Academic Remediation

Cursive writing will never die, so we might as well teach it in school. - By Brian Palmer - Slate Magazine

Cursive writing will never die, so we might as well teach it in school. - By Brian Palmer - Slate Magazine.

According to Steven Roger Fischer, a script expert and author of A History of Writing, children who are never taught to write cursive develop their own slapdash versions—what he calls a "personal cursive." These pidgin modes are faster than printing, but can be very difficult for others to read.

A kid who has his own illegible handwriting may face some obstacles later on in his educational career. Steve Graham, who studies education and literacy at Vanderbilt University and was among the experts cited in the Times piece, notes that kids with sloppy handwriting have been shown to score lower on tests, regardless of the content of their ideas. Bias against poor penmanship can push a score by two standard deviations."People form opinions about the quality of ideas based on the handwriting," he says.

So unless we can do away with handwriting altogether and all at once, it's blatantly unfair not to teach every student proper cursive. We needn't worry over messy signatures, or a loss of fine motor skills or artistic expression. None of that really matters. The problem is that kids will write in cursive whether we're teaching it or not. And they ought to be able to do it as effectively as possible.

It's understandable that school principles would think about cutting penmanship class. After all, while our children waste their time perfecting that preposterous lower-case z, Indian and Chinese children are tinkering with their space elevators and hydrogen cars for the science fair. Maybe we don't have time to teach children to type in addition to writing in both print and cursive.

Fischer offers the right solution: Let's stop teaching children to write in printed script. Forcing children to write in such a formal, inefficient style wastes everyone's time. Worse, it encourages them to trade off legibility by developing their own haphazard cursive. There are other options: For a 2009 column, Slate's "Human Guinea Pig" joined her daughter in learning the Barchowsky method, a hybrid style of writing that's quick to use and easy to pick up.

Visualizing How We Read - Dana Foundation

Visualizing How We Read - Dana Foundation.

Neuroimaging is opening a window onto how we learn to read. Acquiring this complex, demanding skill, researchers find, is a richly orchestrated process that recruits and connects diverse brain regions.

Ultimately, they hope, what’s learned in the laboratory will guide more powerful teaching methods adapted to the quirks and variations of individual children’s brains.

Dyslexia  has drawn the most attention. Earlier research identified defective phonological processing—a relative inability to break words into their component sounds—as the core problem, while other studies focused on visual areas that recognize the shapes of words (the left temporal-occipital cortex, or “visual word-form area”). Researchers are now looking more closely at how parts of the brain that process letters and language sounds work together.

"When looking at letters and words, skilled readers activate a specialized part of the visual system in a way that dyslexic readers typically don't. One thing that is driving this effect may be its coordination with the phonological system,” says Bruce McCandliss, chair of psychology and human development at Vanderbilt University. As the reader seeks phonological information from print, “it puts pressure on the visual system to reorganize and deliver that information in more and more effective ways.”

Great New Reading Apps For Learning Disabled | PadGadget

Great New Reading Apps For Learning Disabled | PadGadget.

It’s been known for some time now, especially after iTunes included a special education category on the featured page, that the iPad helps kids with learning disabilities and other special needs. The touch tablet technology has opened the door to many possibilities for doctors, scientists, teachers and parents. New developments are coming out all of the time that help special needs kids and their parents on their journey together.

Dyslexia Help: The 5 Most Common Accommodations for Dyslexia

Dyslexia Help: The 5 Most Common Accommodations for Dyslexia.

1. Reading accomodations
2. Extra time on tests
3. Option to keyboard, dictate, or scribe
4. Spelling not included in grade (do not reduce grade for spelling)
5. Note taker for lectures

LD OnLine :: Dyslexia and High School

LD OnLine :: Dyslexia and High School.

Last week I visited a local high school to observe a freshman. Even though the end of school is near, I wanted to see first-hand how the teachers were implementing accommodations and modifications for his severe dyslexia. Before school began in the fall, I had met with this student twice a week to build his reading, writing and study skills. He began the year rating school as a "-1" on a one-to-ten scale. By mid-winter, he had moved his self-assessment of school to a "10." Since then he had become increasingly discouraged. Finally I realized that I better get a first-hand look at what was going on in his classes. So, his teacher kindly let me sit in the back of the class. I spent the hour noting the tasks that he was asked to complete along with the other students in his literature class.

How Parents Can Ensure that Schooling Does Not Interfere with their Childrens Education

How Parents Can Ensure that Schooling Does Not Interfere with their Childrens Education.

Episode 1: Taking Recess Away Teacher: “Class, you can have your lost recess time back when you show me that you can sit quietly and focus on this worksheet for the next fifteen minutes without talking or staring out the window or bothering someone else.”

With one voice Class replies: “No deal. Here’s the deal: We will complete this worksheet if you: 1) allow plenty of time in the schedule for us to do it, 2) suggest various worthwhile options for what we can do if we finish early, 3) give us opportunities to be creative, 4) let us work quietly with a partner, 5) show that you understand how important friends, joy and physical play are for making us smarter and more capable of doing your worksheet by never, ever, threatening to take recess away from us, again.

Language Development: A Secret Everyone Should Know | Reading & Other Learning Disabilities

Language Development: A Secret Everyone Should Know | Reading & Other Learning Disabilities.

Is there a secret to helping preschool and older children develop the kind of listening and speaking skills so important to life and to reading and other academic success? Yes. And from the day your children are born, make the secret a daily part of their lives. The secret: Hold lots of interesting, meaningful conversations with your children. Throughout the day, stress several important words they heard and used in their conversations. Don’t treat this like a secret. Instead, share it. Treat it as an important part of daily life.

Children's Book Author with Dyslexia, Jeanne Betancourt - Dyslexic Advantage

Children's Book Author with Dyslexia, Jeanne Betancourt - Dyslexic Advantage.

"I believe that being dyslexic has helped me as a writer. Since learning to read and write was difficult for me growing up, I paid more attention to the world around me. I took clues to what people were thinking and feeling from their speech and body language. Today, as an author, it is easy for me to imagine what it would be like to be in someone else’s shoes..." - Jeanne Betancourt, author Pony Pals series, My Name is Brain Brian

What is Dyslexia? 3 Common Reading Patterns - Dyslexic Advantage

What is Dyslexia? 3 Common Reading Patterns - Dyslexic Advantage.

Here are some of the most common ways that dyslexia can present with reading difficulties: late reading, slow reading, and misreading (especially instructions!).

VIDEO VÉRITÉ | The Films of Alan and Susan Raymond

VIDEO VÉRITÉ | The Films of Alan and Susan Raymond.

JOURNEY INTO DYSLEXIA DEBUTS MAY 11th on HBO2 Academy Award-winning filmmakers Alan and Susan Raymond present Journey into Dyslexia, profiles of dyslexic students and adults who share their experiences of struggling in school and then succeeding in life. Each share their frustration with being misunderstood by teachers and friends and the emotional impact this learning disability had on their lives.

Why Sight-Words Prevent Reading and Create Dyslexia | Sight Words

Why Sight-Words Prevent Reading and Create Dyslexia | Sight Words.

There are actually MANY reasons why Sight-Words are a cruel failure. This video presents the main problem: sight-designs must appear in one predictable form for the brain to memorize them; but English letters and words appear in a multitude of confusing forms.

Is there such a thing as "visual dyslexia"?

(Caveat: here I am speaking of children who have normal vision, or normal corrected vision).  I

Advocates for visual treatment of dyslexia (through special glasses, vision therapy, tinted lenses and overlays, and so on) make the case that there is a visual basis for reading difficulties.  don't think there is a visual component to dyslexia or reading difficulty.

Here is an interesting and relatively new piece of research that suggests that vision isn't involved in dyslexia:

http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/recordDetails.jsp?searchtype=keyword&pageSize=10&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=visual+dyslexia&eric_displayStartCount=1&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=kw&_pageLabel=RecordDetails&objectId=0900019b804400c3&accno=EJ886840&_nfls=false

Ziegler, Johannes C.; Pech-Georgel, Catherine; Dufau, Stephane; Grainger, Jonathan Developmental Science, v13 n4 pF8-F14 Jul 2010



Rapid Processing of Letters, Digits and Symbols: What Purely Visual-Attentional Deficit in Developmental Dyslexia?


Visual-attentional theories of dyslexia predict deficits for dyslexic children not only for the perception of letter strings but also for non-alphanumeric symbol strings. This prediction was tested in a two-alternative forced-choice paradigm with letters, digits, and symbols. Children with dyslexia showed significant deficits for letter and digit strings but not for symbol strings. This finding is difficult to explain for visual-attentional theories of dyslexia which postulate identical deficits for letters, digits and symbols. Moreover, dyslexics showed normal W-shaped serial position functions for letter and digit strings, which suggests that their deficit is not due to an abnormally small attentional window. Finally, the size of the deficit was identical for letters and digits, which suggests that poor letter perception is not just a consequence of the lack of reading. Together then, our results show that symbols that map onto phonological codes are impaired (i.e. letters and digits), whereas symbols that do not map onto phonological codes are not impaired. This dissociation suggests that impaired symbol-sound mapping rather than impaired visual-attentional processing is the key to understanding dyslexia.

Rx - Read to Your Baby - NYTimes.com

Rx - Read to Your Baby - NYTimes.com.

The children’s book, as it turns out, is a valuable tool for both parent and doctor. “Using the book, the pointing and identifying, is a way of helping parents understand the job of naming the child’s world, helping the child learn that everything has a name,” Dr. Klass said. “It’s a big cognitive, developmental and communicative step. It’s a huge step for a baby.”

Bellevue is a leading laboratory in the promotion of early childhood literacy. Doctors at the hospital prescribe books as routinely as immunizations as part of a national nonprofit program called Reach Out and Read. They are taught to use those books to assess a child’s development, including fine motor skills in the way a child holds the book. Doctors also evaluate language, social and emotional skills based on the way the child communicates about the book with parents.

Education Week: Studies Find 'Easy' Material May Not Be Easy to Learn

Education Week: Studies Find 'Easy' Material May Not Be Easy to Learn.

A growing body of cognitive research, including Mr. Kornell’s study and a series of experiments presented at the American Educational Research Association conference earlier this month, suggests challenging material and study strategies—called “desirable difficulties”—help students remember material better and longer. By contrast, trying to take the route that feels easier can lead students to develop study habits that they believe are helpful, but that actively interfere with their learning.

The findings suggest that it may not be enough to teach students study strategies. Educators also must help students think about why and how they learn while studying, researchers say.

Podcast: The Future of Special Education from Council for Exceptional Childrren

This discussion on learning disabilities began as a Town Hall Meeting at the CEC 2010 Convention & Expo in Nashville. This podcast condenses presentations by Lou Danielson of the American Institutes for Research; Margaret McLaughlin of the University of Maryland; Mary Brownell of the University of Florida; and Doug Fuchs of Vanderbilt University.

You can also share your thoughts by e-mailing us at [email protected] with the subject line "LD Podcast." We will use your input to inform our future work.

Podcast: Including Students with Autism in General Education

 

video is 20 minutes:

This discussion on students with autism began as a Town Hall Meeting at the CEC 2010 Convention & Expo in Nashville. This podcast condenses presentations by Craig Kennedy, Mark Wolery, and Carolyn Hughes of Vanderbilt University and Debra Kamps of the University of Kansas.

You can also share your thoughts by e-mailing us at [email protected] with the subject line "Autism Podcast." We will use your input to inform our future work.

Doctors with Dyslexia

Doctors with Dyslexia.

"The history of medicine is filled with dyslexic surgeons and physicians who were at the top of their profession or pioneering new disciplines, but the way was never straightforward for them - the practice of medicine and surgery were the easy parts; lower education and standardized testing hoops were the hard parts."

Wise Advice from Rick Ackerly

Rick is one of my teaching mentors.

Parents as Teachers in the Academic Achievement Race.

In the current zeitgeist, the pressure many parents feel to teach their children seems to be causing some to be both bad teachers and bad parents. Anxious that their children may fall short academically one parent actually defended her daily academic work with her four-year-old with these words: “These days if your child isn’t reading by kindergarten, he won’t succeed in school.”

Naturally a parent might be anxious in this climate, but motivation from fear usually produces bad results. Love, not fear, is the main ingredient in building self-confidence, and love looks like believing in your child as she engages in ever more complex challenges. Internal motivation is critical to her can-do attitude.

Ums and uhs help toddlers learn words

Futurity.org – Ums and uhs help toddlers learn words.

A new study finds children learn to pay closer attention when parents flounder while talking to them. Processing language, especially words they have never heard before, can be difficult. If a child’s brain waits until a new word is spoken and then tries to figure out what it means after the fact, it becomes a much more difficult task and the child is apt to miss what comes next, says Richard Aslin, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester and one of the study’s authors. “The more predictions a listener can make about what is being communicated, the more efficiently the listener can understand it,” says Aslin.

Easy Ways To Improve Your Child’s Reading Vocabulary | Reading & Other Learning Disabilities

Easy Ways To Improve Your Child’s Reading Vocabulary | Reading & Other Learning Disabilities.

Parents of children with reading disabilities often ask, “How can I help my child improve his reading.” My answer often surprises them. They expect me to show them how to teach phonics or other word recognition skills. But what I tell many parents is this: “Help your child to understand new or unknown words that he hears. Help him to use those words in his speech. Show him you love words. Love of words is infectious.”

Teaching Children the Proper Pencil Grip

Teaching Children the Proper Pencil Grip.

Try this at home Holding a pencil with the correct pencil grip requires a child to move his fingers in unfamiliar ways. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way for your child to strengthen his pencil grip is by practicing writing and tracing. To start, sit with your child while he doodles. As long as he is holding the crayon or pencil with the correct pencil grip, any artistic creation will be a success! Encourage him to draw circles, curves and straight lines, to give his fingers practice with many different movements.

Widening our perceptions of reading and writing difficulties

Widening our perceptions of reading and writing difficulties.

Learning to read and write are complex processes, which can be disrupted in various ways, leading to disorders known as dyslexia and dysgraphia. Two new studies, published in a recent special issue of Elsevier's Cortex provide evidence of this variety, suggesting that effective treatment needs to take it into account.

The first study was from Italy:

However, the new study showed that even in Italian, in which it is relatively straightforward to convert sounds into letters, children still have difficulties in spelling. Younger children with dyslexia generally performed worse than proficient readers; however, the older ones showed a more selective impairment when spelling words, suggesting that knowledge of vocabulary may be more important in spelling than previously thought.

The second study, from Israel:

the first systematic description of a type of reading disorder called "attentional dyslexia" in which children identify letters correctly, but the letters jump between words on the page, e.g., "kind wing" is read as "wind king." Teachers and neuropsychologists often notice that children substitute letters when reading, but in this type of dyslexia the substitutions are not caused by inability to identify letters or convert them to sounds; they result from migrations of letters between words. The findings showed that letters would mostly migrate to the same position in another word, so the first letter of one word would switch places with the first letter of another word. Awareness to the existence of this type of dyslexia is important, because it suggests a straightforward way to assist these children in reading -- by presenting a ‎single word at a time, e.g., with the help of a word-sized window cut in a piece of cardboard.

I am not sure that the Israeli study identified "a new kind of dyslexia" but it is interesting.

Poor behavior doesn't always lead to poor academics

Poor behavior doesn't always lead to poor academics.

{Researchers] followed 350 students in seven at-risk schools over a 5-year period. They assessed both teacher perceptions of student behavior and academic achievement, as well as actual performance. They found that teachers were more likely to report that well-behaved students did better academically and expected more of them -- even when some of these students were struggling with school-work. At the same time, students who acted out in school were seen as having more academic difficulties, even though this was not always the case.

 "Children are not well served when teachers believe that teaching behavior requires different skills than teaching academics," said lead author Algozzine. "Or that teaching academics will magically improve behavior."

The researchers concluded that it is important not to focus solely on improving academic or behavior problems in at-risk students, but to emphasize teaching both behavior and academic skills for these children.

"The take-away message in our work is that children have to be carefully taught academics and behavior if we want to see evidence of these accomplishments in school," said Algozzine.

Also see "Motivation, the Elusive Drive" by Kevin Washburne

Study: Third Grade Reading Predicts Later High School Graduation - Inside School Research - Education Week

Study: Third Grade Reading Predicts Later High School Graduation - Inside School Research - Education Week.

A study to be released this morning at the American Educational Research Association convention here in New Orleans presents an even earlier warning sign: A student who can't read on grade level by 3rd grade is four times less likely to graduate by age 19 than a child who does read proficiently by that time. Add poverty to the mix, and a student is 13 times less likely to graduate on time than his or her proficient, wealthier peer.

"Third grade is a kind of pivot point," said Donald J. Hernandez, the study's author and a sociology professor at Hunter College, at the City University of New York. "We teach reading for the first three grades and then after that children are not so much learning to read but using their reading skills to learn other topics. In that sense if you haven't succeeded by 3rd grade it's more difficult to [remediate] than it would have been if you started before then."

Throwing Curves: Parents and Coaches -- an interesting interaction for education

Throwing Curves: Parents and Coaches -- an interesting interaction for education.

Each part must be ready before the kip will work. There really is no short-cut and kids will work on this one stunt for months before they get it. Contrast this with much of the discussion we see in public education -- when students aren't performing at grade level you almost never hear about the importance of foundation skills, the building of knowledge, the identification of weaknesses, the importance of hard work, persistence, and patience.


The post is about gymnastics, but the lesson there is patience, persistence and sound grasp of the fundamentals.

Can Students with Learning Disabilities Learn How to Learn? | Reading & Other Learning Disabilities

Can Students with Learning Disabilities Learn How to Learn? | Reading & Other Learning Disabilities.

If your child is in regular education classes, has little difficulty quickly recognizing the vast majority of words in his reading materials, has sufficient background experiences and listening vocabulary to understand whatever he reads, but typically struggles to understand the materials, his regular class teachers need to help improve his reading comprehension. Why? Without comprehension, reading has no value.

If, like many excellent subject matter teachers (e.g. history), his teachers have little knowledge of how to teach reading comprehension, the school’s reading specialist should work with them to develop an intensive program of reading comprehension instruction that includes time-saving learning strategies like PROVE. If a strategy like PROVE is taught and reinforced properly and used frequently in his different classes—until it becomes part of his everyday thinking—it will likely help him through school and adulthood.

 If your child is eligible for special education, make sure that his Individualized Education Program (IEP) specifically contains goals (and in some states, short-term objectives) that mandate the mastery of research-based learning strategies, such as PROVE. If his teachers or other school personnel complain that this will require too much change in the regular class curriculum, gently but firmly make clear that research shows such strategies also benefit children without disabilities and that teachers can readily adapt such strategies to the existing curriculum. You can do this by sharing the PROVE article with them, or by bringing a private reading specialist to your child’s IEP meetings.

Do You Know How To Teach Your Preschooler How to Write?

This bothers me:

10 Kindergarten Readiness Skills Your Child Needs | Education.com.

1. Writing
* Help your child practice writing letters, especially the letters in her name.
* Teach your child how to write her name with an uppercase first letter and the remaining letters in lowercase.
* Write in shaving cream in the bathtub, salt or sugar in a cake pan or in finger paint to make practicing more fun and multisensory.

What bothers me? Do parents automatically know how to teach proper letter formation? How about proper pencil grip?