Scotland: Farming with Dyslexia

The inaugural meeting of the Farming with Dyslexia Working Group, led by NFU Scotland, took place earlier this week.

Chaired by the Union’s Vice President Rob Livesey, the group was established to ensure that Scottish farming stakeholders recognise the needs of dyslexic crofters and farmers in the most appropriate way.

Representatives from NFU Scotland, the Scottish Government’s Rural Payments Inspection Directorate, Forestry Commission Scotland, Dyslexia Scotland and Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC) along with four farming and crofting members of NFU Scotland who have dyslexia attended the meeting on Wednesday (3 September).

Steered by NFU Scotland, this group was borne from the recognition that dyslexia is a real, but often hidden, issue among the farming community.

With some 25 per cent of agriculture students at SRUC receiving support for dyslexia, it is believed this heritable condition is more prevalent within the farming sector than previously thought.

However, due to stigma and poor understanding, it can remain undiagnosed and can be problematic for those dealing with communications, regulation and form-filling within the agriculture industry.

The Union recently launched a campaign to raise awareness of dyslexia amongst the farming community, whilst engaging with the Scottish Government, Dyslexia Scotland and SRUC to see how joint work can be undertaken to better recognise the issue and support those affected.

NFU Scotland Vice President Rob Livesey commented:

“Today’s meeting was a constructive one and a sound starting point for those keen to recognise the impact of dyslexia within our industry and what action we can take to help their situation.

“I believe we have a great bunch of people with vision and determination to make a difference.  The contribution from those within the working group will be crucial to the success of this initiative.

“It’s now clear to myself and others that there is no one size fits all approach to helping those with dyslexia working within Scottish farming. However, there is a commitment to proactively help those that have or suspect they have dyslexia.

“As a group, our first objective is to continue to raise awareness and build on the work that we have started. The next task we have is to attempt to remove the stigma attached to dyslexia. We strongly believe as a group that there is huge potential to tap into the talent that dyslexic people in our industry have and help them recognise their own potential for the benefit of all.

“That ambition can be underpinned by engaging with all stakeholders to ensure the needs of those with dyslexia are taken into account and that all communications and regulations are available in a format appropriate for those with dyslexia.

“As a result we will be embarking on a campaign in the next few months to address those stated aims.”

Note to Editors

• The three key objectives agreed at the first meeting of the Farmers with Dyslexia Working group were:
• Raise awareness of dyslexia to reduce the stigma and promote the abilities of dyslexic individuals which are of great benefit to the agriculture industry
• Engage with the Scottish Government and other stakeholders to ensure measures to recognise dyslexia among the farming community are appropriate.
• Ensure systems of communication with regulatory bodies are more accessible for dyslexic farmers and crofters with a choice of delivery options
• A photograph of the working group is available on request, by contacting Bob Carruth: media@nfus.org.uk or by calling 0131 472 4006.
• NFU Scotland launched a campaign to get better support in place for farmers and crofters who have dyslexia in July to ensure there is suitable support in place to make the day-to-day running of their businesses easier and more efficient when it comes to form filling and communicating with farming organisations.
• The campaign has received the backing from former racing driver Sir Jackie Stewart and the Union has been working with Scottish Government, Dyslexia Scotland and SRUC throughout the campaign. For more information visit: http://tiny.cc/hisllx

Children with dyslexia might also be having difficulties with social skills

A reluctance to do any reading may be a classic sign of dyslexia, but there may be other tell-tale signs that can raise a parent's concern according to Joanna Dunton of Bangor University's Miles Dyslexia Centre.

Speaking ahead of Dyslexia Awareness Week, (3- 9 November) Language Therapist Jo Dunton explained that children with dyslexia might be having difficulties with reading, spelling and writing, but also with social skills, and with other seemingly unrelated areas.

"It could be that a dyslexic child may be particularly prone to forgetting things or being rather disorganised," explained Jo Dunton.

"Because of the challenges facing them, children with dyslexia may appear withdrawn or lose interest in school work, or might want to avoid going to school and, research has shown, could often be bullied or socially isolated due to their difficulties."

"These differences can lead to low self-esteem, especially if the child doesn't understand why they're having to struggle to do things that other children seem to be able to achieve with ease."

"Recognising the problem can be extremely helpful, as can setting things in place to help the dyslexic child overcome the particular difficulties facing them."

However dyslexia is not all negative, many people with dyslexia have great spatial or 3D awareness, and many go on to be engineers.

Places such as the spy HQ GCHQ have dyslexics ranking among their staff as does space agency NASA, so the sky's the limit!

If you think your child may be facing difficulties with reading, writing or any educationally related problem, then the first port of call should be the school" she told reporters.

"However, here at the Miles Dyslexia Centre we're always willing to speak with parents and advise them and can provide consultation sessions for parents and children."

Jo's Top Tips for Parents:

• Talk to your child - discuss their day or their feelings. Vocabulary has been shown to have a major impact on developing literacy skills.
• Look at the whole person rather than focus on your child's difficulties. Encourage then to get involved with things that they are good at as this will help build self-esteem.
• Don't let homework become a battle ground. Little and often is more effective, reading one page or practising one word is better than nothing at all.
• Spelling practice can be done with a whiteboard or with plastic letters. Try to find a way to make it fun.
• Reading does not always have to be from a book. Perhaps use sets of word cards to make sentences, play matching or pairs games. Don't let your child view it as a chore that has to be done.
• Out shopping- ask your child to read out the shopping list or the signs around the store. We are surrounded by words, use them as resources.
• Talk to the school about any concerns you may have. Working together with the school can lead to a more coordinated response to any difficulties.
• Self-organisation can be a key difficulty leading to forgotten books, kit, pens etc. Encourage your child to develop a routine. Is it swimming tomorrow? – Get the kit ready tonight!
• Encourage the use of memory joggers such as checklists, 'to do' lists or school planners. Perhaps a large chalkboard or whiteboard could be used as a family planner.
• Remember reading and spelling are skills, and, like any skill, they need lots of regular practice. Footballers, swimmers and tennis stars also have to work hard to improve their skills!

Beat synchronization in preschoolers aids learning and reading skills

A team of researchers with Northwestern University in the U.S. has found that an ability to synchronize with a beat may be an indication of how well preschoolers will later do when developing reading skills.

In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the team describes a study they undertook that involved testing for beat synchronization and sound recognition in preschoolers and what they found as a result.

Devising a test for reading aptitude prior to teaching children to read, it is believed, would help children of all levels learn better.

If a teacher knew beforehand that a child was going to have a reading disability, for example, that child could be placed into a program developed specifically for their needs, hopefully offering a better long term outcome.

Likewise, children with an exceptional aptitude for reading could be put into an accelerated program to prevent boredom.

Unfortunately, there is no such test, thus parents and teachers are left to discover a child's reading abilities on their own.

In this new effort, the researchers devised a study to find out if beat synchronicity skills might be used as the basis for such a test.

Reading specialists have suspected that there is a link between beat synchronization and both language and reading ability, reading and speech are both timing based after all.

To better understand that link the researchers arranged to test preschool volunteers.

In the first test, 35 children were given a toy drum and asked to beat it in time with an adult beating on a similar drum.

Those that could do it well were described as synchronizers, those that could not, as nonsyncronizers.

The same group of children then had electrodes pasted to their scalps to measure brain waves, as the researchers watched monitors, the children listened to sounds the researchers played, such as "da" and "ba" with no other sound, and then with background noise.

In studying the data, the researchers found that the children dubbed synchronizers in the first part of the experiment processed the played sounds with greater precision than did the nonsyncronizers.

Further tests revealed that the synchronizers did better on overall language abilities than the nonsyncronizers, which suggests that it might be possible to use the same process to test children as young as infants for later reading ability.

The researchers plan to continue monitoring the same children in the study for five years to see if their testing method is viable.

More information: Beat synchronization predicts neural speech encoding and reading readiness in preschoolers, Kali Woodruff Carr, PNAS, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1406219111

The boundaries of reading apps for children

A series of binary discussions has been plaguing early reading instruction for quite some time now: phonics versus whole language, reading for pleasure versus reading for learning, digital versus paper books and it seems that there is a new tug-of-war on the educational horizon: spritzing versus slow reading.

Spritz is a recently developed programme that brings speed-reading to the untrained eye. Its makers claim that users can ultimately read 1,000 words per minute.

Their goal is to have 15% of the world's texts available in Spritz format by 2016.

But a message is coming from the other direction too. Those who revere and often romanticise printed books argue that we need to slow down.

They warn that the digital age has made us shallow readers who flit from text to text without taking anything in.

We have a clear conflict here. On one hand, lots of people want to read faster, especially now that there is more to read out there than at any other time in human history.

On the other hand, we hear that children in the digital age do not read in depth and the often cited culprit is the device in their hand – the technology that distracts them from picking up a good book.

Is a middle ground possible?

Reading and writing always come hand-in-hand. If readers whizz through rather than engage with texts, this will ultimately be reflected in the type of texts made available to them.

Spritz certainly responds to the zeitgeist to read fast in order to cope in a text-saturated era. You can also see this tendency in the proliferation of listicles on news websites and contents pages that tell you how long it will take you to read an article.

Some say that the only way to cope with large email volumes, is to binge-read our inboxes. Spritz could be thus seen as another invention that panders to our growing tendency to read more but in less depth.

At the same time, readers, be they young or old,need to be given time to pause and think with the author of a text.

Slow reading is, for many, synonymous with deep reading and reading for learning and there are in fact technological developments happening to help readers improve their deep reading, almost the antidote to Spritz.

There are reading annotation systems with built-in interactive discussion to help readers, students in particular, to better understand what they are reading.

These slow them down in their reading by asking them questions or prompting them to pause and take notes.

Similarly for younger readers, there are read-to-learn apps that explain vocabulary and thus help with reading comprehension.

So which approach is better for the contemporary reader? We can now whizz through every page on the internet by installing Spritzlet on our web browser.

It may not be long until slow reading widgets will become available to help us highlight information in onscreen texts, underline unfamiliar words, unpick abstract metaphors and provide links to facts.

In thinking about how to teach children to read effectively in digital age, we need to stop thinking in terms of slow and fast.

There is a difference between reading an email or a chemistry textbook or a novel. We use different reading formats for different contents, and different contents & formats for different purposes.

These different purposes come with different personal investments and hence different reading techniques.

There is already a disturbing disconnect between the content and format of reading happening in schools and outside the classrooms. Let's not increase this gap with another fictitious dichotomy.

Assistive technology: Samsung Galaxy Core Advance

Samsung Electronics introduced a trio of accessories that are designed to help users who are disabled and visually impaired, those with partial or greater loss of vision.

Their smartphones can be transformed in this way into tools that enable easier handling of messages and more.

The three newcomers are called the Ultrasonic Cover, Optical Scan Stand, and Voice Label.

The three are designed for the Galaxy Core Advance mobile device.

Samsung said that the accessories are already available and are offered separately from the device.

To be sure, smartphone handling, not to mention struggles reading small-screen text, have been barriers for those with special needs for vision support.

Back in December, Samsung had already revealed its intentions of providing an Android smartphone with accessibility options.

Assistive technology was on its agenda. The company referred to the Core Advance, which it said would be available early 2014.

At the time, it spoke of an Optical Scan which "can automatically recognize text from an image and read it aloud to disabled and visually impaired users."

Samsung officially described the three on Friday as the Ultrasonic Cover, which allows users in unfamiliar places to detect obstacles and navigate by sending an alert through a vibration or TTS feedback.

"By holding the Cover in front of the user," said the announcement, "it can enhance a visually impaired user's awareness of their surroundings by sensing the presence of a person or object up to two meters away."

The Optical Scan Stand positions the device to focus on printed materials; doing so automatically activates the Optical Scan application, which recognizes text from an image and reads it aloud to the user.

With the Voice Label, users can make notes and tag voice labels on-the-go.

"With NFC technology enabling a seamless connection to their smartphones, users can record, stop and access their notes.

This feature can also help a user distinguish how to use electronics by allowing them to record a short explanation."

In the United States alone, approximately 10 million people are blind or visually impaired, though estimates vary.

Samsung said the accessories are the result of research and in-depth interviews, resulting in their being specially designed with the needs of specific communities in mind.

Among the tech sites responding favorably to Friday's announcement TechCrunch made the point that "these hardware add-ons really show Samsung is committed to provided the best phone experience possible for those who might ordinarily find smartphone operation frustrating."

Levels of key brain chemicals predict children's reading ability

Reading-impaired young children have higher levels of the metabolites glutamate and choline in their brains, and these higher levels continue to be indicative of difficulties in developing typical reading and language skills, a Yale study has found. 

The study appears in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Although anatomical and functional brain networks involved in reading disabilities have been well characterised, the underlying chemical bases of these differences in reading development have been poorly understood.

This study is believed to be the first to examine neurochemistry in a longitudinal study of children during the critical period when they are considered "emergent readers," the age at which neurocircuits that support skilled reading and speaking are still developing.

The Yale team measured levels of glutamate, choline, and other metabolites in 75 children, aged 6 to 10, whose reading abilities ranged from what is considered impaired to superior.

The researchers conducted behavioral testing to characterize the children's reading, language, and general cognitive skills, and used MR spectroscopy to assess metabolite levels.

They found that children with higher glutamate and choline levels in their brains tended to have lower composite scores for reading and language.

In follow-up testing two years later, the same correlation still existed for initial glutamate levels.

Kenneth Pugh

"Reading disabilities affect significant numbers of children," said first author Kenneth Pugh, associate professor of linguistics and president and director of research in the Haskins Laboratories at Yale.

"Our findings suggest new pathways for research into the connection between genes, brain development, and behavioural outcomes in children who struggle with reading."

The researchers also note that higher glutamate and choline levels have been implicated in hyperexcitability in children, another possible factor in cognitive impairment.

Robert Fulbright

"Further research may show whether there is a chemical basis that contributes to learning deficits among the reading-disabled children," said senior author Robert Fulbright, also of the Haskins Laboratories, and associate professor of diagnostic radiology at Yale School of Medicine.

More Information: 'Glutamate and choline levels predict individual differences in reading ability in emergent readers' Journal of Neuroscience Mar 2014 - K.Pugh, R.Fullbright, et al.

Child Poster: Children Need and Deserve Patience

If it takes a poster to help you remember that children need and deserve your patience and understanding to help them learn, then use this poster to help you.

Here are some more quotes to amuse and inform you.

"School is indeed a training for later life not because it teaches the 3 Rs (more or less), but because it instills the essential cultural nightmare fear of failure, envy of success, and absurdity."

Jules Henry

"Schools have not necessarily much to do with education...they are mainly institutions of control where certain basic habits must be inculcated in the young. Education is quite different and has little place in school." 

Winston Churchill

“School prepares for the alienating institutionalization of life by teaching the need to be taught.” Ivan Illich

Reading Skills Benefit from One Modest Change by Teachers

A small change in how teachers and parents read aloud to preschoolers may provide a big boost to their reading skills later on, a new study found. 

That small change involves making specific references to print in books while reading to children -- such as pointing out letters and words on the pages, showing capital letters, and showing how you read from left to right and top to bottom on the page. 

Credit: © Glenda Powers / Fotolia

Preschool children whose teachers used print references during storybook reading showed more advanced reading skills one and even two years later when compared to children whose teachers did not use such references.

Shayne Piasta

This is the first study to show causal links between referencing print and later literacy achievement.

"Using print references during reading was just a slight tweak to what teachers were already doing in the classroom, but it led to a sizeable improvement in reading for kids," said Shayne Piasta, co-author of the study and assistant professor of teaching and learning at Ohio State University.

"This would be a very manageable change for most preschool teachers, who already are doing storybook reading in class."

Joan Kaderavek
University of Toledo

Piasta conducted the study with lead investigator Laura Justice, professor of teaching and learning at Ohio State, as well as co-investigators Anita McGinty of the University of Virginia and Joan Kaderavek of the University of Toledo. Their results appear in the April 2012 issue of the journal Child Development.

The study is part of Project STAR (Sit Together And Read), a randomized clinical trial based at Ohio State to test the short- and long-term impacts associated with reading regularly to preschool children in the classroom.

The study involved more than 300 children in 85 classrooms who participated in a 30-week shared reading program. As a group, the children came from low-income homes, started with below-average language skills and were at substantial risk for later reading difficulties.

The children were separated into three groups: high-dose STAR (four reading sessions per week), low-dose STAR (two reading sessions per week) and a third comparison group who also had four reading sessions per week.

All teachers in the three groups read the same 30 books to their students.

Teachers in the two STAR groups were trained to make specific print references while reading the books.

Teachers in the comparison group were told to read as they normally would, and were not prompted to make print references.

Results showed that both one and even two years later, preschoolers in the high-dose STAR classrooms had higher word reading, spelling and comprehension skills than did children in the comparison group.

The benefits were not as clear for those in the low-dose STAR classrooms, although they did seem to have slightly better skills than those children in the comparison classrooms.

Piasta said it was particularly notable that students in the high-dose STAR classrooms scored higher on tests of reading comprehension.

"If you're getting kids to pay attention to letters and words, it makes sense that they will do better at word recognition and spelling," she said.

"But the fact that they also did better at understanding the passages they read is really exciting. That suggests this intervention may help them become better readers."

How do print references help preschoolers become better readers? Piasta said research suggests it helps children learn the code of letters and how they relate to words and to meaning.

"By showing them what a letter is and what a letter means, and what a word is and what a word means, we're helping them to crack the code of language and understand how to read," she said.

While this study shows the value of using print references with preschoolers, research suggests very few teachers and parents do this systematically, according to Piasta.

NB: STAR-1 has now been superseded by STAR-2

Reading Foreign Languages

Recent research into how we learn is set to help people in their efforts to read a second or foreign language (SFL) more effectively.

This will be good news for those struggling to develop linguistic skills in preparation for a move abroad, or to help in understanding foreign language forms, reports, contracts and instructions.

The ability to read a second or foreign language can be of great benefit to academics, business people, politicians, professionals and migrants trying to master an unfamiliar language.

Surprisingly, little is known about how an ability to read in another language develops.

To address this, the research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), led by Professor Charles Alderson at Lancaster University, set out to identify the factors that determine how this skill develops in a number of different languages and what factors in people's first language influence progress in reading.

"Research into the diagnosis of the strengths and weaknesses of learners in SFL reading was virtually non-existent, making this research highly innovative. We've followed SFL reading ability development over several years and studied which cognitive and linguistic tasks are most promising for predicting literacy skills in several languages," says Alderson.

"Progress has already been made in understanding first language reading problems -- so we co-operated with psychologists who studied a group of dyslexic readers over many years. We used their instruments to see if the things that predict first-language dyslexia can help in understanding SFL reading and its problems," Alderson continues.

Contrary to much belief, the researchers found that ability to read in a first language is less important in SFL reading than proficiency in the new language being learned.

It was concluded that the size of SFL vocabulary and understanding of text influence one another: vocabulary growth promotes comprehension and comprehension helps a reader to learn new words.

Findings will help language teachers devise more effective strategies for assisting learners and influence the accuracy of tests that predict SFL reading abilities.

From data gathered from many countries and languages, the research suggests that reading well in one language has little bearing on the development of reading abilities in another.

Linguist, Professor Scott Jarvis, Ohio University, USA, says, "This study was perhaps the most impressive yet on SFL reading abilities. A remarkable job was done of identifying and measuring a range of cognitive and linguistic abilities, and also of tracking these variables over time and linking them to improvements in learners' second-language reading proficiency. The findings are valuable for language teachers, and the research design is likely to serve as a model for many future SFL studies."

Further information: Click on www.esrc.ac.uk/

Overcoming Dyslexia, Finding Passion - Piper Otterbein

Piper Otterbein is a senior at Cape Elizabeth High School. Piper was born in New York, but she has lived in Cape Elizabeth for the past eleven years. When Piper was in first grade, she was diagnosed with a learning disability.

While Piper struggled throughout elementary school, it was not until 7th grade that this disability was identified as dyslexia.

Piper and her family spent a great deal of time and resources trying to fix her dyslexia; during her middle school years, Piper spent countless hours after school in tutoring programs.

Although she was determined to be successful in school, work took a long time to complete, and she frequently found herself frustrated and exhausted.

When Piper entered high school, she had a revelation; rather than focusing all of her energy on the challenges in her life, she decided to alter her outlook and focus instead on her strengths.

While she remained a conscientious student, Piper threw herself into what she loved most: the arts, event organizing, and community involvement. Today, Piper has a strong presence in the CEHS community.

She juggles painting, ceramics, and drawing with her involvement in student council, SEED, the planning of the TEDx youth conference at CEHS, and her part-time jobs working in a furniture store and babysitting.

All of Piper's talent and hard work has paid off, she will be attending the Savannah College of Art and Design, where she will study interior design and accessory design.

What Is Dysgraphia? - YouTube

Dysgraphia is a learning disability that affects writing, which requires a complex set of motor and information processing skills.

Dysgraphia makes the act of writing difficult. It can lead to problems with spelling, poor handwriting, and putting thoughts on paper.

People with dysgraphia can have trouble organizing letters, numbers, and words on a line or page. This can result partly from:

• Visual-spatial difficulties: trouble processing what the eye sees
• Language processing difficulty: trouble processing and making sense of what the ear hears

As with all learning disabilities (LD), dysgraphia is a lifelong challenge, although how it manifests may change over time.

A student with this disorder can benefit from specific accommodations in the learning environment. Extra practice learning the skills required to be an accomplished writer can also help.

Read more about Dysgraphia

People With Dyslexia Have Difficulty Not Just Reading Words, But Recognizing Voices

While most people think of dyslexia as primarily a problem with reading, people with dyslexia seem to have trouble processing the spoken language, as well. A new study published last week Science found that people with dyslexia have a harder time recognizing voices than other people do.
How the Heck:

• Participants in the study–half of whom were dyslexic–watched and listened to cartoon characters on a computer. Each character had a distinct voice, and spoke either English, the participants’ native language, or Mandarin Chinese.
• The participants were then played a clip of each voice and asked to match it to the correct character.
• People without reading difficulties were better at recognizing voices speaking their native language. They could correctly pick out which character went with a voice about two-thirds of the time if the voice was speaking English, and only about half the time if it was speaking Mandarin.
• Dyslexics, on the other hand, showed no native language boost. It didn’t matter if a voice was speaking English or Mandarin: they correctly matched it with a character around half the time either way.

What’s the Context:

• Researchers are increasingly finding that reading problems, while the most well known feature of dyslexia, are just a part of what’s going on. People with dyslexia have difficulty in processing and combining the sounds of language—and, when reading, correctly linking them to letters on a page.
• This study underscores the idea that people with dyslexia have trouble processing phonemes, the units of sound that make up speech—and that differ slightly between different voices, helping us to recognize who’s talking.

The Future Holds:

• Understanding the mental roots of dyslexia could help researchers develop early interventions, helping children who have trouble processing language even before they start school.
• Since children start to recognize voices long before they learn to read, some variation on a voice-recognition test could help identify children who might develop dyslexia.

Reference: Tyler K. Perrachione, Stephanie N. Del Tufo, & John D. E. Gabrieli. “Human Voice Recognition Depends on Language Ability.” Science, July 29, 2011. DOI: 10.1126/science.1207327

Differentiated Instruction: What Is It?

Differentiated Instruction and Teaching Children with Learning Disabilities

By Janet W. Lerner and Frank Kline

Editors of Learning Disabilities: A Multidisciplinary Journal

The US. Department of Education (2008) reports that 87% of students  with learning disabilities receive instruction in general education  classes. This number includes both students whose educational placement  is in the general education classroom for most of the day (52%) and  students who are both in a resource room for part of the day and in a  general education classroom for the balance of the day (35%).

General education teachers are often stymied when instruction  designed for the general education student does not meet the needs of  students with learning disabilities. These students need a different  kind of instruction. Differentiated Instruction is recommended to  general education teachers as one method to teach students with learning  disabilities and other special learning needs in general education  classes (Tomlinson, Brimijoin and Narvaez, 2008; Tomlinson, 2001).

It is  interesting to note the many similarities between differentiated  instruction and the philosophy and strategies for teaching special  education students.

The term differentiated instruction reflects a philosophy of teaching  that enables teachers to reach the unique needs of each student,  capitalizing on the student’s strengths and weaknesses. Differentiated  instruction embodies some of the qualities of special education teaching  in the general education classroom.

Advocates of differentiated instruction note that one of the biggest  mistakes we make in teaching is to treat everyone equally when it comes  to learning. With the recognition that not all students are alike,  differentiated instruction applies an approach to teaching and learning  that gives students multiple options for taking in information and  making sense of ideas.

Differentiated instruction recognizes that a  one-size-fits-all curriculum simply will not work for all children.  Children process information differently; some form images, others form  words, and others form sentences.

Differentiated instruction takes their  individual needs into account with teaching that responds to their  personal talents, interests, varying background knowledge, and distinct  experiences. In differentiated instruction, the teacher seeks to find  the special methods that will be successful for an individual student to  help that student learn (Lerner & Johns, 2011; Tomlinson, Brimijoin  and Narvaez, 2008; Tomlinson, 2001).

Fonts and Dyslexia

Fonts and Dyslexia – an article from iansyst Ltd

Dyslexia can mean that a person has a sensitivity to particular typefaces, both in print and on screen. It is always good to understand a person's particular preferences and dislikes when it comes to font selection and this should be examined with each individual.

Whatever materials you are creating, it is good to consider whether they are going to be accessible to as broad an audience as possible.

Many dyslexic and non-dyslexic people find that the readability of a piece of text varies greatly depending upon the font (type face or type style) used.

Serif fonts, with their ‘ticks’ and ‘tails’ at the end of most strokes (as found in traditional print fonts such as Georgia or Times New Roman), tend to obscure the shapes of letters, so sans-serif fonts are generally preferred.

Many dyslexic people also find it easier to read a font that looks similar to hand writing as they are familiar with this style, and some teachers prefer them. However these types of fonts can lead to confusion with some letter combinations, such as “oa” and “oo”; “rn” and “m”.

The size of the ascenders and descenders of letters (the ‘stems’ on letters like p and b) is also important as many dyslexic readers rely on recalling the visual shape of a word due to poor phonological awareness.

If ascenders and descenders are too short the shape of the word is more difficult to identify and can make reading slower and less accurate.

Read Regular - Font
Recently Natascha Frensch, a graphic designer at the Royal College of Art, has designed a font (Read Regular) specifically for dyslexic readers, taking into account the issues discussed above.
There are examples of Read Regular on her web site at www.readregular.com and the children’s publisher Chrysalis is now using it for two-thirds of the 150 children’s titles it brings out every year.

Lexia Readable
Has also been designed specifically for dyslexia and is actually available. You can download it from www.k-type.com/ free for individual use. It has developed quite a bit over the last few months, although it still has some minor irregularities.

It tries to avoid some possible dyslexic confusions (eg b-d) by using different shapes, and is broadly based on Comic Sans, see below. Please let us know what you think of it.

Tiresias
This font has been designed for people with Visual Impairment. Originally produced for subtitles and signs there is now a screen version Tiresias PC font. Tiresias is now free to download. It is good for legibility, but doesn’t address the issue of dyslexic confusions.

Sassoon

The font Sassoon, is often recommended for dyslexia, but was actually designed to assist children in early reading. Also, it is quite expensive and can be bought through Adrian Williams Design and elsewhere on the web.

Letter shapes are similar to those that schools use to teach handwriting, and ascenders and descenders are exaggerated to emphasise word shapes.

Myriad Pro

Myriad pro was designed by Adobe and it has a clean sans serif aesthetic making it suitable for people with dyslexia.

Web based Fonts
Verdana is a very popular and clear font used by many on websites but arguably better is Trebuchet MS. It has short descenders but reasonably long ascenders, a small body size and generous line spacing. We find this font suits many readers both dyslexic and non-dyslexic.

Write Friendly Text

To test your sensitivity to these fonts, choose one from the ones suggetsed, print out some text in 12 points and check them out for yourself. You can also ask your friends and family about their choices and preferences.

Apart from the font selection, think carefully about colour and printing on coloured paper. There are a number of good and bad combinations that you should be awareof.

For more advice and guidance, follow the advice in the BDA’s Dyslexia Friendly Style Guide and we wish you more friendly writing for the future!

For more information on Fonts and Typefaces check out my Copy writing block post on the subject.

A pioneering new way to face up to dyslexia - Times Online

A pioneering new way to face up to dyslexia - A.A. Gill - Times Online

A.A. Gill is a professional writer and author of high repute. In this insightful article he expresses his feelings and experiences around his dawning realisation of dyslexia and how he lives with this condition. He describes himself as;

A dyslexic who writes a lot — 1,500 words, give or take, a day. And if I let the spellchecker get its bureaucratic little pince-nez within squinting distance of any of them, it would say 1,000 are spelt wrongly.

I am a grammar cripple, a functioning illiterate. Literally. I write for a living and, like blind mountaineers and limbless golfers, I am a straw to be clutched at by these quietly desperate and bravely determined people whose lives and dreams for their children have been overwhelmed by 26 characters in search of an orthodoxy.

I have taken several extracts from the article to illustrate his depth of feelings on the subject and his concern for parents and children alike. Those who suffer criticism, exclusion and isolation because of the ignorance of others.

He describes a local meeting of the dyslexia group;

The parents, mostly mothers, their faces taut with worry and incomprehension, listen intently. One or two have brought their children, who sit with their heads down, drawing, trying to be invisible. I’m with them.

The outcome of this meeting, like so many others, is disappointing from the parents' viewpoint and consequently, for the children with dyslexia.

After too long, the meeting closes. It has answered all the questions with more questions. Doors have opened to reveal corridors filled with more doors.

It has helped only to concern the concerned, whose anxieties mostly revolve around statements.

Children with learning difficulties need to be statemented — that is, given a series of tests by a professional that take a long time and are, if not arbitrary, then not altogether precise, a bit like a Cosmo quiz for the semiliterate.

They are useful, and they are craved by the parents of children who are failing.

He brings to life the growing panic and exclusion that comes from dyslexia and other learning difficulties. Although confident in his adult life, in the face of an enthusiastic teacher, he finds himself falling back into his fearful past;

I can feel myself regressing, the panic begins to constrict my chest. I can’t follow what Mr Taylor is saying. I don’t understand.

Millie (a young pupil) leans across and helps me, not as a politeness to a grown-up who’s older than her dad, but with the fellowship of the impaired; another word-blind, number-paralysed school sufferer.

It all rushes back over me: everything falling off my brain, like hearing through double glazing, the fog of incomprehension, the panic of being left behind.

I’d completely forgotten the loneliness of classrooms where it all makes sense to everyone else. I look down at the page and my handwriting belongs to a child. I get it all wrong. “Never mind,” says Millie. No, never mind.

This is the most salutary of lessons. I had utterly buried this feeling, until now: being here in this place.

His opportunity to evangelise to a young audience is full of humour and human feelings of doubt, self awareness and passionate belief. It's his passion and belief that come through in his writings.

I stood in front of this sea of blameless little faces, knowing that behind each of them there was already a room full of low esteem, full of catalogues of failure, a great weight of parental concern, and I wondered again at the horrible obstacle course we make of other people’s childhoods after we’ve f***ed up our own.

And I caught sight of Zinzan, and I felt the anger, the hot fury for the wasted, tearful, silently worried, failed years of school, and I had a Spartacus moment. I started talking, rather too loudly.

I told them this was their language, this English, this most marvellous and expressive cloak of meaning and imagination. This great, exclamatory, illuminating song, it belonged to anyone who found it in their mouths.

There was no wrong way to say it, or write it, the language couldn’t be compelled or herded, it couldn’t be tonsured or pruned, pollarded or plaited, it was as hard as oaths and as subtle as rhyme.

It couldn’t be forced or bullied or policed by academics; it wasn’t owned by those with flat accents; nobody had the right to tell them how to use it or what to say.

There are no rules and nobody speaks incorrectly, because there is no correctly: no high court of syntax.

And while everyone can speak with the language, nobody speaks for the language. Not grammars, not dictionaries. They just run along behind, picking up discarded usages. This English doesn’t belong to examiners or teachers.

All of you already own the greatest gift, the highest degree this country can bestow. It’s on the tip of your tongue.

And then I caught sight of myself, standing like a declamatory ticktack man, bellowing like a costermonger, and I stopped and stared at the faces staring at me with expressions of utter, dyslexic incomprehension.

From the back of the room, a teacher coughed.

Improving Motor Skills: Helping Kids Take Care of Their Healthy Smiles

Sometims children with reduced motor skills struggle a little more with daily activities. Fine motor issues can get in the way of easily accomplishing basic tasks, like dressing, bathing and brushing teeth.

Physical and occupational therapies are a big help when it comes to helping children with these problems. They can also learn how to accomplish some of the harder tasks, like buttons, catches and zippers. Sometimes these therapies also help children become more independent or consistent with their personal hygiene.

Is Brushing Teeth the Exception?
Brushing teeth involves a lot of motor skills. Children need to have good proprioceptive awareness, meaning they need to know where their bodies are in space, in order to comfortably aim the toothbrush into the mouth.

It also involves a skill called “ crossing the midline,” meaning kids need to be able to comfortably and confidently reach a hand from one side of the body to the other and use brush with accuracy.

Because of the difficulty in brushing, parents of children with motor skills deficits often end up brushing their childrens’ teeth for them, and for much longer than they might for other children.

Reading Difficulties: Ways to calm a struggling reader

How to calm a struggling reader requires the tutor to know what is currently causing or aggravating the problem; this allows the tutor to tailor interventions, such as the strategies below, to the struggling reader’s needs.

Although the strategies below are directed to the tutor, teachers and parents might also benefit from understanding them:

1.Use Proper Materials. Especially during the first few months of tutoring, make sure that the material is easy for him. Make sure that after this period,

• When you increase the difficulty of the materials he’s about to read, you give him materials at his proper reading instructional level; before instruction, he should be able to quickly recognize 95% or more of the words in what he’s about to read and understand 70% or more of the material.
• When he’s about to read independently, you’re sure he can recognize 99% of the words and understand 90% of the material.

2.Remove Threats by Stressing Fun. Remove the threats inherent in tutoring. Do this by building lots of fun into tutoring. Fun means the struggling reader likes it and looks forward to it.

This may require playing Monopoly for the first few sessions or, if he likes basketball, just “shooting hoops.” When you do this, you’re not wasting time; instead, you’re building a positive relationship—one in which he feels safe, comfortable, and respected—and anticipates good things.

As time passes and he’s obviously feeling comfortable, gradually add reading instruction that’s designed to foster success and the anticipation of success.

You might begin by reading aloud to him, but reading only materials in which he’s interested, such as Pokémon comics. You might also motivate him by having him choose what to read, from materials that will interest him and that are at his proper instructional and independent levels. This means, start where he is comfortable.

3.Explore Relaxation Training. If the struggling reader is getting help from a qualified mental health specialist, such as a psychologist, psychiatrist, or Licensed Clinical Social Worker, thoroughly discuss with this person and with the child’s parents the possibility of teaching the child simple relaxation strategies, such as diaphragmatic breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, or visual imagery.

Relaxation training refers to a promising set of simple practices that lower anxiety, and, as a side benefit, have helped some children strengthen their reading, improve their attention and their behavior.

To learn more about relaxation training, visit our website (www.reading2008.com) and download the free article, Self‑induced relaxation: A practical strategy to improve self‑concepts, reduce anxiety and prevent behavioral problems.

4.Systematically Strengthen the Struggling Reader’s Self-Efficacy. Self-efficacy is the child’s belief that he can succeed on a task. Add to this definition, if he makes a moderate effort. Self-efficacy is critical to motivation. After all, if a child thinks he’ll fail, no matter his effort, he’s unlikely to try, he’s likely to resist. He’ll think: Why try, I'll just fail? Why prove to everyone I’m dumb? Why embarrass myself?

If his self-efficacy for reading is weak—as it is with many struggling readers—you have to help him strengthen it. To do so, you need to stress the four sources of self-efficacy: (a) mastery experiences, (b) vicarious experiences, (c) verbal persuasion, and (d) physiological and emotional arousal.

5.Weave Aerobic Exercise and Music into Your Tutoring Sessions. To improve the struggling reader’s mood, you may want to start your sessions with music that will help him feel positive about the upcoming lesson:

• Music seems to offer a novel system of communication rooted in emotions rather than in meaning.
• Music reliably conveys certain sentiments.
• We may never know why music exists but even amid uncertainty about music’s origins, we can still use songs to pump ourselves up or calm ourselves down, ease pain and anxiety, bond with others or simply move people to tears. (Schrock, 2009)

You might also provide short sessions of aerobic exercise throughout the tutoring session. Why? Because aerobic exercise can improve both a child’s mood and his cognitive functioning. So, you might encourage him to exercise three minutes here, two there:

We learn more effectively when we are physically active. (Siegel, 2010, p. 84)

Critical Questions
Clearly, we’ve listed only a few ways to improve the struggling reader’s readiness for learning, including his confidence, motivation, and behavior. Other ways include counseling, music therapy (see http://www.reading2008.com/blog/?s=pellitteri), and applied behavior analysis. Generally, it’s best to match the intervention to the current causes of the difficulty, which can take considerable time and expertise.

In the meantime, build your lessons around these five questions;

• Does the struggling reader think the lesson will be fun?
• Does he think the materials and the activities will be interesting or important?
• Does he think he will succeed if he makes a moderate effort?
• Does he think his success will help him achieve goals that are important to him, that will get him what he wants?
• What can you say and do to strengthen his self-efficacy, his confidence that he will succeed?

Also examine other parts of his day. Ask:

• Throughout the day, are his teachers giving him materials and activities at his proper instructional and independent levels, including homework?
• Throughout the day, is he getting sufficient social and emotional support, so that he feels psychologically and physically secure?
• Is he getting enough sleep? Is it quality sleep?
• Is his diet likely to support learning?
• Throughout the day, is he getting enough exercise?

Dyslexia: Understanding your child's difficulties

Evaluating your child's reading needs, planning their program, monitoring progress and requesting suitable modifications and changes along the way, requires you to have responsive and appropriate answers to many practical questions.

• If my child is not performing at the correct level, at what level are they performing?
• What do they need to learn that they are not currently learning? Where is the gap?
• What services and instructions do they need to improve to support their learning? How do we fill that gap?
• How do we compare and monitor the progress made?

A question that you need to ask yourself is whether the school is giving you the correct information. Are you getting accurate and appropriate answers in the right context? Are you getting all the answers you require? Do you feel you have the knowledge or level of expertise to manage the situation?

It is one of the greatest burdens that fall on parents, being the carer and manager of your child's education, intervention and educational progress. You are told that 'the more you know and understand about your child's learning difficulties, the better your child will do.'

What a huge burden that places on you. It is no easy task. It is a diverse and complex role that is difficult to excel in but you are compelled to play it. If it seems too large, seek help. Share the burden with like-minded people, other parents and carers that are experiencing or have experienced a similar situation.

What is dyspraxia? How does it impair development?

Developmental dyspraxia is an impairment or immaturity of the organisation of movement. It is an immaturity in the way that the brain processes information, which results in messages not being properly or fully transmitted.

It can create a clumsy child that is more uncoordinated, slower to walk and develop good motor and hand to eye skills.

Praxis
The term dyspraxia comes from the word praxis, which means 'doing, acting'. (The largest DIY retail hardware outlet is named Praxis.) Dyspraxia affects the planning of what to do and how to do it. It is associated with problems of perception, language and thought.

Dyspraxia is thought to affect up to ten per cent of the population but like many disorders the child may experience only minor disorder. Unfortunately, some children will experience severe symptoms but they are only two per cent.

Males v Females
Males are four times more likely to be affected than females. Dyspraxia sometimes runs in families and like other developmental disorders, the child may experience other related conditions. If you are concerned then simply seek the advice of a qualified consultant.

Name magic
Other names for dyspraxia include Developmental Co-ordination Disorder (DCD), Perceptuo-Motor Dysfunction, and Motor Learning Difficulties. It used to be known as Minimal Brain Damage and Clumsy Child Syndrome.

Statistically, it is likely that there is one child in every class of 30 children. We need to raise the awareness of this debilitating condition and make sure that everyone understands and knows how best to help this significant minority.