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Gifted and Dyslexic – Kids like Us. By Liana Chandler (Bach EC, M.T & M Ed Spec)

28/7/2014

The Hon Bill Shorten received the report from the Dyslexia Working Party in January 2010. The report entitled ‘Helping people with dyslexia: a national action agenda’ stated that “There should be adoption at a national level of a working definition of dyslexia to allow shared language for productive discourse on the issue in Australia. The proposed working definition, consistent with the definitions published by the British Dyslexia Association, the International Dyslexia Association/ National Institute of Child Health and Development, the International Reading Association, and the Rose Report on Dyslexia, is:

"Dyslexia is a language-based learning disability of neurological origin. It primarily affects the skills involved in accurate and fluent word reading and spelling. It is frequently associated with difficulties in phonological processing. It occurs across the range of intellectual abilities with no distinct cut-off points. It is viewed as a lifelong disability that often does not respond as expected to best-practice evidence-based classroom methods for teaching reading.”

The student who cannot read, write or spell must trigger alarms for concerned parents and teachers. More concerning though, is the student who struggles despite an adequate IQ. The struggling student who has received the same teaching that has allowed fellow students to become literate. The capable, confident student who has a visible ability or skill in a non-reading, writing, spelling based task. The student who has phenomenal skills in technology, music, maths, art etc. is not the one we automatically check for dyslexia, yet like a duck they may be paddling furiously beneath the surface as they struggle to keep up in the torrent of requirements teachers put upon them.

Students who are able in one or several areas, yet produce very limited, basic written texts, using vocabulary that is considerably below their verbal ability, need our attention and compassionate support. For a gifted student this discrepancy can involve many, many years difference between what should be achieved and what is achieved.

Dyslexia is not a failure to read, write or spell but rather a complex, significant discrepancy between the ability to process and remember instructions and ideas and then to produce quick spoken or written output.

Unfortunately dyslexia is almost completely disregarded in Australia, at the moment, but it is one part of being twice exceptional that is likely to cause significant stress within the classroom and with homework. Though some students are able to manage their difficulties and cope adequately with study requirements for many years.

Students with combined giftedness and dyslexia, in whatever proportions, are considerably disadvantaged by an education system that stresses academic achievement and paper qualifications. Historically such students have been able to grow up to become the inventors, tradespeople and entrepreneurs of society. The gifted with dyslexia path is considerably more challenging in the twenty-first century.

Further reading:

Shaywitz, S. (2005). Overcoming dyslexia: a new incomplete science-based program for reading problems at any level

Davis, R. & Braun, E. (2010). The gift of dyslexia, revised and expanded: why some of the smartest people can't read…. And how they can learn

Eide, B.; Eide, F. (2011). The dyslexic advantage: unlocking the hidden potential of the dyslexic brain

Fisher, J. ; Price, J. (2011). Take control of dyslexia and other reading difficulties.

Reid, G. (2011). Dyslexia: a complete guide for parents and those who help them

Trail, B. (2010). Twice exceptional gifted children: understanding, teaching, and counselling gifted students

Kiesa, K. (Ed.). (2000). Uniquely gifted: identifying and meeting the needs of twice exceptional student

Callard-Szulgit, R. (2008). Twice exceptional kids: a guide for assisting students who are both academically gifted and learning disabled

Montgomery, D. (2003). Gifted and talented children with special educational needs: double exceptionality

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Progress in Fluency and Automaticity. By Liana Chandler (Bach EC, M.T & M Ed Spec)

25/7/2014

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Gaining fluency in reading entails developing rapid and perhaps automatic word identification processes (La Berge and Samuels, 1974). The main mechanism for gains in automaticity is, in some form or another, practice at consistent input-output mappings (Schneider and Shiffrin, 1977). In reading, this involves practice at word identification. On a word-based account of reading acquisition, it is a characteristic of words, not readers.

Progress in Understanding

For children learning to read, comprehension can take advantage of skills they have been using in their oral language: the shared basic language components, working memory and vocabulary and topic knowledge. Reading comprehension skills are at first limited by unskilled decoding; later, comprehension when reading and when listening to a text are highly correlated; still later, the advantage of listening over reading disappears and, in some cases, for some kinds of texts and purposes, reverses (Curtis, 1980). But in the beginning, many tricks of the trade that children have as native speakers will help a great deal. Moreover, early books can be well designed to support the child's engagement and curiosity and keep the process going.

Research on what young good comprehenders do is not as far along as research on children's word processing. Studies that contrast skilled and less skilled comprehenders have shown that skilled comprehenders are better at decoding (e.g., Perfetti, 1985), have superior global language comprehension (Smiley et al., 1977), and have superior metacognitive skills (Paris and Myers, 1981). Some studies have matched subjects on decoding measured in oral reading by counting errors. In a series of studies of 7- and 8-year-olds in English schools, Yuill and Oakhill (1991) compared children matched for chronological age and for reading accuracy but who differed significantly in reading comprehension on a standardized norm-referenced test that measures the two aspects of reading separately. The skilled comprehenders (at or slightly above the level expected for their chronological age in comprehension) were notable for the work they did with the words and sentences they encountered in texts. For example, they understood pronoun references, made proper inferences about the text from particular words, drew more global inferences from elements of the text that were not adjacent, detected inconsistencies in texts, applied background knowledge, and monitored their comprehension.

Tracing the development of reading comprehension to show the necessary and sufficient conditions to prevent reading difficulty is not as well researched as other aspects of reading growth. In fact, as Cain (1996) notes, "because early reading instruction emphasizes word recognition rather than comprehension, the less skilled comprehenders' difficulties generally go unnoticed by their class-room teachers. "It may well be that relieving the bottleneck from poor word recognition skills will reveal, for some children, stop-pages in other areas that create comprehension problems; more research is called for on factors related to comprehension growth from birth to age 8 that may produce problems as children read to learn in elementary school.

The year 4 slump is a term used to describe a widely encountered disappointment when examining scores of year 4’s in comparison with younger children. Whether looking at test scores or other performance indicators, there is sometimes a decline in the rate of progress or a decrease in the number of children achieving at good levels reported for year 4. It is not clear what the explanation is or even if there is a unitary explanation. The most obvious but probably least likely explanation would be that some children simply stop growing in reading at year 4.

Two other explanations are more likely. One possibility is that the slump is an artefact; that is, the tasks in school and the tasks in assessment instruments may change so much between year 3 and year 4 that it is not sensible to compare progress and success on such different tasks and measures. It may be that the true next stage of what is measured in year 3 is not represented in the year 4 data and that the true precedents for the year 4 data are not represented in the year 3 data.

A second possibility is that it is not so much a year 4 slump as a primary streak, that is, that some children have problems in the earlier years that are hidden while so much else is being learned. Previously "unimportant" reading difficulties may appear for the first time in year 4 when the children are dealing more frequently, deeply, and widely with nonfiction materials in a variety of school subjects and when these are represented in assessment instruments. It may be that there had been less call for certain knowledge and abilities until year 4 and a failure to thrive in those areas might not be noticed until then. It is, of course, this latter possibility that is important for preventing reading difficulties, and more attention needs to be paid to research on the year 4 slump.

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Difficulties with Mathematics. By Liana Chandler (Bach EC, M.T & M Ed Spec)

21/7/2014

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When children who struggle with learning are the topic of conversation, the spotlight is most often turned to reading, and with good reason. Trouble with reading is by far the most reported concern by parents and teachers alike. That said, math is not far behind, and it is not unusual for individuals who have difficulties with reading to also have trouble with mathematics.

Just like reading skills are critical for succeeding in school and in life, there has been increased recognition during the past few years of the importance of acquiring basic math skills that set the stage for more advanced math learning required for higher education and employment.

There is no question that the failure to develop competencies in math during the school years can seriously handicap both daily living and vocational prospects for young people and adults alike. In today’s world, mathematical knowledge, math reasoning and math problem-solving skills are no less important than reading ability.

Dyscalculia Defined

Dyscalculia is the general term used to describe learning difficulties in mathematics. Individuals with dyscalculia have significant problems with numbers: learning about them and understanding how they work. They also experience difficulties in the areas of math calculations, telling time, left/right orientation, understanding rules in games and much more.

What We Know: Early Math Skills Predict Future Academic Achievement

There is wide-spread misunderstanding of the importance of math in everyday life and a lack of appreciation of how important math learning is for young children. Researchers have begun to look at kindergarten math skills as effective predictors of future academic achievement. Children's early math knowledge is said to be important because it fosters future abilities not only in math but also in reading. In one study, pre-math skills at kindergarten entry are said to predict math achievement as much as reading achievement by year three.

Early math skills are often not only often strong predictors of later math achievement; they can be predictive of later reading achievement as well as the acquisition of early reading skills. These and other patterns were similar for boys and girls and for children from both upper-middle class and poor families.

What We Know: A Lack of Knowledge About Learning Disabilities in Math

Many teachers (and parents), by their own admission, lack a conceptual understanding of math and are therefore not well prepared to teach math effectively or convey an appreciation of math to their students. Many even admit to disliking or being anxious about math, a perception easily conveyed to students.

In contrast to dyslexia, researchers have not yet identified the primary cognitive deficits that underlie math learning difficulties. Difficulties in math appear not to be linked to a specific disability, but rather, may be the result of weaknesses in other related cognitive skill areas such as language, attention, memory and skills related to perceiving and imagining space.

What We Know: The Importance of Monitoring Progress

There is good evidence that early prediction or identification of math difficulties, coupled with well-targeted research-based interventions, can diminish or prevent struggle with math learning for many children.

Children with a learning difficulty in math are likely to show persistent difficulties with learning over time, making it all the more important to gather reliable data about student progress beginning as early as possible in the child’s school career.

However, math learning does not follow a predictable, step-by-step course and this can make the tracking of progress more challenging. Interestingly, seemingly more advanced skills and concepts are possible to learn before mastering more basic numerical operations.

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What is Disgraphia? By Liana Chandler (Bach EC, M.T & M Ed Spec)

18/7/2014

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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.

What Are the Warning Signs of Dysgraphia?

Just having bad handwriting doesn’t mean a person has dysgraphia. Since dysgraphia is a processing disorder, difficulties can change throughout a lifetime. However since writing is a developmental process—children learn the motor skills needed to write, while learning the thinking skills needed to communicate on paper—difficulties can also overlap.

Dysgraphia: Warning Signs By Age

Young Children

Trouble With:

Tight, awkward pencil grip and body position

Avoiding writing or drawing tasks

Trouble forming letter shapes

Inconsistent spacing between letters or words

Poor understanding of uppercase and lowercase letters

Inability to write or draw in a line or within margins

Tiring quickly while writing

School-Age Children

Trouble With:

Illegible handwriting

Mixture of cursive and print writing

Saying words out loud while writing

Concentrating so hard on writing that comprehension of what's written is missed

Trouble thinking of words to write

Omitting or not finishing words in sentences

Teenagers and Adults

Trouble With:

Trouble organizing thoughts on paper

Trouble keeping track of thoughts already written down

Difficulty with syntax structure and grammar

Large gap between written ideas and understanding demonstrated through speech

What Strategies Can Help?

There are many ways to help a person with dysgraphia achieve success. Generally strategies fall into three main categories:

Accommodations: providing alternatives to written expression

Modifications: changing expectations or tasks to minimize or avoid the area of weakness

Remediation: providing instruction for improving handwriting and writing skills

Each type of strategy should be considered when planning instruction and support. A person with dysgraphia will benefit from help from both specialists and those who are closest to the person. Finding the most beneficial type of support is a process of trying different ideas and openly exchanging thoughts on what works best.

Although teachers and employers are required by law to make "reasonable accommodations" for individuals with learning disabilities, they may not be aware of how to help. Speak to them about dysgraphia and explain the challenges faced as a result of this learning disability.

Here are examples of how to teach individuals with dysgraphia to overcome some of their difficulties with written expression.

Early Writers

Be patient and positive, encourage practice and praise effort. Becoming a good writer takes time and practice.

Use paper with raised lines for a sensory guide to staying within the lines.

Try different pens and pencils to find one that’s most comfortable.

Practice writing letters and numbers in the air with big arm movements to improve motor memory of these important shapes. Also practice letters and numbers with smaller hand or finger motions.

Encourage proper grip, posture and paper positioning for writing. It’s important to reinforce this early as it’s difficult for students to unlearn bad habits later on.

Use multi-sensory techniques for learning letters, shapes and numbers. For example, speaking through motor sequences, such as "b" is "big stick down, circle away from my body."

Introduce a word processor on a computer early; however do not eliminate handwriting for the child. While typing can make it easier to write by alleviating the frustration of forming letters, handwriting is a vital part of a person's ability to function in the world.

Young Students

Encourage practice through low-stress opportunities for writing. This might include writing letters or in a diary, making household lists, or keeping track of sports teams.

Allow use of print or cursive—whichever is more comfortable.

Use large graph paper for math calculation to keep columns and rows organized.

Allow extra time for writing assignments.

Begin writing assignments creatively with drawing, or speaking ideas into a tape recorder.

Alternate focus of writing assignments—put the emphasis on some for neatness and spelling, others for grammar or organization of ideas.

Explicitly teach different types of writing—expository and personal essays, short stories, poems, etc.

Do not judge timed assignments on neatness and spelling.

Have students proofread work after a delay—it’s easier to see mistakes after a break.

Help students create a checklist for editing work—spelling, neatness, grammar, syntax, clear progression of ideas, etc.

Encourage use of a spell checker—speaking spell checkers are available for handwritten work.

Reduce amount of copying; instead, focus on writing original answers and ideas.

Have student complete tasks in small steps instead of all at once.

Find alternative means of assessing knowledge, such as oral reports or visual projects.

Teenagers and Adults

Many of these tips can be used by all age groups. It is never too early or too late to reinforce the skills needed to be a good writer.

Provide tape recorders to supplement note taking and to prepare for writing assignments.

Create a step-by-step plan that breaks writing assignments into small tasks (see below).

When organizing writing projects, create a list of keywords that will be useful.

Provide clear, constructive feedback on the quality of work, explaining both the strengths and weaknesses of the project, commenting on the structure as well as the information that is included.

Use assistive technology such as voice-activated software if the mechanical aspects of writing remain a major hurdle.

How to Approach Writing Assignments

Plan your paper (Pull together your ideas and consider how you want them in your writing.)

Organize your thoughts and ideas.

Create an outline or graphic organizer to be sure you’ve included all your ideas.

Make a list of key thoughts and words you will want to use in your paper.

Write a draft

This first draft should focus on getting your ideas on paper—don’t worry about making spelling or grammar errors. Using

a computer

is helpful because it will be easier to edit later on.

Edit your work

Check your work for proper spelling, grammar and syntax; use a spell checker if necessary.

Edit your paper to elaborate and enhance content—a thesaurus is helpful for finding different ways to make your point.

Revise your work, producing a final draft

Rewrite your work into a final draft.

Be sure to read it one last time before submitting it.

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Reading Comprehension Instruction for Students with Learning Difficulties. By Liana Chandler (Bach EC, M.T & M Ed Spec)

2/7/2014

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Background and Purpose

Research conducted in the 1980s and more recently has suggested that children with learning difficulties struggle with reading comprehension that is the result of broadly based language problems and not limited to simple difficulties with word recognition. Since reading comprehension is crucial to school success, it is essential to understand the difficulties children with learning difficulties face as they encounter new text and to identify instructional approaches that focus on learning and using the many skills that are needed for successful reading.

This research synthesis was conducted to critically review recent contributions to the body of research on reading comprehension in students with learning difficulties with the goal of enhancing current classroom practices and identifying avenues for future research. These points serve as background information for the following discussion:

Successful reading comprehension is correlated with oral reading fluency and vocabulary knowledge. However, interventions that focus on improving fluency or vocabulary do not necessarily increase reading comprehension, especially of long passages.
Students with learning difficulties often show signs of giving up too quickly when faced with a difficult passage. This so-called task persistence, a skill that must be acquired by all readers, is especially important for successful reading of expository text, such as history and science textbooks, newspapers, and voter pamphlets.
Children with learning difficulties, who have a history of academic difficulties, have documented gaps in grade-appropriate knowledge of history, geography, and other subjects. These knowledge gaps interfere with their understanding of material they encounter in new texts and compound their reading comprehension problems.

Findings

An analysis of three recent research reviews brings the following issues and findings to the forefront of reading comprehension research.

What is the role of self-monitoring in reading comprehension?

So-called active readers learn to monitor how well they understand what they are reading, as they read. When reading difficult material, these students engage in beneficial self-monitoring strategies such as rereading portions of the text and trying to figure out the meaning of unfamiliar words central to understanding it. In contrast, students with learning difficulties often fail to realise that they must pay attention to how well they understand a text as they read so that they can go back and reread as necessary. They must learn several self-monitoring techniques, such as asking themselves questions after reading a passage or summarizing in their own words the material they've read or they might try to predict what will happen next. Learning to make predictions helps reading comprehension.

The ability to reflect on how well a reading task is progressing is a critical component of reading comprehension. Students who are taught a number of strategies to use as they read, such as asking themselves questions as they read and summarizing what they read, generally experience more improvements in comprehension than students who are taught a single, specific comprehension skill. It is essential for students to learn "repair strategies" to use when they find themselves not understanding the text they are reading.

Although students with learning difficulties can be taught to use self-monitoring techniques, it is considerably more difficult for these students to generalize these skills, or apply them to other reading situations. Students frequently do not continue the comprehension strategies that they are taught after completion of the study unless they are asked to. It appears that intense, long-term interventions utilizing multiple self-monitoring interventions may be the most effective approach.

Students with LD process information inactively, and they have difficulty differentiating relevant and irrelevant associations. Possible solutions include techniques that force students to focus attention on the material being read and help them more readily identify the theme of a narrative.

What are the contributions of text structures to reading comprehension?

Skills in discerning and using text structures are important to understanding texts. Students with learning difficulties have trouble learning about the structures of stories. In addition, they typically recall less about stories they've read and cannot easily identify the important information in stories. The most useful text structure is referred to as story grammar, which is the way narrative texts are organized. That is, there are characters, a setting, problems, solutions to the problems, etc. Students with LD know less about narrative text structure than other students. This lack of knowledge interferes with comprehension. Fortunately, narrative text structure can be taught, and when it is, comprehension improves.

Expository writing, the kind of texts found in newspapers and history books, for example, presents these students with even greater challenges. Expository writing typically contains a variety of organizational or text structures that are more difficult to identify. Thus, the tactics that may help when reading stories, such as identifying the main story elements and processing them, are often less effective with expository texts.

Peer-assisted learning strategies (PALS) improve comprehension and oral reading skills. In addition to having students reread text, PALS also has children work directly on comprehension by summarizing what they've read, identifying the most important information, and predicting what may happen next.

Although peer-assisted learning has shown strong benefits, additional research is necessary to determine whether peers have the skills to explain to another student how they handle the difficulties they encounter while reading. It's clear that students can help with practice and that practice is essential for internalizing strategies, but it's not clear to what extent proficient readers can actually teach less proficient readers.

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About ALA

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.

Gifted and Dyslexic – Kids like Us. By Liana Chandler (Bach EC, M.T & M Ed Spec)

Progress in Fluency and Automaticity. By Liana Chandler (Bach EC, M.T & M Ed Spec)

Difficulties with Mathematics. By Liana Chandler (Bach EC, M.T & M Ed Spec)

What is Disgraphia? By Liana Chandler (Bach EC, M.T & M Ed Spec)

Reading Comprehension Instruction for Students with Learning Difficulties. By Liana Chandler (Bach EC, M.T & M Ed Spec)

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