why I think they do not like to write…” One young teacher of high school students put her own assumptions to the test and her teaching has changed forever. Students with dyslexia often hate to write because there is such a huge gulf between the ideas in their heads and what they can get down on paper. At a recent talk to some student teachers, I asked the room what they thought they could do for a high school student who was very slow and having trouble getting their […]
