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Harry Potter Star Gives Dyspraxia Advice.  By Liana Chandler (Bach EC, M.T & M. Ed. Sp.)

22/3/2015

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Harry Potter is a hero to a generation of kids and their parents who are fans of the books.  But the actor Daniel Radcliffe, who plays the clever wizard in the Harry Potter movies, has also become a hero, of sorts.  He’s speaking out for kids with dyspraxia, a condition that makes it hard to plan and coordinate physical movement.

Radcliffe, who has a mild form of dyspraxia, knows the challenges it can bring.  As a child, he had trouble with handwriting and tying his shoelaces.  His early school years were very difficult because as he says “I was awful at everything, with no discernible talent.”

In a recent Facebook chat with The Wall Street Journal’s Speakeasy blog, Radcliffe offered encouragement to a 10-year-old girl with dyspraxia.

“Do not let it stop you,” he said.  “It has never held me back, and some of the smartest people I know are people who have learning disabilities.  The fact that some things are more of a struggle will only make you more determined, harder working and more imaginative in the solutions you find to problems.”

Dyspraxia is not as well-known as other learning and attention issues, such as dyslexia and ADHD.  But it’s quite common and often co-occurs with those issues.  Between 6 and 10 percent of all children show signs of dyspraxia, with boys being more likely to have it than girls.

So what is dyspraxia?

Dyspraxia isn’t a sign of muscle weakness or of low intelligence.  It’s a brain-based condition that makes it hard to plan and coordinate physical movement.  Children with dyspraxia tend to struggle with balance and posture.  They may appear clumsy, uncoordinated or out of touch with their environment.

Dyspraxia goes by many names: developmental coordination disorder, motor learning difficulty, motor planning difficulty and apraxia of speech.  It can affect the development of gross motor skills like walking or jumping.  It can also affect fine motor skills. These include things like the hand movements needed to write clearly and the mouth and tongue movements needed to pronounce words correctly.

Dyspraxia can affect social skills too.  Children with dyspraxia may behave immaturely even though they typically have average or above-average intelligence.

Kids don’t outgrow dyspraxia.  But occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech therapy and other tools and strategies can help. Kids can learn to work around areas of weakness and build on their strengths.

Different Kinds of Dyspraxia
Dyspraxia can affect different kinds of movement.  Professionals you speak to might break it down into these categories:


  • Ideomotor dyspraxia: Makes it hard to complete single-step motor tasks such as combing hair and waving goodbye.
  • Ideational dyspraxia: Makes it more difficult to perform a sequence of movements, like brushing teeth or making a bed.
  • Oromotor dyspraxia, also called verbal apraxia or apraxia of speech: Makes it difficult to coordinate muscle movements needed to pronounce words.  Kids with dyspraxia may have speech that is slurred and difficult to understand because they’re unable to enunciate.
  • Constructional dyspraxia: Makes it harder to understand spatial relationships.  Kids with this type of dyspraxia may have difficulty copying geometric drawings or using building blocks.
 

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Processing Speed: What You Need to Know.   By Liana Chandler (Bach EC, M.T & M. Ed. Sp.)

20/3/2015

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At a Glance

  • Slow processing speed is not a learning or attention issue on its own.
  • Kids who have trouble with processing speed may struggle in school.
  • Slow processing speed has nothing to do with how smart kids are.
Does your child take two hours to do math homework that takes other kids 20 minutes?  Does she often do poorly on tests even though she knows the material?  Are multi-step directions hard for her to follow, especially when there isn’t much time to get the task done?

While there are many possible reasons for these struggles, slow processing speed may be a factor.

What Processing Speed Is

Processing speed is the pace at which you take in information, make sense of it and begin to respond.  This information can be visual, such as letters and numbers.  It can also be auditory, such as spoken language.

Having slow processing speed has nothing to do with how smart kids are—just how fast they can take in and use information.  It may take kids who struggle with processing speed a lot longer than other kids to perform tasks, both school-related and in daily life.

For example, when a child with slow processing speed sees the letters that make up the word “house,” she may not immediately know what they say.  She has to figure out what strategy to use to understand the meaning of the group of letters in front of her.  It’s not that she can’t read.  It’s just that a process that’s quick and automatic for other kids her age takes longer and requires more effort for her.

Saying too many things at once can also pose a challenge.  If you give multiple-step directions—“When you come downstairs, bring your notebook.  And can you also bring down the dirty glasses, and put them in the dishwasher?”—a child with slow processing speed may not follow all of them.  Having slow processing speed makes it hard to digest all that information quickly enough to finish the task.

Slow processing speed impacts learning at all stages.  It can make it harder for young children to master the basics of reading, writing and counting.  And it impacts older kids’ ability to perform tasks quickly and accurately.

Slow Processing Speed and Learning and Attention Issues

Slow processing speed isn’t a learning or attention issue on its own. But it can contribute to learning and attention issues like ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalculia and auditory processing disorder.

It can also impact executive functioning skills.  These are the thinking skills that help kids plan, set goals, respond to problems and persist on tasks.  Kids who are slow to process information may have trouble getting started on assignments, staying focused and monitoring how well they’re doing.

What Slow Processing Speed Looks Like

Slow processing speed can affect kids in the classroom, at home and during activities like sports. Kids might have trouble with:

  • Finishing tests in the allotted time
  • Finishing homework in the expected time frame
  • Listening or taking notes when a teacher is speaking
  • Reading and taking notes
  • Solving simple math problems in their head
  • Completing multi-step math problems in the allotted time
  • Doing written projects that require details and complex thoughts
  • Keeping up with conversations
Parents and teachers may notice that a child:

  • Becomes overwhelmed by too much information at once
  • Needs more time to make decisions or give answers
  • Needs to read information more than once for comprehension
  • Misses nuances in conversation
  • Has trouble executing instructions if told to do more than one thing at once
Finding Out If Your Child Has Trouble With Processing Speed

If you suspect your child is struggling with processing speed, the first step is to talk to your child’s teacher.  Discuss your own observations and find out what the teacher has noticed in class.

If processing speed is interfering with your child’s ability to learn, you might want to have her evaluated to determine what kinds of help the school can provide.  A full evaluation should include tests that look at speed of processing for visual and auditory information. Testing can help you and your child’s teachers develop a plan to address her challenges.

 

 

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Four Tips to Boost Reading Comprehension for Students.  By Liana Chandler (Bach EC, M.T & M Ed Spec)

15/3/2015

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Read with a purpose.  Goal-oriented reading affects what learning processes will take place and how effective those processes will be.  Whenever we assign reading activities, especially for children, they need to be assigned with a purpose.  For example, reading to locate information, to summarize, to tell a friend, or to learn how to put together a toy are great ways to facilitate effective learning.  If you have a purpose, it influences how things come together and interconnect in your memory.

 

Choose the right texts.  It’s important to separate the texts we use for children learning to read and the texts we use for children reading to learn. When selecting a text for a child who is learning to read, we need to match his or her reading level so it’s not too difficult and not too easy.  Reading to learn, on the other hand, means we should also worry about whether the information to be learned is also age appropriate.

Think out loud.  Verbalizing your thoughts is a methodology we use in our Lab to understand the processes of reading.  It helps reading itself and influences learning in a positive way.  Take the lead on this by showing your child or student how you think through specific texts, one sentence at a time. Illustrating this process will help those students who have yet to figure out how reading unfolds explicitly.

 

Ask “why questions.”  Reading is a constructive process.  We interconnect information and ultimately form a mental picture about the text in our minds. Choose a pre-specified point, such as after every paragraph, to dig deeper and ask your students or children “why questions.”  This helps students make connections when those are needed and facilitates their comprehension and learning.

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8 Working Memory Boosters.  By Liana Chandler (Bach EC, M.T & M. Ed. Sp.)

9/3/2015

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Does your child have a hard time remembering directions or math facts? Do they often forget what they want to say?  If so, they might have working memory issues.

Working memory refers to the manipulation of information that short-term memory stores (in the past, the term “working memory” was used interchangeably with the term “short-term memory.”) It’s a skill kids use to learn.  You can help your child improve their recall by building some working memory boosters into daily life.

1. Teach visualization skills.

Encourage your child to create a picture of what they’ve just read or heard.  For example, if you’ve told them to set the table for five people, ask them to come up with a picture in their head of what the table should look like.  Then have them draw that picture.  As they get better at visualizing, they can start describing the image to you instead of drawing it.

2. Have your child teach you.

Being able to explain how to do something involves making sense of information and mentally filing it.  If they’re learning a skill, like how to dribble a basketball, ask them to teach it to you after their coach explains it to them.

3. Suggest games that use visual memory.

Give your child a magazine page and ask them to circle all instances of the word “the” or the letter “a” in one minute.  Alternatively, play games in the car in which one of you recites the letters and numbers on a license plate you see and then has to say it backwards, too.

4. Play cards.

Simple card games like Uno, Go Fish and Concentration improve working memory in two ways.  Your child has to keep the rules of the game in mind, but also has to remember what cards they have and which ones other people have played.

5. Make up category games.

When words and ideas are put into categories, they’re easier to remember.  Playing games in which you name as many animals as you can think of can eventually lead to playing games with more complicated concepts.  For example, you may ask your child to name as many clue words for addition as they can (such as “all together,” “in all,” “total” and “plus”).

6. Number your directions.

Beginning a sentence with words like “I need you to do three things…” can help your child keep all of the different points in their head. You can do the same thing with other information, too, like shopping lists (”We need to buy these five items…”).

7. Connect emotion to information.

Processing information in as many ways as possible can help your child remember it.  Help them connect feelings to what they’re trying to remember.  For instance, if they’re learning about how the pyramids in ancient Egypt were built, ask them to think about what it felt like to have to climb to the top of one of them pulling a heavy stone in the hot sun.

8. Help make connections.

Connections are the relationship between things.  Finding ways to connect what your child is trying to remember with things they already know can help them learn new material.  For instance, show them that the twos times table is the same as their doubles facts, such as 4 x 2 = 8 and 4 + 4 = 8.

Memory-boosting tricks and games are just some of the ways you can help improve your child’s executive functioning skills.

 

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Common Learning and Attention Issues.  By Liana Chandler (Bach. EC, M. Teach, M. Ed Sp.)

7/3/2015

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Now I Understand What My Child With Dyslexia Is Going Through.  By Liana Chandler (Bach EC, M.T & M. Ed. Sp.)

2/3/2015

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I’ve been focused on my teenager’s dyslexia for years now.  Since I found out they had a reading issue in kindergarten and year 1 respectively, I’ve spent a lot of time educating myself.

I even wrote a lot of my essay’s for university about how I felt when I first learned about their dyslexia.  Now, as a Literacy Specialist at the Australian Literacy Academy, I talk with parents about how learning issues affect their children at home and at school.

But as much as I talk, write and think about dyslexia and how kids like my children deal with it every day, I’ve never really walked in their shoes.  When I first learned about the Through Your Child’s Eyes simulation of dyslexia, I jumped at the opportunity to give it a go.

It went something like this:

The letters are jumbled.  The clock starts ticking.  You can’t read the words.  You feel stressed out almost right away.

You try to put words into context by reading the entire sentence, but you can’t.  You have to decode.  But until you flip the letters, you can’t figure out the words.  It’s really hard to tell which letters are flipped.

The more frustrated you get, the more you want to give up.  Is reading this even worth my time?  What is it trying to say?  What’s the point?  Keep in mind this is only a 75-second exercise and I’m not in school anymore.

And so it hits me.  This is what it’s like for my teenagers every time they read.

No wonder.

No wonder the frustration, the excuses and the anger when I ask them to read or do their homework.  No wonder as much as they enjoy their reading and math tutor they are completely exhausted at the end of each session.

I may never fully know what they face, but I get it much more now. It’s not just about dyslexia.  It’s about what it’s like to struggle with something fundamental.

For my teenagers, being understood means having the opportunity to reach their goals, both big and small.  The more I understand about what it’s like to be in their shoes, the more I can help them achieve success.

 

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    The Australian Literacy Academy (ALA) is a private English tutoring centre in Castle Hill, NSW dedicated to helping children of all levels and spectrums reach their full potential in the area of literacy: reading, writing, spelling, comprehension and speaking and listening.

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About Us
Australian Literacy Academy is a private English tutoring centre dedicated to helping children of all levels and spectrums reach their full potential in the area of literacy: reading, writing, spelling, comprehension and speaking and listening. We provide tutoring at our Castle Hill centre and online
tutoring to children of all ages across Australia.


www.australianliteracyacademy.com.au

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Australian Literacy Academy (ALA)
Private English Tutoring Castle Hill
Unit 12
7 Anella Avenue 
CASTLE HILL NSW 2154 


T:  (02) 9191 7336
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