Academic Remediation

OnMedica - News - Dyslexia still a blight for kids, despite treatment advances

OnMedica - News - Dyslexia still a blight for kids, despite treatment advances.

Most children are only diagnosed with dyslexia after they have experienced serious difficulties in school, at a time when it is much harder for them to master new skills, and this could be thwarting their ability to fully realise their potential, say the authors. 

“Professionals should not wait until children are formally diagnosed with dyslexia or experience repeated failures before implementation of reading treatment, because remediation is less effective than early intervention”, explain Robin Peterson and Bruce Pennington from the University of Denver in Colorado, USA. 

About 7% of the population are dyslexic, and boys are about twice as likely to have dyslexia as girls. Mounting evidence suggests that the underlying problem involves difficulty with how sounds in language are heard and mapped onto letters — phonological impairment.

Advice from the OT Part 4 – Teach Your Students the Right Way to Write

This is must reading for all parents, but especially parents of preschoolers and kindergarteners.

Advice from the OT Part 4 – Teach Your Students the Right Way to Write.

In New York City, where I practice, children are expected to be able to write at the age of four. In my clinical opinion, this is two full years before they are developmentally ready, and does more harm than good.  If a child does not yet have the internal strength and stability to perform such a high level task, in order to comply with the grownups demands, he is going to have to manufacture it by straining and contorting his body in a very unnatural way.  This sets him up for a lifetime of poor posture and bad habits.

Accelerated Reader: Undermining literacy while plundering library budgets « The Life That Chose Me

Accelerated Reader: Undermining literacy while plundering library budgets « The Life That Chose Me.

Here is a great article by Gary Stager on the shortcomings of AR and how it drains schools of scarce resources while creating and exacerbating a problem that it is claiming to address.  What I want to add to the conversation is first-hand experience with how AR, and its implementation has had a detrimental effect on reading in our household.

Emotional issues may follow motor problems in kids

Emotional issues may follow motor problems in kids.

Coordination issues -- sometimes diagnosed as developmental coordination disorder (DCD) -- prevent people from accomplishing everyday tasks, such as using scissors or buttoning their shirts. The disorder can lead to frustration at school, at home and on the playground. 

"Traditionally it was believed that children would outgrow any motor problems but there is now much evidence that these difficulties may continue into adolescence and beyond," wrote Daniela Rigoli, the study's lead author and a researcher at Curtin University in Western Australia, in an email. 

For the new study, published in the journal Pediatrics, Rigoli and her colleagues decided to see if, and how, the link between coordination and emotional issues like anxiety and depression is influenced by the way children with DCD see themselves.

Why Colleges Need Dyslexic Students

Successful dyslexics share their differences and why they flourished in higher education and later in their careers. This short video is the highlights from the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity-sponsored conference for college admissions professionals.

Ellen Galinsky: Executive Function Skills Are Essential to America's Present and Future

Ellen Galinsky: Executive Function Skills Are Essential to America's Present and Future.

Just what are executive functions skills? Executive function skills take place in the prefrontal cortex of the brain and other areas of the brain working in concert with it. We use these skills to manage our attention, our emotions, our intellect, and our behavior to reach our goals. They include: 

• Focus -- being able to pay attention; Working memory -- being able to keep information in mind in order to use it; Cognitive flexibility -- being able to adjust to shifting needs and demands; and Inhibitory control -- being able to resist the temptation to go on automatic and do what we need to do to achieve our goals. As children grow older, these skills include reflecting, analyzing, planning and evaluating. Executive function skills are always goal-driven.  
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