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« Dyslexia is a Junk Diagnosis | Main | Dyslexia A Big Expensive Myth »

Monday, January 15, 2007

Learning Disablities Posts Index

Posts, Categorized

Previous Posts: UK Approaches to Dyslexia, LDs

The Myth of Dyslexia Posts
Interview with Julian Elliot and Michael Shaunnessey September  5 2005
Is Dyslexia A Myth?  Julian Elliot and Conference Details  September 2 2005


Variation in Remediating Reading Difficulties the US

General

Product / Program Reviews

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One shouldn't regard a dyslexia program as "tutoring".   Parents should select a program that has been shown to work, that has the following features:

Effective Teaching to Remediate Dyslexia--These steps must be mastered in order!

  • Phonemic Awareness is the first step. You must teach the student how to listen to a single word or syllable and break it into individual phonemes--the individual sounds.
  • Phoneme/Grapheme Correspondence is the next step. Here you teach which sounds are represented by which letter(s), and how to blend those letters into single-syllable words.
  • The Six Types of Syllables that compose English words are taught next.
  • Probabilities and Rules are then taught. The English language provides several ways to spell the same sounds. For example, the sound /SHUN/ can be spelled either TION, SION, or CION. The sound of /J/ at the end of a word can be spelled GE or DGE. Dyslexic students need to be taught these rules and probabilities.
  • Roots and Affixes and Morphology are then taught to expand a student's vocabulary and ability to comprehend (and spell) unfamiliar words. For instance, once a student has been taught that the Latin root TRACT means pull, and a student knows the various Latin affixes, the student can figure out that retract means pull again, contract means pull together, subtract means pull away (or pull under), while tractor means a machine that pulls.

How it is taught: Simultaneous Multisensory Instruction: Sometimes we rattle this off and don't really explain what it means or why it is important

This can be confusing to parents
Sight or seeing, using the eyes = VISUAL
Hearing or listening, using the ears = AUDITORY
Feeling or touching, using the skin = TACTILE
Moving through space and time, using the whole body = KINESTHETIC

Reading and writing go together; writing is a kinesthetic task--(can you feel how all the muscles in your hand and arm work to form letters as you write a sentence?).

Dyslexic people who use all of their senses when they learn (visual, auditory, tactile, and kinesthetic) are better able to store and retrieve the information. So a beginning dyslexic student might see the letter A, say its name and sound, and write it in the air -- all at the same time. 

Excellent instruction includes:

  • Intense Instruction with Ample Practice: The dyslexic brain benefits from overlearning--having a very precise focus with lots and lots of correct practice.
  • Direct, Explicit Instruction: dyslexic students do not automatically "get" anything about the reading task, and may not generalize well. Therefore, each detail of every rule that governs written language needs to be taught directly, one rule at a time. Then the rule needs to be practiced until the student has demonstrated that she has mastered the rule in both receptive (reading) and productive (writing and spelling) aspects. Only then should the instructor introduce the next rule.
  • Systematic and Cumulative Many dyslexic students are not identified until later in their academic careers. They have developed mental "structures" of how English works that are completely wrong. To develop good written language skills--reading and writing--the tutor must go back to the very beginning and rebuild the student's mastery with a solid foundation that has no holes or cracks.
  • Synthetic and Analytic: dyslexic students must be taught both how to take the individual letters or sounds and put them together to form a word (synthetic), as well as how to look at a long word and break it into smaller pieces (analytic). Both synthetic and analytic phonics must be taught all the time.
  • Diagnostic Teaching the teacher must continuously assess their student's understanding of, and ability to apply, the rules. The teacher must ensure the student isn't simply recognizing a pattern and blindly applying it. And when confusion of a previously-taught rule is discovered, it must be retaught.

What I wished every parent (and teacher) knew about dyslexia and teaching reading.

More resources
 

from the National Right to Read Foundation
What is Developmentally Appropriate?
Treatment intervention research has shown that appropriate early direct instruction seems to be the best medicine for reading problems. Reading is not developmental or natural, but is learned. Reading disabilities reflect a persistent deficit, rather than a developmental lag in linguistic (phonological) skills and basic reading skills. Children who fall behind at an early age (K and grade 1) fall further and further behind over time. Longitudinal studies show that of the children who are diagnosed as reading disabled in third grade, 74% remain disabled in ninth grade.... These findings contradict the prevalent notion that children will begin to learn to read when they are "ready."

The concept "developmentally appropriate" should not suggest delaying intervention, but using appropriate instructional strategies at an early age—especially in kindergarten. Although we now have the ability to identify children who are at-risk for reading failure, and we now understand some of the instructional conditions that must be considered for teaching, the majority of reading disabilities are not identified until the third grade.

Early Identification and Treatment
The best predictor in K or 1st grade of a future reading disability in grade 3 is a combination of performance on measures of phonemic awareness, rapid naming of letters, numbers, and objects, and print awareness. Phonemic awareness is the ability to segment words and syllables into constituent sound units, or phonemes. Converging evidence from all the research centers show that deficits in phonemic awareness reflect the core deficit in reading disabilities. These deficits are characterized by difficulties in segmenting syllables and words into constituent sound units called phonemes—in short, there is a difficulty in turning spelling into sounds. Lack of phonemic awareness seems to be a major obstacle for learning to read. This is true for any language, even Chinese. About 2 in 5 children have some level of difficulty with phonemic awareness. For about 1 in 5 children phonemic awareness does not develop or improve over time. These children never catch up but fall further and further behind in reading and in all academic subjects

Examples of phonemic awareness tasks    

  • Phoneme deletion: What word would be left if the /k/ sound were taken away from cat?    
  • * Word to word matching: Do pen and pipe begin with the same sound?    
  • * Blending: What word would we have if you put these sounds together: /s/, /a/, /t/?    
  • * Sound isolation: What is the first sound in rose?    
  • * Phoneme segmentation: What sounds do you hear in the word hot?    
  • * Phoneme counting: How many sounds do you hear in the word cake?    
  • * Deleting phonemes: What sound do you hear in meat that is missing in eat?
  • Odd word out: What word starts with a different sound: bag, nine, beach, bike?     *
  • Sound to word matching: Is there a /k/ in bike?

What should be in a psychoeducational evaluation? 

Margaret Kay has written an article,  Preparation of a Psycho-educational Evaluation Report, that all parents should read. Writing first in the Perspectives (published by The International Dyslexia Association.), and reprinted in the invaluable Wrightslaw, Marianne S. Meyer tells parents What to Expect From an Evaluation

A good evaluation for a leaning disability is not as simple as "having your child tested". First, it requires preparation on your part. You must choose an appropriate professional, provide a clear statement of your (or a teacher's) concerns, and produce records for review. You should be prepared to give a thorough and accurate prenatal, birth, motor, and medical background as well as details about speech/language development, social development, and family history. Finally, you or one or more of the child's teachers may be asked to complete checklists that will profile your child's attentional style. Supplying this information will determine the nature and scope of the evaluation. The process is methodical, and cannot be rushed! So plan ahead, allowing time to collect the necessary information and schedule appointments.

Initially, the term "Matthew Effect" was coined to describe the phenomenon of general decline on tests that measure accumulated verbal learning in children with unremediated reading disabilities. Children who cannot read to learn new information suffer from a lack of exposure to content and their verbal IQ test scores often fall over time. Children with limited reading skills are often placed in low groups in regular education classes, which leads to further educational deprivation. In many cases, the Verbal IQ scores of these children go down over time, rather than remaining stable, as is typically found in the general population.

 

Monday, January 15, 2007 at 02:58 PM in Learning Disabilities |

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