Childhood Autism: English Arsonists destroy boy's Xmas surprise treat

An arson attack which destroyed a sensory room built as a Christmas present for a severely autistic boy has been condemned as a "disgusting and cowardly crime".

Fiona and Wesley Ratcliff, from Woodhouse Park in Wythenshawe, Manchester, had spent the last two weeks transforming the summer house into a safe play space for their seven -year-old s on Harvey, who suffers from Phelan-McDermid syndrome, (22q13) a rare genetic disorder.

They had planned to show Harvey the sensory room for the first time on Christmas Day, but instead they discovered it had been destroyed in an arson attack.

Wesley Ratcliff, 32, said: "Everyone was devastated. We had family come down from Scotland. They had put in the money towards helping us build it. They had all come down to see his face.

"We are all in shock. The consequence with what could have happened; it being so close to the house - I think we are lucky."

A guinea pig hutch next to the summer house had also been set alight, but the two guinea pigs escaped unharmed.

Mr Ratcliff, who is a support worker with autistic adults, said: "We bought the summer house at the beginning of the month, and the idea was to get it up and ready for Christmas.

"We painted it, put the flooring down, put the lights in, decorated it with pictures and painted it sky blue because Harvey is a Manchester City fan. It was just somewhere where he could go when he was having a hard time. I had put the final touches in on Christmas Eve."

But yesterday morning Mr Ratcliff found that the summer house had been destroyed by a fire.

He said: "The disco lights and a digital radio had been stolen. We had put soft floor mats inside which were completely burnt by the fire. The bean bag chair and a little stool and easel table were all destroyed as well.

"My opinion is that we have not been targeted, but that it was just a random attack. It was probably just some drunk teenagers, a one off. My wife is really upset and she is scared about being alone with the kids in the house."

Detective Inspector Jane Curran said: "This truly is heartbreaking, the family, like every other family across Greater Manchester, were really looking forward to showing their son his Christmas present when they woke on Christmas Day.

"Whoever did this really has no morals whatsoever.

"It is a disgusting and cowardly crime and I really would like anyone who may have seen anything or who has any information about this to contact us.

"Thankfully we think that the weather overnight extinguished the fire otherwise we may have been dealing with a much more serious incident yesterday."

Dyslexia: Is it Big in Japan?

Many psychologists and cognitive scientists are convinced that Dyslexia is a complex cognitive disorder that only affects people trying to learn and read particularly difficult languages, ones which are full of exceptions to their own grammatical rules and which are more conceptual and not graphical in nature.

With this in mind, Dyslexia is thought to be very rare or non-existent in oriental languages because of the graphical nature of their language and writings.

Below is an extract from The Asahi Shimbun article that not only considers Dyslexia an issue in Japan but has first hand knowledge of the difficulties incurred by students.

Satoru Inoue

"Satoru Inoue and other people in Japan with dyslexia, a learning disorder that makes reading and writing difficult, have begun speaking out about their experiences by writing books and appearing in documentary films.

"I'd like teachers to know that children have the right to learn,” Satoru said, explaining why he wrote the book. “I want to do what I can so that there are fewer people like me."

Awareness of the disorder has been slow to develop in Japan, while support has been lagging that of Western countries.

Since the support is limited, many only become aware that they have dyslexia after reaching adulthood."

A Second extract from the same article:

"Like Satoru, Hiroko Sunanaga reached adulthood not knowing that she had dyslexia.

Her daily life is now featured in "DX (Dyslexia) na Hibi: Bin-chan no Baai" (DX days: The case of Bin-chan), an 81-minute documentary.

Sunanaga, whose nickname is Bin-chan, is now in her 30s.

A professor at an art university in London, where Sunanaga was studying in her early 20s, was the first person to suggest she had dyslexia."
 
Read the full article here

English Games to improve literacy

A great way to command children's attention is through fun educational games. These teaching resources introduce and revise English subjects with children aged 5 to 15 years.

Starting with the alphabet and progress through English grammar and vocabulary using board games, puzzles, story telling, handwriting games and rescue packs.

Visit the Keen-to-Learn website and decide for yourself!

Cognition : A case study of an English-Japanese bilingual with monolingual dyslexia

ScienceDirect - Cognition : A case study of an English-Japanese bilingual with monolingual dyslexia

Here is a very interesting report, the case of AS, a 16 year-old English/Japanese bilingual boy, whose reading/writing difficulties are confined to English only.

AS was born in Japan to a highly literate Australian father and English mother, and goes to a Japanese selective senior high school in Japan. His spoken language at home is English.

AS's reading in logo-graphic Japanese Kanji and syllabic Kana is equivalent to that of Japanese undergraduates or graduates.

In contrast, his performance in various reading and writing tests in English as well as tasks involving phonological processing was very poor, even when compared to his Japanese contemporaries.

Yet he has no problem with letter names or letter sounds, and his phoneme categorisation is well within the normal range of English native speakers.

The data show a clear dissociation between AS's ability to read English and Japanese, and the research study put forward the ‘hypothesis of granularity and transparency'.

Definitions
The Orthography of a language specifies the correct way of using a specific writing system to write the language and Phonology is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language.

Study Postulation
It is postulated that any language where orthography-to-phonology mapping is transparent, or even opaque, or any language whose orthographic unit representing sound is coarse (i.e. at a whole character or word level) should not produce a high incidence of developmental phonological dyslexia.