American Dyslexia Association

Tag: education

  • Three Ways to Help Teens with Dyslexia Prepare for Exams

    by Hailey Thompson

    Exam period can be a stressful time for teens, parents and teachers alike.
    Everyone wants their child to do their best, whatever that looks like for them, and
    for older teens, there can be additional pressure around needing the results to get
    into higher education.


    But there can be even more stress for people with dyslexia, who may struggle with
    the mainstream method of exam preparation offered in school. If you’re trying to
    support someone in this position, you may feel a bit lost when it comes to what
    practical assistance you can offer. Here, we take a look at three things you can do to help.


    Help them make a plan
    Especially in their mid-teens, high school students may find themselves
    overwhelmed with the amount of subjects they need to revise for, and the
    number of exams they have on their timetable. This can lead to panic, and a feeling
    of running out of time, which impacts their mental wellbeing as well as their ability
    to study.

    One thing you can do is to offer to help them make a plan to manage their time,
    so that they know that they have enough time to revise for all their subjects, as
    well as knowing clearly when exams are. They could put this up in their bedroom,
    or in a communal space like the kitchen, so that everyone knows when they’ll be
    focusing.
    Just make sure that you use this as a support tool for your teen, and not as a
    way for you to put pressure on them when they’re taking a break.


    Support shared studying
    Some people with dyslexia find it hard to study alone. Dyslexia can
    make it hard for teens to concentrate, and reading their notes alone can be
    very hard work. Instead, support your teen by facilitating shared study time,
    perhaps with friends or in after school study groups. You can also ask older
    relatives or friends to help, if they’ve sat the exam before.

    By letting your teen know that you are ok with them having people over to
    study, or taking them to a friend’s house, you are giving them practical support.
    If you’re able to and they want to, you could also offer to quiz them, or let them
    talk through a specific area to check their understanding.


    Consider getting them extra support
    Your teen might not feel comfortable with you helping test them, or you might
    not feel that you have enough knowledge on the subject. In this instance, getting
    a tutor can help them get the answers they need, and teens with dyslexia might
    find that they have a better understanding of a topic if they talk through it, rather
    than read it themselves.


    Tutors can also help with confidence, and show your teen that they have the
    tools they need to succeed in their exams. Make sure to do your homework
    beforehand, and choose a tutor that is right for your family, and make it clear
    to your child that they can let you know if the tutor turns out not to be the right fit.
    It’s really important to make sure they trust this person and feel comfortable with
    them in order to get the most out of their sessions.

  • Kids Can’t Wait: Strategies to Support Struggling Readers

    By Kyle Redford – YCDC Education Editor

    Strategies to Support Struggling Readers Which Don’t Require a Ph.D. in Neuropsychology

    I have a confession to make.  It involves a basic failure on my behalf.  What’s worse, my failure impacted students whom I care deeply about: students with dyslexia and other language-based learning challenges. It involved waiting for test results before putting accommodations in place for students who were struggling in my class. Of course I didn’t fail them intentionally, and by about the third time I got an evaluation back that pretty much said what I imagined it would, I started putting help in place for the student right away. The discovery of my own blind spot led me to wonder if other teachers were accidentally failing their students in similar ways.

    For many years, this is what I did: I would identify a student who was having problems, make some basic observations about what was particularly difficult for him, and then request further information about the student in the form of screening, special tests, and/or a learning evaluation.  I would then wait for a report before taking further action. I  am often haunted by memories of a particular former eighth-grade history student whose contributions to our discussions put him at the top of the class, but his written answers on tests and essays were always weak and minimalist and put him only in the high C range.  At the time, I thought it was sufficient to label this descrepancy and recommend that he get a formal evaluation.  I suspected a test would reveal that he was dyslexic.  His English teacher concurred.  Unfortunately, his father would have nothing to do with outside testing, so my brilliant student received low Bs in my class and never got the help he needed to express what he knew.

    But really, what was I waiting for? If asked, I would have responded that I needed more specific information about the student before I could know best how to support him. To many readers, I am sure that response sounds legitimate and reasonable. However, my confession is aimed at fellow teachers who will understand why my delay was unnecessary.  I know that I am not alone when I admit that I can usually make general assumptions about what a learning evaluation is going to say before the results are in.  Most often the report confirms what I had intuitively guessed about the student.  As personally validating and satisfying as that confirmation often is, it should not be a prerequisite to providing timely critical accommodations to my students.

    Immediately employing accommodations makes sense for many reasons.  First, evaluations take time to schedule and complete.  Why waste time waiting to have suspicions confirmed before helping a student?  Secondly, there are those untidy problems of cost and access.  Testing and evaluations are expensive and for many an unobtainable luxury.  For a variety of reasons, public schools can be stingy with these resources, and many independent schools wrongly assume that parents can afford this expense on top of the cost of the school’s tuition.  Consequently, many students who need the help that an evaluation can provide are denied it.

    I need to be clear about something—I remain an enthusiastic proponent of testing and evaluations.  Teachers are greatly assisted by the critical information that they yield. Outside testing provided by learning specialists offers a unique opportunity to isolate many classroom variables and specifically reveal and identify students’ academic strengths and weaknesses. Additionally, testing helps assess how extreme students’ gaps are, and what level of response is necessary.  That information is a real gift to teachers, parents, and most importantly, students, and it is a gift that keeps on giving because tests allow future teachers to understand the student’s profile.  Lastly, evaluations are required for students to qualify for accommodations on high-stakes tests such as SATs, ACTs and state exams.  All indentified students should be provided access to them.

    For A Student Struggling with Understanding the Classroom Reading Assignments

    • Suggest listening to audiobooks or identify a willing adult to read the assigned book to the student.  Recommend that students read along with the audiobook version or to follow the words alongside the reader.  The more often a struggling reader is exposed to the way they words look, the better. Exposure to the page helps students learn the architecture of sentences.  This also helps with spelling and conventions.
    • Suggest use of assistive technologies currently available that read material aloud to the student.  The Kindle, the iPad, or Google’s Nexus tablet, would be examples of this kind of technology, but there are many similar devices being introduced into the market all the time. Click here to read a comparison of these tablets.
    • If the book/content has been made into a film or covered in a film, suggest that the student watch it to help give a context to the story or content.
    • Offer extra time to finish reading assignments. Dyslexic and struggling readers need more time to read assigned material.
    • Provide class syllabuses in advance. Allow the student to read assignments ahead over the school breaks and the summer. This can help the student get a head start so that when the school year takes on its full momentum she is prepared and has had an opportunity to work ahead to absorb the increased volume of work.
    • Recommend reading books with larger fonts.  Hardback versions from the library are visually easier and E-readers offers the ability to adjust the font size as well.
    • Recommend books that may be shorter or less dense but equally rich in ideas and story for independent reading time. (Click here for a kid-tested reading list.) It is important to recommend the book with enthusiasm, the same enthusiasm typically reserved for more sophisticated titles. Read well-written, easier books yourself, out loud to the class, and recommend them to all students so the struggling students can read them without shame.  The objective is to get struggling readers to read AND to like it. (For more on creating a classroom culture for struggling readers, click here.)
    • Recommend graphic novels. (Click here for a listing of kid-approved ones.) Graphic novels provide struggling readers with a way of strengthening their vocabularies, build their reading confidence, and foster their appreciation of story. Graphic novels can also help support a reader’s understanding of everything from Greek Mythology to Shakespheare.Dictating ideas to an adult can help a student get started with their writing by generating an idea bank that they can draw from. (They also won’t get caught up  worrying about how to spell those words)

    Continue reading: http://www.dyslexia.yale.edu/resources/educators/instruction/kids-cant-wait-strategies-to-support-struggling-readers/

  • Dyslexic Thinkers Aren’t Disabled Thinkers

    Dyslexic Thinkers Aren’t Disabled Thinkers

    In the world of reading, we know oral language is mapped on to symbols we recognize as the alphabet.

    This is a sound-symbol relationship. When an individual struggles to grasp this relationship, the label of ‘dyslexia’ is often applied, implying a learning disability. This approach assumes everyone thinks and processes incoming information alike.

    What if this is not the case? An architect ‘sees’ a building before drafting a blueprint. An engineer imagines a bridge, visualizing the piers. These visual thinkers imagine a world in three dimensions. Those with dyslexia exhibit visual and dimensional thinking as a stronger mental process.

    Now, imagine a Kindergartener being introduced to flat lines on paper that are supposed to carry sounds that have no meaning until blended together into words. In the dyslexic world, if the letter ‘R’ was three dimensional, looking down from the top, it would be a bar; from below, two small squares. Without directionality to hold the letter in place, how it is supposed to look? Lines anchor two-dimensional letters in place but what holds three-dimensions?

    Technology is changing the mental landscape. In the 14th century, few people could read so gossip was the mode of communication. Fast forward to the 20th century, with books, radio, and television engaging the visual and auditory senses, and eventually, computers and smartphones, adding touch. Today’s student thinks in all three modalities. Imagine thinking in live-action holographs, and you’d have a better idea of the mental processing of a dyslexic thinker.

    How do we teach someone who sees the world in holographic images? We begin with dimensions using real objects. By naming them, we add language, using the entire word initially.

    Before dyslexic thinkers can recognize letters in their proper position on a line, they need to examine them in dimensional space. By using pliable materials to shape symbols for 360-degree viewing, young learners begin to recognize how to place a letter properly on a line. By beginning with named objects, the entire word is connected to dimensions. Dyslexic thinkers need to take words apart to discover patterns rather than assembling these from isolated letters and sounds.

    This object – picture – sound – symbol approach creates a bridge for dimensional thinkers to move into the two-dimensional word of print and text.  Building a mental library of objects with their whole word label creates a resource for using careful observation to detect common patterns and relationship with words which do not contain a visual image such as ‘not’ or ‘is’ or words we know as function words.

    Continue reading article:

    https://www.teachthought.com/literacy/dyslexic-thinkers-arent-disabled-thinkers/

  • We Can’t Teach Love But We Can Teach Reading

    Teachers can speak a lot of things into existence (a quiet line in the hallway, students sitting “criss, cross, applesauce”) but a love of reading isn’t one of them. Enthusiasm is a part of good teaching, but communicating a love of books isn’t the same thing as teaching reading. I learned that the hard way.

    When reading comes easily, it’s easy to love it

    Reading courses in my teacher preparation program centered around a love of reading. In class, we shared our own memories of learning to read, curated books lists for our classroom libraries, and debated the themes hidden in our favorite children’s books. We were taught to devote time to students reading for pleasure and to be disdainful of basal programs with scripted lessons.

    When I first began teaching, I read aloud to my class every day, gave my students time for independent reading, and facilitated discussions about their books. My approach worked well for students who entered my fourth grade class already reading well. They would sprawl around the classroom and become so absorbed in their books that they’d groan when Read to Self time was over. I had a few students who struggled with reading and they were pulled for intervention by a specialist and I never had the opportunity to see the instruction they received. So while I taught fourth grade in a high-performing school, I believed that if students were given time to read and discuss good books, their abilities would grow and a love of reading would flow naturally.

    But when reading is difficult …

    Five years ago, I moved to a school with low reading achievement. As a literacy coach, I saw teachers try the same strategies I had used, but they experienced very different results. And I quickly learned that in classrooms with children who cannot read well there are a thousand ways a Readers Workshop lesson can backfire.

    In one third grade class, a teacher began to state her teaching point, “Good readers…” only to be cut off by a student who called out, “We don’t got those in here!” The teacher handled the disruption beautifully in the moment, but afterwards she lamented, “The kid had a point.” Just two of her students were reading anywhere near grade level.

    In well-managed classrooms, independent reading periods would devolve into quiet distraction. In less-orderly rooms, students scrawled curse words in books and knocked leveled book bins to the floor. Our school’s kindergarteners had more tolerance for low-level books than the ten year olds who had been struggling for years to make sense of reading. I soon realized that independent reading is a burden, not a pleasure, for students who struggle to lift the words off the page.

    Student: Why do they always put tricky words in there?

    Although we had hundreds of books bins, only the low-level books were being used. Our mini-lessons began to feel too mini and our Guided Reading lessons felt too guided. What had seemed to be enough in my own fourth grade classroom was certainly not enough here. It seemed cruel to talk about a love of reading when students felt taunted by the squiggly lines on the page.

    The joy of cracking the code

    I began to use the time I had devoted to Guided Reading intervention for explicit phonics instruction. The scripted lessons felt dry, but I honored the instructional routines and I faked enthusiasm. My students discovered the joy in the lessons before I did.

    Continue reading here: https://www.readingrockets.org/blogs/right-read/we-can-t-teach-love-we-can-teach-reading

     

  • Why is it important for a child with dyslexia to have good self-esteem?

    Parenting coach, John Hicks, answers questions from parents of dyslexic children about self-esteem and dyslexia taken from the Dyslexia Show Virtual webinar “Why is it important for a child with dyslexia to have good self-esteem?” on the 7th May 2020.

     


    Key Links:

    The Studying With Dyslexia Blog article – www.studyingwithdyslexiablog.co.uk/blog/dyslexia-show-virtual-questions-about-self-esteem

    The Dyslexia Show –

    www.dyslexiashow.co.uk

  • Close the Learning Gap: Learnedy now for free!

    CLOSE THE LEARNING GAP: Just because one should / must stay at home at the moment does not mean that learning and practicing should also stop!

    The Dyslexia Research Center has 25 years of experience with distance learning and, in cooperation with the American Dyslexia Association, wants to help parents to design meaningful lessons for their children at home!

    We offer the new online learning platform Learnedy free of charge for parents. Learnedy is an educationally useful online diagnosis and learning platform for English Language Arts and mathematics in the early and elementary school years.

    Success in three steps: educational diagnosis, individual program with exercises for practicing and regular re-testing.

    Parents can now gain free access to Learnedy until the start of the next school year, so that lessons can be meaningfully continued at home over the summer. Most of the time, parents don’t know where to start. With Learnedy, the child can continue learning exactly where he/she stands.

    Parents can register here free of charge: https://parents.learnedy.com/register/

  • Embracing dyslexia

    Embracing dyslexia

    Embracing Dyslexia is a thoughtful and moving exploration of dyslexia from an insider’s perspective, weaving together interviews with parents, adult dyslexics, researchers, educators, and experts to provide an accurate portrayal of a learning difference that affects between 15 and 20% of the population.

    Parents share emotional stories of their frustration over failing to understand why their children were struggling with reading, writing, and spelling, and the life-altering impact the word dyslexia had on their lives.

    Adult dyslexics courageously open up and speak candidly about their dyslexia, sharing their struggles and successes they had in school and in their adult lives.

    Experts and educators define what dyslexia is and illustrate why early dyslexia screening for all children is vital. They also share how effective tutoring, classroom accommodations, and recognizing and fostering the natural gifts and abilities of a child with dyslexia can take them from feeling stupid and experiencing failure on a daily basis to believing in themselves and knowing that they can be successful.

    Watch the complete movie at www.embracingdyslexia.com

    Embracing Dyslexia – The trailer:

     

  • Strategies for Working with Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

    Strategies for Working with Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

    Will you be welcoming a student with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) into your classroom this fall?  If this is your first experience having a child with ASD in your classroom, you may be a tad nervous (well, likely more than just a tad).  You may be wondering how in the world you are going to meet this one child’s needs while balancing the needs of the other children in your classroom.  How will you handle the behaviors?  What do the parents expect?  Children with ASD often come with a barrage of service providers such as Speech/Language Pathologists, Occupational Therapists, Behavioral Consultants, and sometimes a 1:1 para-professional– how are we all going to be working together?  You may be worrying about your lack of training in autism and be unsure if you are equipped to meet the needs of the child.  Well, take a deep breath.  With the proper perspective and some planning and preparation, this may be the most rewarding experience of your teaching career. CONTINUE READING

  • Handwriting Worksheet Wizard

    Handwriting Worksheet Wizard

    With the ESL Writing Wizard, you can easily make worksheets for handwriting practice. You can change the font (print or cursive), the size, and the line patterns. With a few clicks, you can create one-word worksheets or multi-word worksheets. The Writing Wizard is a free resource for teachers and homeschooling moms and dads. Access the ESL wizard here.

    ESL_Writing