Dyscalculia: Students Burdened by blunders with numbers

Between 3 and 6% of schoolchildren suffer from an arithmetic-related learning disability.

Researchers at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich now show that these children are also more likely to exhibit deficits in reading and spelling than had been previously suspected.

Addition and subtraction, multiplication and division are the four basic operations in arithmetic, but for some children, learning these fundamental skills is particularly challenging.

Studies show that they have problems grasping the concepts of number, magnitude, and quantity, and that they do poorly when asked to estimate relative amounts.

In mathematics classes they consistently lag behind, although they have little difficulty in subjects. In other words, they suffer from a highly specific learning disorder, which psychologists call 'dyscalculia'.

In total, about 5% of second- to fourth-graders manifest the condition.

Depending on which arithmetical operation is tested, the prevalence of the disorder varies between 3 and 6%.

These figures emerge from a new study carried out by LMU researchers led by Professor Gerd Schulte-Körne, Director of the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, which has just been published.

The data are based on tests carried out on 1633 third- and fourth-graders in schools in the Munich area.

An arithmetic-related deficit can have a drastic effect on overall scholastic achievement and on the psychological development of the children affected.

They are reluctant to go to school because they are afraid of being perceived as failures and embarrassing themselves in front of their classmates.

Wherever possible, they resort to the use of avoidance strategies and develop a negative self-image. In the end, their performance also suffers in subjects in which they are perfectly capable.

Their lack of mathematical skills usually precludes them from going on to the type of secondary school for which their level of intelligence would otherwise qualify them, and impedes their chances of higher education.

Indeed, so long as they continue to get bad marks in mathematics, their chances of even completing secondary school remain low.

A promising training model
Schulte-Körne complains that the problems of children who suffer from dyscalculia are often overlooked in everyday classroom routine.

Furthermore, unlike the situation in the case of dyslexic disorders, there is no provision in Bavarian schools for adapting the learning environment so as to alleviate the burden on these children, he adds.

"This is not an appropriate response to a disorder that has a biological basis," he says.

It would, for example, be perfectly possible to give such children more time to complete their classwork in mathematics, to give them extra help, and even to refrain altogether from assigning a formal mark to their performance in the subject.

The new study, however, also shows that developmental deficits in cognition can affect more than one learning domain.

The LMU researchers found the prevalence of so-called comorbidity to be far higher than has been previously recognized.

According to psychologist Dr. Kristina Moll, first author on the new report, about 57% of children who have an arithmetic-related learning disorder also suffer from a reading or spelling disability.

"These data were quite a surprise for us", Schulte-Körne confesses. "This finding forces us to think again about diagnostic procedures for specific learning disorders but, above all, about how we can more effectively treat these conditions," Moll adds.

"These children need intensive and specific training and support. Otherwise, they are in danger of failing to achieve the scholastic success that would be compatible with their general level of intelligence."

As Schulte-Körne points out, effective approaches to the mitigation of dyscalculia are already available. These, however, require intensive, long-term training programs for the children affected.

In addition, the new study reveals that gender also appears to play a role in determining susceptibility to specific learning disorders, says Schulte-Körne: "While deficits in spelling are more prevalent among boys, girls are more likely to display dyscalculia. Reading difficulties, on the other hand, appear to be equally prevalent in both sexes."

The reasons for these striking findings remain unclear. Schulte-Körne suspects that biological factors are responsible, given that the learning environments experienced by both sexes are very similar.

Decoding Dyslexia Poster

Easy to remember list of accomodations for students with Dyslexia.

www.facebook.com/DecodingDyslexiaUT/ 

Dyslexia: Our Education System is failing students - Cartoon

Disabled Students restrained, secluded in school

This is a graph of Instances of Restraint and Seclusion Per 100 Students. Credit: Carsey Institute at UNH

The restraint and seclusion of students in U.S. public schools in response to student behaviour problems are used much more frequently on students with a disability than on students without a disability, and especially in affluent school districts, according to new research at the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire.

Restraint is a practice that uses physical or mechanical means to restrict a student's freedom of motion.

Seclusion is a practice that usually involves the involuntary isolation of a student for a period of several minutes.

Douglas Gagnon

The research is presented in the Carsey Institute brief "Variation in rates of restraint and seclusion among students with a disability."

The research was conducted by Douglas Gagnon, doctoral candidate in education at UNH and a research assistant at the Carsey Institute; Marybeth Mattingly, director of research on vulnerable families at the Carsey Institute and research assistant professor of sociology at UNH; and Vincent Connelly, associate professor of education at UNH.

Vincent Connelly

On average across school districts nationwide, there were 2.6 instances of restraint for every 100 students with a disability for the 2009-2010 school year, compared with only 0.1 instances for every 100 students without a disability, the researchers found. Seclusion rates followed a similar pattern.

Add caption

This is a graph of Percentage of Districts Reporting Restraint/Seclusion For Students with a Disability. Credit: Carsey Institute at UNH

The researchers found there was wide variability in the use of restraint and seclusion on students with a disability in school districts, with the vast majority of school districts not employing these techniques.

According to the researchers, 59.3 percent of school districts report no instances of restraint of a student with a disability and 82.5 percent do not report a single instance of seclusion.

However, a small proportion of districts report exceedingly high rates.

"Schools today are tasked with implementing positive techniques that can effectively manage the difficult and sometimes violent behaviors of the most challenging students with a disability, which might lead some schools to more extreme measures," the researchers said.

The researchers also found that school districts with higher concentrations of poverty and larger black and Hispanic populations are associated with lower rates of restraint and seclusion. In fact, average rates of restraint and seclusion are more than twice as high in school districts of low poverty and low diversity.

"If certain disability types elicit more frequent restraint and seclusion, and the frequency of such disabilities differs by school type, this may help explain why rates differ across school poverty and racial composition," the researchers said.

More information: This research is based on data from the 2009-2010 Civil Rights Data Collection and the 2009 Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates. The research brief "Variation in rates of restraint and seclusion among students with a disability" is available at carseyinstitute.unh.edu/publication/969

Dyslexia: Smartphone Apps for Students

NCLD: Reading is the area in which students with dyslexia struggle the most. 

Fortunately, there are many mobile apps that can help.

While we’ve reviewed all of the following ones, and they work well for my daughter who has dyslexia, we also know that “one size (or app) does not fit all.”

You may need to do additional research before finding the app that provides the best “fit” for your child.

Understanding Dyslexia - Infographic

Click on the Image to View the full Infographic or Download it PDF format here

Online Learning: Regular demands on attention and memory needed

Somewhere between the traditional classroom and old fashion home schooling, online learning has emerged as the dominant educational resource.

Skyrocketing tuition fees, particularly at the college level, has sped the inevitable migration to online accreditation.

While the benefits are obvious, the loss of those seamless instances of micro-feedback between student and teacher makes attention the primary casualty of its rapid adoption.

Efforts to bridge this gap and reduce mind wandering among online students are underway at Harvard University, an institution well poised to be a leader in providing online content.

A new study in PNAS from their psychology department gives one possible solution to the problem. By making attentional demands in the form of brief quizzes on 5-minute intervals, student performance in online courses can be significantly improved.

Even the most highly motivated student still battles the constant urge to search or click on a link to learn more—or less as the case may be.

Undoubtedly striking the right balance between freedom and oversight is the central challenge to giving students mastery over a given body of knowledge.

Various models have emerged that have garnered massive worldwide enrollment.

Free courses at edX.org, coursera.org, 2u.com, Udacity.com have all been highly successful.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the call for help in maintaining selective attention in the absence of the normal controllers has come from the students themselves.

Noval Khan
Schacter Memory Lab

The approach taken by the new Harvard study is based on what they call interpolated memory.

It is based upon the idea of interpolating the coursework or task with short memory tasks.

Students were given a 21-minute statistics video lecture which was segmented into four periods, each followed up with a 2-minute testing period.

The testing period involved brief review, testing, and even unrelated arithmetic. The perhaps predictable results were that students given the additional retesting at each segment, did much better on cumulative testing done after the lecture.

This formalisation of the obvious was corroborated by the student self-assessment in which they invariably reported reduced periods of mind wandering.

The study adds rigor to the idea that replacing a human lecturer with a human on a screen can work, provided appropriate considerations for the learning process are taken.

A useful analogy might be to consider running on a field compared to running on a treadmill. On your own on the field, you can control your speed at every step, and go in a any direction you choose.

On a treadmill your pace is set for you. The best performance seems to be somewhere in between, as on a track.

Here the goal is set, the student has some freedoms in getting there at their own pace, but is guided at every turn.

More information: 
Interpolated memory tests reduce mind wandering and improve learning of online lectures, PNAS, Published online before print April 1, 2013, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1221764110

College Degrees Challenge Students with Learning Difficulties

It may surprise you to learn that the U.S. ranks 14th among 37 developed nations when it comes to the percentage of young people holding college degrees. 

According to a study conducted by the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2011, only 56% of students in the U.S. that begin four-year colleges are likely to graduate.

If college presents insurmountable obstacles for almost half of all college students, you can imagine what that means for students with learning disabilities who already face challenges.

The postsecondary success rate for students with LD is half that of the general population; it’s estimated that only 28% receive a diploma.

According to the Institute for Higher Education Policy, the low graduation rate is largely attributable to educational missteps that begin in elementary school and continue through high school.

From kindergarten through 12th grade, students with LD experience “inadequate academic preparation when compared to their peers without disabilities; lower academic expectations; inferior pedagogy and services; and lack of full access to the core curriculum.”

Furthermore, with high school guidance counselors, teachers, and even parents focused on college admission rather than how to succeed when they get there, students with LD remain largely uneducated about the dramatically different culture they’re about to enter.

Even parents who graduated college themselves remain ignorant of the obstacles kids with learning disabilities encounter at the college level.

Read more of this article here

Reading Disabilities: 50 Useful Apps For Students

Whether you’re the parent of a child with a reading disability or an educator that works with learning disabled students on a daily basis, you’re undoubtedly always looking for new tools to help these bright young kids meet their potential and work through their disability.

While there are numerous technologies out there that can help, perhaps one of the richest is the iPad, which offers dozens of applications designed to meet the needs of learning disabled kids and beginning readers alike.

Here, we highlight just a few of the amazing apps out there that can help students with a reading disability improve their skills not only in reading, writing, and spelling, but also get a boost in confidence and learn to see school as a fun, engaging activity, not a struggle.

Helpful Tools

These tools are useful for both educators and students with reading disabilities alike, aiding in everything from looking up a correct spelling to reading text out loud.

1. Speak It!: Speak It! is a great text-to-speech solution that can allow students with reading disabilities to get a little help with reading when they need it.
2. Talk to Me: Talk to Me is another text to speech application. It can be used to read words out loud as they are typed, which can help students to better correlate the letters and words with how they’re pronounced.
3. Dragon Dictation: Dragon Dictation works in reverse of the two apps we just listed. Instead of reading text out loud, the application writes down spoken text. For students who struggle with writing, it can be a great way for them to jot down ideas or get help learning.
4. Dyslexic Like Me: Explaining dyslexia to a child can be hard, but this application can make it a little easier. It’s an interactive children’s book that helps students to understand dyslexia and become empowered to overcome their learning disability.
5. Merriam-Webster Dictionary: If spelling is a problem, it’s always a good idea to have a really great dictionary on hand. This app from Merriam-Webster can provide that.
6. Ditionary.com: If Dictionary.com is your go-to place for definitions and spelling help, this app can be a great way to bring that functionality to your iPad or iPhone.
7. Prizmo: With Prizmo, users can scan in any kind of text document and have the program read it out loud, which can be a big help to those who struggle with reading.
8. Flashcards for iPad: This app makes it easy to study words, spelling, and other things that young and LD readers might need help with.
9. Soundnote: Using Soundnote, you can record drawings, notes, and audio all at once, balancing reading-based skills with those that are auditory and visual.

Fundamentals

These apps help teach the fundamentals of reading, writing, and spelling to any young learner, but can be especially helpful for those who are struggling.

10. Alphabet Zoo: Alphabet Zoo is a great tool for helping young readers to recognize letter sounds. Using text and pictures of animals, kids can build their reading skills while having fun.
11. Find the Letters HD: A favorite of special education teachers and psychologists, this app asks learners to find letters and numbers in a coloring grid. It helps build skills in spatial positioning, depth orientation, form discrimination, and concentration and attention.
12. First Words Sampler: Preschoolers with a reading disability can get a head start on improving their skills with this app that teaches them about letters and words using fun graphics and sounds.
13. Montessori Crosswords: Embrace the Montessori method by using this app to help youngsters improve their spelling and reading skills through engaging phonics-based exercises.
14. Read & Write :Students can practice reading and writing letters using this application. Users can trace letters, learn letter sounds, and get illustrations to go along with each part of the alphabet.
15. Sound Literacy: With a portion of the proceeds from this app going to the Dyslexia Association, there’s no reason not to sign on. Even better, the app is incredibly useful, employing the Orton-Gillingham method to help students recognize the spellings of English phonemes.
16. weesay ABC: Using pictures, words, and sounds, this application makes it easy for young students to practice and learn their ABCs.
17. abc PocketPhonics: This app is a great tool for teaching reading disabled students the fundamentals of letter sounds and shapes.
18. The Writing Machine: By correlating pictures and words, reading text, sounding out letters, this tool helps students develop early literacy abilities with greater ease.
19. WordSort: One of the top educational apps out there, this game helps kids to learn how to identify parts of speech, like nouns, adverbs, and verbs, as well as emphasizing grammar skills.
20. ABC Phonics Word Families: Using analogy phonics (or word families) this application teaches young learners to see and hear the patterns of commonality in a set of words. With flashcards, spelling words, scrambled words, and games, this app is a must-have for helping students.

Reading

These excellent iPad apps can be a big help to reading disabled students who need a little extra support when trying to read.

21. Blio: Blio offers all the same features of any basic e-reader, and also a few things that make it unique. Through synchronized highlighting and a serial presentation view, the app helps those with reading disabilities make sense of the text, something many other similar apps don’t offer.
22. Read 2 Me: For those who have difficulty reading, apps like Read 2 Me can be a godsend. The app comes complete with an entire library of texts, all of which can be read out loud.
23. Read2Go: If you use DAISY (Digital Accessible Information System) books in your classroom, Read2Go is one of the best and most accessible ways to read those books on iOS.
24. AppWriter: Designed with reading and writing disabilities in mind, this text editor for iPad integrates numerous accessibility features into standard text editing functionality.
25. Audiobooks: Sometimes students with reading disabilities might just want a break from reading books the old fashioned way. That’s why this amazing collection of free audiobooks can come in handy, offering access to classics like Romeo and Juliet and Treasure Island.
26. Bob’s Books: Bob’s Books uses phonics-based interactive games to help kids learn how to read. Activities will help young learners to sound out words, spell, and make connections between letters and sounds.
27. iStoryTime: There are numerous titles to choose from in the iStoryTime series, all of which allow kids to have the book read to them or to get help reading it themselves.
28. MeeGenius! Kids’ Books: MeeGenius is another series that’s perfect for practicing reading skills. Those with trouble reading can use illustrations and helpful word highlighting to get help, or just have the book read to them until they’re confident enough to do it on their own.
29. Reading Trainer: While this app is designed to help average readers boost their reading speed and ability, it can be useful to those who struggle as well, as many of the skills taught can help just about anyone become a more confident reader.
30. See Read Say: This application will help to ensure that young learners are familiar with all of the Dolch sight words (the most common words), using games, activities, and tons of practice.
31. Stories2Learn: Why use existing stories to help troubled readers when you can build your own? This application lets you develop your own text and audio stories, including messages, topics, and other things that can help keep kids interested.
32. eReading series: The eReading series from Brain Integration LLC, helps young readers at all levels of proficiency learn about topics like Greek Mythology and Gulliver’s Travels. Users can have the book read to them, or practice reading without the help, too.

Writing

For those with reading disabilities, sometimes writing can also be a trying task. Here are some apps that can help teach, assist, and make writing more fun.

33. iWrite Words: Named by The Washington Post as one of the best apps for special needs kids, this game-based program helps youngsters learn to write their letters through a fun and engaging setup that uses illustrations and animations to keep things interesting.
34. AlphaWriter: Using Montessori-based learning methods, this application helps kids to learn how to read, write, and spell phonetically. It also teaches lessons on consonants and vowels, letter sounds, writing stories, and much more.
35. Sentence Builder: Through this application, elementary school children will learn how to build grammatically correct sentences, with a special focus on using connector words.
36. Story Builder: After kids are done learning how to build sentences, they can move onto this app which combines those sentences into one coherent story, complete with illustrations.
37. Writing Prompts: Having trouble thinking of things for students to write about? This app removes that roadblock and offers up numerous ideas for short writing assignments.
38. Idea Sketch: This mind-mapping app can help learning disabled students make sense of their ideas and organize them in ways that they can easily translate into written work.
39. Storyrobe: Teachers and students can build and share their own unique stories through this application. Integration with YouTube and email makes it easy to share and revise, too.

Spelling

These applications can be excellent tools for improving spelling skills.

40. American Wordspeller: Looking up a word in a dictionary isn’t that simple if you have no idea how to spell it. This app removes that problem and employs a method that lets you much more easily pinpoint how to spell just about any word.
41. Word Magic: Created by the parents of a five-year-old, this app for young learners help kids learn words and how to spell them correctly. It uses lots of positive reinforcement, rewards, and fun pictures to keep things interesting to learners.
42. Typ-O: Poor spellers can rejoice over this great application that help you spell words correctly in any typing-related program on your iPhone or iPad.
43. A1 Spelling App: This application is a great way to help poor spellers begin to learn the correct spelling of common words, increasing difficulty as kids master words.
44. iSpell Word: iSpell Word is designed to help kids learn the spellings of simple English words. It uses games to teach, with each level of the game employing more difficult words so kids are always challenged.
45. Jumbline: If you’re looking to make reading, writing, and spelling into a game, this app can help. It’s full of word games that ask players to use speed, smarts, pattern recognition, and spelling skills to win.
46. Spelling Bee Challenge: Kids can have fun taking part in a mock spelling bee using this application that boosts both spelling and vocab skills.
47. Word Fall: In this educational game, words fall from the sky and players must collect letters to form basic words.
48. WordLadder: This highly challenging word game will get older readers thinking about how words are spelled and how they can be connected and changed to form new words.
49. ACT Spell: Developed especially for learners with disabilities and special needs, this tool helps develop motor control, word recognition, spelling, and reading skills.
50. Word Wizard: Lauded by The New York Times, this word-focused app lets kids hear the sounds of letters and words through a movable alphabet while also engaging them in spelling practice and games.

Dyslexia: Merilee Grage Hearing the Voices of Dragon

This week we are looking at the story of Merilee Grage who struggled with undiagnosed dyslexia for years.

She is using Nuance's Dragon Naturally Speaking to help finish her Master’s degree in Special Education.

She is a believer in the use of assistive tech in the classroom, and has introduced Dragon to the students in her repsonibility, who face reading challenges.

She reports that the results have been “amazing.”

Grage dropped out of college in 1979 due to her undiagnosed dyslexia, but with Dragon NaturallySpeaking, the tables have turned: "I bought Dragon to help with my typing and I ended up using it for everything: emails, papers, my online courses, and anything else that requires a keyboard."

"It’s about creativity and having a flow of work that’s not interrupted by worrying about spelling and grammar. Dragon is a major part of that."

More recently, Merilee has seen the transformation Dragon has had on students of all ages, including a 3rd grader with dyslexia who, for the first time, was excited about reading and was thirsty for more.

“When we were done,” Grage recalls he said, "There has to be a third book." His motivation was amazing.

This was a student who didn’t want to go to the resource room because he read at a first grade level and couldn’t write complete sentences.

"Dragon and echo reading during profile creation forced him to work on word pronunciation, and his comprehension and fluency greatly increased."

To read more of Merilee’s story, go to Nuance's website here.

University of Ghent Dyslexia Studies in Students - Video

To see the Video Click on the picture to link to the University of Ghent's  Website

This video is in the Dutch /Flemish language with English sub-titles.

Studying with Dyslexia
The documentary tells the story of young professionals with dyslexia who are studying at the university and how they are building exciting careers.

They testify about the obstacles from their student days.

A team of experts combines the stories of the professionals in the research on dyslexia today. A melting pot of intense testimony, scientific research and everyday practice makes for a fascinating viewing experience.

"Studying with dyslexia 'is an absolute must for anyone who wants to get rid of prejudices about dyslexia.

The DVD can be ordered via sigried.lievens@ugent.be

Teacher Robots may become the future in elementary schools

We’ve been promised for years that robots will soon move from factories into our everyday lives and yet so far, nothing.

In addition to dexterity and the ability to walk, one of the biggest hurdles to personal robotics has been human-machine interaction.

For a machine to enter human space, it has to understand certain niceties and if a robot with social skills can be built, it could have a huge effect on our classrooms.

An ideal social robot responds not just to what you say, but to how you say it, factoring in social cues like intonation, gestures, and facial expressions.

The robot can then respond with appropriate body language. We take this kind of interaction for granted in science fiction.

In reality, it looks like Leonardo, a robot built by MIT’s Cynthia Breazeal that smiles and reaches for a puppet that he’s told is good, or Kismet, who hangs his head in shame when scolded.

We like treating robots as though they are people. Even with today’s simplest robots, researchers have seen study participants give their machines names and carry on one-sided conversations with them.

Compare that to the ambivalence people feel about their computer screens and it’s easy to see the potential for robots to keep people engaged.

Our affinity for robots also appears to affect how we learn from them. Researchers at Yale recently found that people doing cognitive tasks like logic puzzles (in this case nonograms) learn more effectively when guided by a physical robot than they do with the same help from an on-screen avatar.

The study doesn’t draw conclusions as to why the physical robot was a more effective teacher than its on-screen version, but one guess is that the physical presence of a teaching robot lends it a degree of authority that participants didn’t sense from the digital instructors.

The way we divide the world between animate and inanimate objects plays a major role in how we learn, says Yale professor Brian Scassellati, who worked on the study.

We’re used to identifying computers as inanimate and teachers as animate, but social robots don’t fit neatly into either category.

Their physical presence and interactivity make them seem animate without actually being alive, and they can respond to people and social cues, but often only in fixed and superficial ways.

A National Science Foundation project led by Scassellati, Breazeal and USC professor Maja Mataric aims to push these limits.

The team is working to develop robots that can help children with disabilities learn social and cognitive skills.

To carry out meaningful interactions, though, these robots have to be able to learn on their own so they can understand an individual’s personality traits and social cues.

Juyang Weng, co-founder of Michigan State University’s Embodied Intelligence Laboratory, is studying how robotic learning and cognitive development can look more like human learning in order to strengthen the connection between children and robot teachers.

Traditional robots, even ones used in education, aren’t really interactive, he says, but are often just a new interface for familiar computer programs.

Creating artificial intelligence based on learning and social skills, though, will set a new standard for interactive educational technologies.

“Eventually if a robot can develop its mind, then the robot can be a very close friend of a child,” Weng says. “The robot can be a teacher in a very fundamental way.”

Yes, it may still be a long time before children learn their ABC's in the robotic classroom but moving social robots from science fiction to reality promises to be a powerful force for education.

Dyslexia: Reading Program ineffective for Students with Learning Difficulties

A new report from the What Works Clearinghouse questions the effectiveness of a longstanding, widely used reading program, developed by McGraw-Hill, for students with learning disabilities.

In a report this month, the WWC found that there is evidence that Reading Mastery has "no discernible effects on reading comprehension and potentially negative effects on alphabetics, reading fluency, and writing for students with learning disabilities."

Looking at the 17 studies about Reading Mastery Classic and Reading Mastery Signature, specifically for students with learning disabilities, the WWC found two of them met its research standards.

Reading Mastery is used in all 50 US states and internationally, and more than 6,500 schools across the country use Reading Mastery Signature, McGraw-Hill said.

The cost per student, the WWC said, during the first year of implementation ranges from $200 to $300 and pays for materials including storybooks, textbooks, workbooks and textbooks. Buying a full set of teaching materials costs between $650 and $1,000 per grade level.

The research in these studies included 113 students with learning disabilities in 2nd through 5th grades from schools in the southeast.

In a typical Reading Mastery lesson, there are seven to nine short activities that address skills such as phonemic awareness, letter-sound correspondence, sounding out words, word recognition, vocabulary, oral reading fluency, and comprehension.

Teachers get scripted lessons to keep students on task, and students who struggle get remedial lessons.

McGraw-Hill cited other research that it says supports its confidence in Reading Mastery's effectiveness.

"For more than 40 years, Reading Mastery has supported the development of struggling readers in grades preK-5 through Direct Instruction," McGraw-Hill spokesman Brian Belardi said.

"The vast majority of anecdotal and empirical evidence suggests that Reading Mastery has a positive, meaningful impact on improving student learning."


Contact:Brian Belardi
McGraw-Hill Education
(212) 904-4827
brian_belardi@mcgraw-hill.com

How Do Students with learning Disabilities Learn?

In this insightful interview, Associate Professor, The Pennsylvania State University, Altoona College, Barbara Hong defines what a learning disability is, and tells us what elements we should start looking for, when analyzing educational websites to ensure children with learning disabilities are integrated in the educational process.

Sleep paralysis more common in students

Sleep paralysis, a condition that affects less the 8 percent of the general population, is defined as “a discrete period of time during which voluntary muscle movement is inhibited, yet ocular and respiratory movements are intact,” according to a new study in the current issue of Sleep Medicine Reviews.

Some experts now suspect the townspeople involved in the Salem witch trials may have been experiencing sleep paralysis and in the 19th-century novel Moby Dick, the main character Ishmael experiences an episode of sleep paralysis in the form of a malevolent presence in the room.

Some people who experience these episodes may regularly try to avoid going to sleep because of the unpleasant sensations they experience. But other people enjoy the sensations they feel during sleep paralysis, notes Brian A. Sharpless, clinical assistant professor of psychology at Penn State.

“I realized that there were no real sleep paralysis prevalence rates available that were based on large and diverse samples,” Sharpless says. “So I combined data from my previous study with 34 other studies to determine how common it was in different groups.”

He looked at a total of 35 published studies from the past 50 years to find lifetime sleep paralysis rates.

These studies surveyed a total of 36,533 people. Overall he found that about one-fifth of these people experienced an episode at least once. Frequency of sleep paralysis ranged from once in a lifetime to every night.

When looking at specific groups, 28 percent of students reported experiencing sleep paralysis, while nearly 32 percent of psychiatric patients reported experiencing at least one episode.

People with panic disorder were even more likely to experience sleep paralysis, and almost 35 percent of those surveyed reported experiencing these episodes. Sleep paralysis also appears to be more common in non-Caucasians.

“Sleep paralysis should be assessed more regularly and uniformly in order to determine its impact on individual functioning and better articulate its relation to other psychiatric and medical conditions,” Sharpless says.

He looked at a broad range of samples—papers were included from several different countries.

People experience three basic types of hallucinations during sleep paralysis—the presence of an intruder, pressure on the chest sometimes accompanied by physical and/or sexual assault experiences, and levitation or out-of-body experiences.

There has been little research conducted on how to alleviate sleep paralysis or whether or not people experience episodes throughout their lives.

“I want to better understand how sleep paralysis affects people, as opposed to simply knowing that they experience it,” says Sharpless. “I want to see how it impacts their lives.”

Sharpless hopes to look at relationships between sleep paralysis and post-traumatic stress disorder in the future.

Jacques P. Barber, professor of psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, contributed to the research, which was supported in part by the National Institute of Mental Health.

More news from Penn State: http://live.psu.edu/

UK Schools Rating System to be Cheapened

Under new rules, UK school inspectors will listen to primary school pupils read. 

Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

Fewer UK schools will be rated outstanding from next year, inspectors have said. The move comes after Michael Gove, the UK coalition education secretary, said many schools awarded the ranking did not deserve it.

Under rules coming into force in January, UK school inspectors will pay more attention to pupils' behaviour, the quality of teaching, and children's ability to read.

They will also spend more time scrutinising whether schools are narrowing the gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers.

Miriam Rosen, Ofsted's chief inspector, said she expected it would become "more difficult to achieve the accolade of outstanding".

Education Audit: Ofsted's most recent annual report, published in November, showed that 13% of schools in England were rated as Outstanding, 43% were Good, 37% were Satisfactory and 8% were Inadequate.

Earlier this month Gove told a conference on UK school leadership that it was "a worry to me that so many UK schools are still judged as Outstanding overall when they have not achieved an Outstanding in their teaching and learning".

Inspectors give an overall rating to schools, but also give individual verdicts on teaching and learning. Ofsted figures show that of 3,577 schools judged outstanding overall at their latest inspection, 923 would have been ranked as good or very good at teaching.

The UK coalition government has instructed Ofsted to dramatically reduce the inspection categories to four: the achievement of pupils; the quality of teaching and learning; the effectiveness of the leadership and management; and standards of behaviour and safety..

Schools will no longer receive separate verdicts on whether they are doing their best to achieve community cohesion or safeguard their pupils.

Will Google+ Be a Real Benefit to Teachers?

If you’re a teacher or in the US parliance, an 'educator' and you haven’t yet started experimenting with Google+ you may be missing out on a useful tool.

Google+ is being promoted as the next best and the most amazing, awesome collaboration tool. To be more moderate, it may help you promote your classes in a better way.

There are some good ways to think about this and how you get started. Possibly the best function of Google+ is it's availability and the savings on promotional overheads. The tool is open to anyone with a Google Gmail account and is free to users.

Setup an Account

First connect to Google+ at www.google.com and establish an account using your existing Gmail account or follow the online instructions to make a new account.

Making a Class Circle

Let's look at one of the basic functions that may assist teachers i.e. building a class environment and populating this with like minded and motivated students /people.

After you’ve set up your account and published your profile, go to your Circles page and start adding people in your class to the circle.



When you have it all populated, share it with the people in that circle, so they can all add each other to the same circle.

Do this by clicking “share this circle” in the upper right hand side of your screen. (If you have any questions, leave them in the comments section and Google+ promise to sort you out.)

Sharing your Lesson Plans

You can post your lesson plans to your circle without sharing them to the outside world. Simply click the X on other circles and sharing options like “public” and “extended circles” until your special class circle is all that’s remaining, and you have your privacy.


Now, post lesson plans, share YouTube videos, photos, and more via links. You can even do location-related homework by having people post location check-ins to the circle as a response to your plans.

Conclusion
I hope this posting has been of some assistance to you and wish you and your students great success for the future.

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