Supporting children with reading and writing difficulties week 6

Accommodations

• Allow for extra time
• bigger font size - 14 Ariel
• Allow computer
• Define words
• Teach spelling of subject specific vocab
• Don't double side pages - dyslexic learners often miss the verso side of the page
• Don't take off marks for spelling, especially if it is not the competency being measured
• When evaluating spelling allow for modified marking - eg if they get 20 words to learn, tell dyslexic child to write the ones they think they know and their mark is how many they got correct vs how many they attempted.
• Read questions aloud unless evaluating reading
• Use visuals to support input as well as manual-kinaesthetic 
• Evaluate one aspect of the writing eg spelling, grammar, punctuation...
• Write the correct answer for spelling. Circle correct words
• Provide students with multiplication tables for maths
• Provide a summary of the lesson rather than get them to write it. Get them to highlight key words (for example ) so that they are not passive.
• Evaluate orally rather than in writing
• Discuss a mistake as a positive thing eg over-generalisation can talk about the rules and the exceptions
• Celebrate progress.
• Text -to - speech conversion
• Record questions
• History - allow for use of computer, vocabulary, define words, bigger fonts, they may reverse dates - don't penalise them for that, allow for use of mind maps
• Maths - have multiplication tables next to them, display four basic operations, evaluate reasoning and result separately, simplify instructions, allow use of computer/calculator

Technology Aids Reading

• Programs may have been superseded by something more useful
• Text to speech; annotation tools (on and offline); change visual appearance of text (colour, contrast, font, letter spacing, smaller window?); organisational tools for collating information from multiple text sources
• Text to speech - AT bar (text to speech, magnify text, take images, use dictionary); 
• Change visual appearance of text - eg change background/text colour; 
• Annotation - eg increasing letter spacing. Voice Dream includes this.
• Size of Windows - a guide for lines, text in columns. Try what works with individual students. 
• Organisational tools - Evernote, Trello (project management tool, allows different people in a team to log in, assign tasks to different people), reminders
• Give responsibility to students to choose apps that work for them

Aids for Writing

• Pre-writing - graphic organisers, mind maps etc. Kidsperartion. Pre-planning is VERY important for children with dyslexia. We have a tendency to rush the pre-writing stage and it is important that this doesn't happen with dyslexic learners.
• Writing - text expander - shortcut so that don't have to type whole word - Phrase Express, Let Me Type; Live scribe digital pen audio records the writing (for notetaking); Ginger spell checker - takes into account context; Speech to text tools - use with caution with younger children because of the frustrations involved in training the software, also has difficulty with accents, hard to speak in the same way that you write so might add cognitive demands rather than reduce them

Aids for Memory

• Can we increase our memory? Science isn't clear
• Software to increase memory span - some evidence that can increase specific skill you are training but unsure how generalised this skill is
• If we know that auditory memory is vulnerable, support it with our other senses eg images, videos, manipulating objects
• Overlearning things - once introduced word, then get them to do more active retrieval, repetition of word over time (Word Generation)
• Chunking - instructions are in chunks so that they can be remembered (eg digit span test)
• Front-load key information - say action verb in instruction early on; give visual back-up
• Think of a signal the child can give that they don't understand that won't be obvious to other children
• Record instructions

Aids for Organisation

• People with dyslexia may also have problems with things in time and space
• Can be seen as a motivational thing rather than related to dyslexia
• Scaffold some planning strategies
• Orientation in time (timetabling, planning) - eg timetable using symbols and pictures to aid memory
• Timetables in multiple places
• Timetables that make sense for the student = collaborative effort
• Give students content before hand so they can plan
• When setting homework allow some time in class so misunderstandings can be clarified

Supporting children with difficulties in reading and writing - Week 5

Multisensory Teaching Practice

Auditory Discovery

• Children listen to the words and identify the common sound (fog, careful, sift, refill, funny, cliff, often, fight).

Visual Discovery

• Give list of words - children circle the letter that makes the sound.
• They don't need to read the word.
• What is the name of the letter?

Tracking

• "Catch" each f by circling it, keeping pen on the paper in between.

Oral Kinaesthetic Discovery

• Try to feel what is happening with our bodies when we say f.
• Put hands on neck and feel the difference in sound between f and v.
• When we pronounce f, the vocal chords are not moving
• Tongue - explore movement with children. It can move in all directions. How does it move when we say f? Sh? Ss? When saying f, tongue is against your teeth.
• Teeth and lips - pronounce f and s. What difference do you see? When you say f, lips are closed, can't see teeth.

Manual Kinaesthetic Discovery

• Read words with fingers, not eyes.
• Use cards with raised letters - can you read the word?

Tactile

• Cover eyes with blindfold.
• Read words with fingers.
• Use counters to count the number of syllables in a word.
• Then put hand under jaw to count syllables. How many times did your jaw touch your hand?
• Write the word with a line after each syllable.
• For long words, use your thumb to split the word into syllables.

The Alphabet

• Lay alphabet in the shape of a rainbow so that you can see all of the letters.

Blap

• Blap is from planet Gizoom.
• What sounds do you hear in the name Blap? Put a counter down for each sound.
• Find words (real or imaginary) that end the same way as Blap.

Revision of Reading Cards

• Review short and long sounds for vowels and the sounds for consonants/blends.
• Say the clue word, children say the first sound they hear in the word.

Teaching Phonological Awareness and the Alphabetic Principle

• Start with shorter words and move on to longer words.
• Use the Blap "alien" to work through the assessment tasks.
• Use counters/objects to help teach phonological awareness. Ideally, different colours - syllables, two shades of same colour to represent onset and rime and a colour for the phoneme.
• Have wooden/ plastic alphabet for touch. Get children to write the letters. Start with upppercase because less confusion between letters.
• Must make sure child has a thorough understanding of the alphabet.
• Dyslexic children may not be able to tell you which letter comes before or after a target letter, although they are able to recite the alphabet.
• Five minutes a day work on alphabet - use in a rainbow shape.
• Ask them to lay letters out and put their hands on their mouth and throat so they can feel the movement.
• Close eyes. What letter comes before another? If they get stuck, ask them to feel the letter.
• Have a word in your head. Each child has one letter. They have to listen to each other the work out what the word is.
• Auditory discovery of phoneme - series of words where the target phoneme is at the beginning, middle and end of the word.
• Visual - circle the grapheme relating to the phoneme you are working on.
• Write the word in the air, in sand trays etc.
• Tracking - have the letter in different fonts/forms
• Reading cards to use for revision. Important to reinforce the grapheme-phoneme correspondences.
• Spelling cards - when teaching the spelling of phonemes always start with the more frequent graphemes (eg first f, then ff, then ph).
• Children can review reading cards each day - say the clue word, say the phoneme, and then turn over the card to see if they are correct.

Multisensory Techniques

• Working in structure - don't put child in a situation where they haven't seen the grapheme/ phoneme link in a multisensory link.
• Give the children self-correction tools so that children can self-correct
• Reading - grouping words into families - teach explicitly with colour coding
• Reading - helping children separate longer words into smaller sections eg syllables.  Underline the phonemes, cross out the silent letters, separate the syllables.
• Make a reading pack of irregular words
• Spelling - teach cursive writing because each time the pen is lifted from he paper. the more chance of error for a dyslexic learner (American dnealian). 
• How to teach regular/irregular words.
• Regular - SOS (Simultaneous Oral Spelling) 
• Irregular words - LSWC - Look Cover Write Check
• Sentence dictation - allow child to read the text before you dictate it. Child says back sentence. Teacher dictates sentence, students write it. Pupils read what they have written. Find mistakes.
• Tricks to remember spelling.

Comprehension

• Try strategies with students to see what works with those students.
• Use audio books to allow children to access content when you are not focussing on working on the text.
• Be aware of font when creating worksheets etc. San serif fonts like Ariel, size 14 with letters a little more widely spaced can make things easier to read. Double spaced too.
• When presenting a text to a child:

1. Verbal preparation, preview difficult words in the text, what do they know about the topic?
2. KWL - knowledge, what do I want to learn, what have I learned?
3. When the child is reading - self-monitoring eg re-read sentences, look up words. Stop  - what did that just say? What words didn't they know?
4. Active processing of the text - asking children to recall, get children to sequence chunks, students take on role of teacher and ask questions of a student or a peer.

• Reading Rockets website, Reading Educator website.
• What kind of text is it? Different strategies for different types. How is the text organised?
• Visualisation, mind maps. Use visual imagery for comprehension. Is it useful for the child in front of you (not always useful)
• Mind maps can be used to plan writing

Composition

• Pre-writing stage - bring together background knowledge, make sure student knows exactly what is expected from the writing. Brainstorm, mind-maps, get the ideas down.
• Karen Harris researcher
• Organisation - structures.
• Try to make writing task authentic
• Think about audience - who am I addressing?
• Drafting - then edit
• Editing - part of the process. Make process explicit
• MAPS - Meaning, agreement (grammatical), punctuation, spelling
• Use writing strategically - do they need to demonstrate their knowledge via writing?

Supporting children with difficulties in reading and writing - Week 4

Inclusion

• Important that schools respond to individual differences.
• Teaches children to be open to differences.
• Less expensive than specialised schools.

Early identification important as is getting parent and community involvement.

Learning happens when there is active participation from the child.

Successful inclusion in Finland:

• All learners sharing the same classroom
• No wall between children with special needs and others
• Children taken individually at the back of classroom by a specialist

Reports on Reading

Key components of learning to read:

• Explicit teaching of phonological and phonemic awareness
• Explicit teaching of the grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPC)
• Both reinforce the other

Phonological activities should focus on rimes in English because of the importance of rimes in English.

Systematic teaching of GPC is better than other methods such as whole word, whole language, especially for dyslexic (Ehri et al, 2000).

• Best training is the teaching of GPC
• Phonological awareness is paramount
• Such teaching should be multi-sensory, with tokens (or blocks) that can be manipulated  
• Such training benefits all children, expecially those with dyslexia and those from lower SES

General Principles

Four principles:

• Structured and sequential - associate colours with subjects. establish learning objectives, revisit same topic several times in different way. Structure corresponds to frequency of letters in the language. Logical progression in teaching the grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPC). From high-frequency simple concepts to low frequency concepts of more complexity. Simple digraphs (sh-) before more complex (-tion). Old English words, then Latin and French words, then Greek based letter groups. Phonics progression chart (Milne).Suffix that added to base word taught before suffixes that change the base word.
• Phonics based- global methods are bad for dyslexic learners. They also induce social-economical effects.
• Multi-sensory - combining a maximum of entries to the brain, simultaneously. Let children feel what is happening in their throat, mouth etc when they say words. Also manual eg when writing, touch. Must be structured, sequential, cumulative, each step mastered before moving on, memory training. Diagnostic - adapt teaching strategy depending on reaction of learner.
• Metacognitive - constant self-questioning - how do I learn this? how will I remember? what approach is required for this task or problem? how did I succeed in a similar situation? Induces a feeling of control that is good for self-esteem. Relies on two principles: succeeding is not random, it involves a strategy, to overcome a difficulty, one must measure the extent of the incomprehension. Dyslexics often have weak memory.

What can you do to help?

• Dyslexics will need more time to automatise processes owing to weak memory, both for storing and accessing knowledge.
• Offer a pause for reflection every now and again and then you propose a solution to a problem, each validated strategy is put on the board, each then becomes a resource person who can help others. Card with steps on it. How did they get the answer?

Subject Specific Principles

Science

• Reduce literacy demands so student can access subject
• Heavy language load - long, may sound/look similar
• Instructions - experiment design etc
• Memory load in instructions in class
• Don't rely on verbal instructions, written as well
• Instructions sequenced into short, manageable chunks
• Prior warning of topic so they have time to pre-process some of the text
• More repetition of terms, word walls
• Different forms of assessment, not just written report eg video, powerpoint

If child not responding to phonics - may not have the oral language to access content, group may not be a good place for student, negative thinking (I can't do this), variety of presentation/texts. As a teacher you can never rely on one thing. What is working/not working for THIS child. 

Supporting children with difficulties in reading and writing - Week 3

Audition

• Audition is a broad area of processing. Audition is how the brain makes sense of the sounds it receives from the ears.
• Speech sounds can differ due to duration, pitch, loudness (vowels are louder), stress syllables
• Auditory perception is not one thing

Vision

• Visual part is not typically the primary cause of dyslexia
• Motion perception/ eye movement problems
• Visual stress - seeing highly contrasting visual images - providing special glasses or coloured overlays that seem to reduce visual stress.Research evidence is mixed for these solutions.
• Magnocellular theory - - evidence also mixed - cause or effect?
• Visual attention - the brain is deciding what to attend to. May find it easier to read a smaller window of text - may be better for some people.

Attention

• Attention can be hyperactive or inattentive
• If attention is not on instruction, can miss vital parts of instruction
• May take approximate approach to reading - eg may miss words, change small words
• If child has decoding issue, find reading frustrating - may show similar patterns
• Different causes can cause similar behaviours - or can be an issue with both!
• Children with a more primary reading issues tend to have bigger phonological issues.
• If you read comprehension questions to a child with dyslexia, they can sometimes perform better without demands of decoding. Children with attention issues may show the reverse.
• Do attention issues only occur at reading time?

Maths

• Up to 60% of dyslexic children have issues with maths
• A lot of rote learning in maths - difficult for those with dyslexic tendencies
• Then don't have the foundations on which to build
• Dyslexics can have issues with sequencing - challenge in maths
• Focus on concepts rather than rote learning can help
• Symbols can look very similar to dyslexic people
• Word problems - different words used. Abstract, relational terms
• Need to instil competence in early years

Dyspraxia

• Difficulties in motor control, automatisms and spacial temporal organisation.
• Difficulty in dressing, coordinate hands and legs to ride a bike, tie shoelaces etc
• Appear to be clumsy
• difficulty in reading time
• Computer is useful because they find it hard to hold a pencil
• Verbal intelligence is normal, sometimes superior
• Visual/Spacial ability problematic
• Difficulty with geometory - adaption - ask them to explain problem and you write or use app
• Use computer as early as eight.
• Often goes hand in hand with dycalcula

Oral Language Impairment

• Phonemes often fuzzier
• Non-dyslexic learners ignore unimportant variations while dyslexic learners tend to notice them - although this is controversial.
• Difficulties in identifying fast temporal changes in oral language
• Specific Language Impairment often comes with dyslexia.

Psychological Effects

• Need more effort to succeed and not rewarded with results
• Anxiety and depression
• Can have a significant impact on the justice system
• Need self-esteem to learn
• Self-perception if negative difficult to deal with difficulties
• Teacher has central role to recognise all children at school
• Dyslexic child who experiences failure at school can develop four types of behviour:
• Inhibition
• Regression - requires attention, doesn't think by themselves
• Projection - tries to ignore difficulties but will notice them in others and make fun of them, perhps violence
• Displacement - get validation in other domains
• Results often do not match the huge efAdvantage that dyslefort put in
• Teachers must make sure they recognise the other abilities of these children

Positive Aspects

• People with dyslexia can excel often in eg visualising things in 3D space 
• Dyslexics have more of their brain for visual information
• Professions where dyslexics excel - architect, engineer, designer, TV presenter, poet, singer, entrepreneur, salesperson

Pros and Cons of Labelling

• Advantages - relief to put a word on something; some countries will allow adaptations at school
• Disadvantages - sometimes child will give up; in some school systems then can get packaged intervention which doesn't always help; labels easy to give, hard to take away

How to Identify Reading Difficulties

Week 2 of the Supporting Children with Difficulties in Reading and Writing.

Definition and Causes

• Dyslexia is a neurologically-based condition, which is often hereditary. It results in problems with reading, writing and spelling. Also usually associated with difficulties in concentration, short term memory and organisation.

• Dyslexia is NOT caused by poor schooling or home background or by poor motivation for learning. It does not clinically manifest with poor sight, hearing or muscle control - although it may occur with these conditions.

• Matthew effect - if child struggles to decode they will read less texts over time, exposed to less new vocabulary and so results in lower vocabulary level compared to peers later on.

• Why do children have these problems? 

• Decoding struggles - these children tend to struggle with phonological processing. Problem with manipulating sounds in words.Dyslexia usually associated with visual problems and there are often these as well but primarily it is a phonological issue. Harder to automatically link sounds and letters.Also might be a separate matter with speed of processing which can exacerbate the phonological issues.

• Strong genetics component to dyslexia caused by mulitple genes. Continuum of effect.

•  Early intervention critically important. Children who are late talkers often go on to have reading difficulties.

Identification - Pre-Primary

• Dyslexia exists from birth.
• Risk factors for dyslexia (not to be considered in isolation - combination of risk factors and consistency over time) before the child learns to read: 
        
1. Dyslexia in the family. Did parents, grandparents have difficulties reading and writing?
2. Ambidextrous, difficulty establishing manual preference.
3.  Persistent confusion between left and right.
4. Inability to appreciate rhymes in nursery rhymes and songs.
5. Difficulty following a rhythm and reproducing it.
6. Difficulty learning songs or poems by rote.
7. Difficulty naming familiar objects - finds it hard to access the name of something even if it is known.
8. Difficulty in following a sequence of instructions.. They have a difficulty with short term memory.
9. Difficulty in saying words - will confuse sound order. 
10. Difficulty with organisation and frequent loss of personal items.
11. Difficulty with time and space eg before/after, tomorrow/yesterday. 

Identification - Primary

• Things to look for (persistent over time):
        
1. Auditory confusion between similar phonemes eg buh/puh/duh.
2. Visual confusion between graphemes that are similar eg p/q, n/u, f/t.
3. Inversion between letter and syllables.
4. Addition of letters, syllables or affixes.
5. Omissions of elements of words.
6. Substitution of words, guessing words.
7. Contraction or de-contraction. Misusing word boundaries.
• Other behaviours:
        
1. Lose the thread of what they are reading. Re-read the line two times without being aware they are doing it.
2. Read/write a text in present tense instead of the past or future.
3. Very inconsistent autography - same word spelled in several different ways in same piece of writing.
4. Ignoring punctuation, no intonation.
5. Writing is very slow.
6. Fatigue. First long OK, end of product mistakes

Informal Assessment

• Combination of several symptoms, frequency despite your correction ad persistence over time.
• Examine phonological awareness in child. Difficulty in manipulating sounds of language.
• Complexity differs - syllables are easier than onset rimes which are easier than phonemes.
• Important to pronounce pure sounds eg t not "tuh"
• Eight tasks:
        
1. Generation - get child to generate words containg the same ending, final syllable or rime as a target word.
2. Detection - give three words to child and find odd one out. Child has to retain words in memory and give answer.
3. Blending - syllable give me the whole word "te-le-vi-sion"; onset rime - what do you get when you join up "tr and ap; phoneme - c a n a l
4. Segmentation - Give child word and divide into syllables, onset rime and phonemes.
5. Deletion - syllable eg say word cabin, now say it again without "ca", phoneme - meat say it again without m.
6. Substitution - track - what would happen to it if I replaced tr with cr.
7. Phoneme Fusion - first phoneme of two words eg big apple = ba
8. Inversion - eg invert two first consonants in a word and say the word. Very complex!!
• Irregular words - said, yacht, knight etc. You can't use phoneme code you need to know these words. Have to use direct access path. Typical mistakes are regulatisation.
• Pseudo words - invented words. Can only be read by phonological decoding route.
• If they can read pseudo words better than irregular words then you know that phonological decoding is working quite well. Direct access route not so good. Errors include lexicalisation - eg labbit - rabbit (overuse of direct access path); addition/omission/ inversion.
• IF they are reading irregular words well and pseudo words poorly then you know direct access route is working well but phonological decoding route is not.
• Text comprehension - find suitable text. Evaluate comprehension. Assess child' background knowledge of the topic of the text:
        
1. What do you know about the subject?
2. What do you think the text is going to be about?
• Gives you an idea of their knowledge before they read.
• Present the text. They read text aloud. Have two copies of text so you can record errors and if possible, record them. 
• Assess their comprehension. Either recall task - get child to tell what the text was about eg describe it to someone who hasn't read the story (look for sequence, central idea, details, basic structure, precise, omissions). Explicit and implicit questions about the text.
• Assess strategy used for completing information. Present text again to child and ask questions that were not correctly answered and analyse the strategy they use to find the answer in the text.
• Analyse mistakes in reading. Positive errors - omissions, insertions, changes in sequence, inattention to punctuation, repetition of part of a word, self correction where meaning is not changed. Negative errors - omissions, insertions, changes in sequence, inattention to punctuation, repetition of part of a word, refusal to read a word where the meaning is altered.
• Using the results - stimulate positive strategies eg link more to prior knowledge, pay more attention to punctuation, improve decoding strategies, encourage self correction. Guide child away from strategies that are being over used eg relying on context to guess a word.
• Assessing sequencing abilities - dyslexics find thing like alphabet, months of year, multiplcation tables etc hard. Design a test - name months of the year. for older children - what letter comes before "p"?
• Rapid automatised naming - name as quickly as possible and without mistakes. Dyslexics are much slower at this. Uses pictures - don't put learner in a situation where they "fail".
• Auditory short term memory - digit span test. Keep increasing until the child makes two mistakes in a row. Then you stop. Do the test again and ask child to repeat in reverse order. In primary school, digit span forward is usually 4-5, backward 2-3. Dyslexic usually much lower.
• Visual short term memory - copying test. Copy text as quickly as possible (eg in 2 minutes). Stress mean dyslexic learners will make mistakes.
• Finding shapes - bell test. How many do they find? What strategy do they use? Dyslexic usually more erratic.
• Sequence comparison - series of letters - are they the same? 

What Can you Do with Test Results?

• If child has difficulty in phonemic awareness and difficulty with pseudo words - design a programe to enhance phonemic awareness and improving the phonological route.
• Child has greater difficulty reading irregular words and much better short term memory for visual rather than auditory materials. Teach irregular words with flashcards.

How the Brain Learns to Read

Coursera - Supporting children with difficulties in reading and writing Week 1

I signed up for the Coursera Supporting Children with Difficulties in Reading and Writing course many months ago because I felt that it was an area I didn't know enough about. I must confess that I had almost forgotten about it but it has finally started! I won't be going for certification (it is simply too much to take on at the moment) but I will be doing some "blog notes" so that my brain doesn't totally forget what I hope will be useful content. Let the blogging begin!

Week 1

Writing Systems

• English has an added layer of "messiness". Aural language changes, written language takes time to adjust.
• Great vowel shift in the Middle Ages - English is an old language so these changes are more noticeable.
• Children learning English take longer than in more "transparent" language such as Finnsh.
• Sound (phonological) awareness key predictor of success in alphabetic languages.
• Think about reading direction (left to right vs. right to left).

Models of Reading

• No pre-programmed module in the brain for the acquisition of written language.
• Logographic stage - recognises some words as pictures or logos.
• Alphabetic stage - child needs to be aware words can be divided into smaller parts called phonemes. Also they need to understand how oral language links to written language.
• Autographic stage - have direct access to the word without relying on phonological route. Comes with repetition.
• Child has to establish millions of new connections in the brain to learn to read, especially between the visual and auditory areas.
• Fluent reader nearly always uses direct path. Experience!

Importance of Automatisation

• Two parts - speed and accuracy
• Dyslexic readers don't have this automaticity so a lot of more work.
• Fluent readers do not use the context to identify a word because the process of word recognition is too quick.
• Only poor readers rely on context.
• Rapid automatising test - dyslexic people are slower than others
• The child with dyslexia is spending so much brainpower on putting letters into sounds that he/she has little left over to think about the meaning.

Biligualism

• Very few studies relating bilingualism and dyslexia.
• Many different variables.
• Diversity of pairs of languages put together.
• Some mistakes result from the contrasts between the languages while other relate to generalisations and simplifications specific to second language.
• Eg "L" and "R" sounds difficult for Japanese speakers.
• Difficulties where one language alphabetical and one not eg English and Chinese. Where both languages are alphabetical, children seem to be able to transfer knowledge.
• Bilingual adults and children activate both languages even when they don't need to.
• "In the bilingual reader, words that look similar in both languages interfere with each even when the person is trying to work mostly in one language. There is cross-interference from the other language. The brain is trying to work out which word or meaning is intended. So the response is slowed down." 
• Dyslexia in biligualism - makes language learning difficult, memorisation difficult.
• Dyslexic or not, some children find oral language acquisition easier than others.
• When acquiring the writing system for a second language dyslexic learner have to learn a new set of grapheme/phoneme correspondences, some which may conflict with native language.
• English is the most opaque language in the world.
• If one of the languages of the dyslexic learner is transparent, then there can be benefits for the less transparent learner.