DYSLEXIA IN EMPLOYMENT

"One to two of these employees could be Dyslexic"

The common understanding of Dyslexia is it is a condition which causes difficulty with reading, writing and spelling; ‘children who get their letters back to front’.

Early attempts to describe the condition did focus on its implications for written language skills, particularly reading, but the modern understanding is much broader.  Dyslexia is for life and the constitutional difference which caused problems with reading, writing and spelling persists into adulthood.

What is Dyslexia?

People with Dyslexia have a differently organized brain structure and therefore have a different way of learning and organizing their thoughts.

This may cause a variety of ‘symptoms’, and the particular selection and severity to which each is affected will vary from person to person.

The condition is independent of intelligence but those in whom it is most easily recognized are those who range from average intelligence to those who are exceptionally bright.

Incidence

Studies have shown that 1 in 6 of the population will be affected to some degree and may need help for their difficulties at some stage in their life.

Types of difficulties

The most common weakness is in short term memory, whether visual or auditory. It is this which makes it difficult for the Dyslexic to learn the correspondence between the written symbol and spoken word. Language represents a memorised code and written symbols are the code for spoken sounds.

Sequencing is often another weakness. Besides affecting spelling – getting the letters in the right order – it also has a bearing on planning and organization.

Reading for information is often not a problem, though reading aloud is very difficult for some Dyslexic people.

Identification

In the identification of Dyslexia, ‘incongruity’ is the keyword.

A discrepancy may be observed between academic achievement and real life performance in practical problem solving and verbal skills.

The Dyslexic person will often have an aversion to writing notes, reports, or, in fact, anything at all.

He may have difficulties with organization, or may be ‘super-organized’ as a compensating strategy.

Note: The Dyslexic adult will often have developed excellent coping strategies and avoidance techniques and may be quite difficult to identify.

Dyslexic adults will often refuse promotion, even if the job is well within their capabilities, if the new post requires more literacy skills.

The Employer’s role

Dyslexia is best thought of as an alternative or different learning style.  By using methods which suit their learning style, Dyslexics can overcome many of their problems.

A good employer will bear in mind the incidence of Dyslexia and that several of his employees may be Dyslexic. There will be those whose problems are obvious in that they relate to basic literacy skills but there will be those whose difficulties only manifest themselves subtly. There is much that an employer can do to make it possible for the Dyslexic person to carry out his job efficiently.

Training and induction courses, interviews and all presentations need not rely heavily on the written word.  Multi-sensory (hearing, seeing, saying, doing) aids should be used where at all possible.

Internally produced policies, procedures and factual data can be kept to a minimum and produced with good indexing for easy retrieval.

Pictograms can be used wherever possible for instructions and information.

Alan McDowell
Proud to be Dyslexic
Assessor and Trainer for Dyslexia Awareness in the Workplace in the UK – Retired
If you would like communicate with Alan please email him at:
admin@fulcrumonline.com

Is it Dyslexia?

I was talking with a fellow worker recently about Dyslexia and how she believed she and her child were Dyslexic. She had gone through a formal testing process for herself and it was determined she wasn’t Dyslexic. They had no explanation for many of her issues, but she was not Dyslexic.

As we continued to chat I was very interested in the many personal characteristics of Dyslexia she had when describing herself. She had difficulty remembering names but she could remember faces, places and events with great detail. She was frustrated when she had to learn something presented in a sequence or step by step instructions with no overview (big picture) and no clear explanation of what she was learning and what it meant. She found “just memorizing” was of no value and didn’t “stick”. She could understand complicated math concepts but often could not write out the steps even though she knew the answer. Simple arithmetic was sometimes difficult and hard to remember unless she could visualize it with pictures in her mind such as groups of things like animals. Being “on time” or understanding what being on time meant or why it was necessary had always been an issue for her. She transposed numbers in sequences such as phone numbers. She didn’t like lists but she liked to draw out a plan. She liked helping people and found she was very effective with problem solving and intuition. But she is not Dyslexic.

She also told us about her daughter and a recent school project she was doing about dogs. When she looked at her daughter’s work she noticed that she had started out with the word “dog” and then on following pages she was writing “god”. But I’m sure her daughter is not Dyslexic either.

The view of many professionals is that “Dyslexia” is a general term for learning disabilities. However we find that all the Dyslexic children and adults we assess or talk to have the same list of strengths and issues and only vary on degree, are wonderful problem solvers and tend to be exceptionally intelligent and creative in one or more areas. They don’t have many of the problems that other children with learning disabilities possess and are different learners and thinkers in some very clear ways from the general population. But when tested they don’t have Dyslexia!

Cheers!
Karey Hope
Founder of Dyslexia Victoria Online

Another Dyslexia Book Recommendation by Dyslexia Victoria Online

In our never ending search for good information about Dyslexia I recommend another book to add to your library. The book is called “The Everything Parent’s Guide to Children with Dyslexia” by Abigail Marshall. This book is in “The Everything Parent’s Guide” series of parenting books.  

What Karey and I like about this book is the vast range of topics this book covers.  It touches on many of the issues we feel are of importance for individuals with dyslexic learning issues in a general manner which makes this book easy to read. Though the book is written without getting too bogged down in jargon, it does give enough information to help parents and teachers make intelligent decisions.

Probably the one thing that impressed me most about the book is the amount of research the author has gathered.  She covers topics like: “Understanding and recognizing characteristics of Dyslexia”, “Dyslexia Treatment Programs”, “the IEP process”, “Strategies for Spelling and Math”, and “making choices for high school and college”. She also covers brief descriptions of other learning challenges such as dysgraphia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, autism and Aspergers.

Much of the book is written for Americans who are navigating American school systems but for the most part it is appropriate for all of North American parents. I also believe this book would be a good resource and starting point for anybody facing the issues of Dyslexia or anybody who just wants a good general resource about the topic anywhere in the world.

I was particularly impressed with was her stand on getting a child assessed as young as possible. Karey and I are about to do an assessment on an eleven year old child because her mother was told by the school counselor her daughter could not get assessed by the school psychologist. The reason for the school’s refusal to assess the girl was that they felt she was too young and that none of the problems the girl was having in school could possibly be due to dyslexia. Unfortunately we have seen that leaving interventions till the child is older only compounds the problems. We have performed assessments on children as young as 4 ½, such as one little girl we worked with who has progressed well with the teaching recommendations made for her parents. She is happier and is doing much better in kindergarten. The author also mentioned that the assessment process need not be the ultimate domain of psychologist or doctors but can also be just as effective from a knowledgeable multidisciplinary team made of learning and other specialists.

“We recommend this book as a great general resource of information about Dyslexia and related conditions described in terms that will help any parent begin to understand these complicated and often misunderstood learning issues.”

It’s even printed in a larger font, which we advocate, yah!

I hope this was of value to you and we wish you good luck on your journey to further enlightenment about all things dyslexic.

Happy trails!
Howie deGraaf
Editor and Consultant for Dyslexia Victoria Online

RAD prism lenses: Part 2

Wow, talk about a lot of dialogue, both positive and negative. When I originally wrote the article about the prism glasses my goal was just to present an interesting piece of news. I never said that the glasses were the absolute cure to Dyslexia. I had read about the glasses and I had heard from a friend that they had worked for somebody. My blog on the RAD prism lenses really seemed to polarize two different audiences.

I have had comments about that article sent to me telling me that there was no medical basis for them and I also have heard from people today who tell me these glasses work. I don’t know what to say, I guess I can only repeat what I said in the original blog. My point was simple, try whatever is out there and see if it helps. If there is a money back guarantee then you lose nothing and who knows, you might even gain something positive.

We have provided a link to their website: Dyslexia Solutions Inc.

http://www.readfluent.com/
Happy Trails!

Summertime is a Great Time for Dyslexics to Catch up for School

Summer is coming up quickly. For a lot of people this is a great time for getting away from it all and probably the last thing a parent or child wants to think about is extra “school work” during this break.

All students should continue to read and practice their skills learned in school to be prepared for the upcoming school year.  Children can lose ground over the summer when not practicing and have to catch back up when starting school again.  This is particularly true for Dyslexics. We often have parents worry about how far their Dyslexic child falls behind over the summer. Sometimes it can be  extreme and drop as much as one or two grade levels.

The summer can  be a great opportunity to practice reading, spelling, printing and many other subjects due to the parent and child having more free time to devote to it or getting appropriate tutoring.   We also suggest the best time to get an assessment for Dyslexia is at the end of the school year or early summer because then the parent has a chance to use an appropriate teaching approach to prepare the child for school in the fall. This can make a world of difference for the struggling Dyslexic student and can help them achieve success in the following school year.

We have put together a summer program for Dyslexics with some of our teaching manuals for parents, tutors and teachers. We provide information on what Dyslexia is and how to understand and teach a Dyslexic. Included is our “Fourteen Steps to Teach Dyslexics how to Spell and Read”, “Mind-mapping for Dyslexics” and approaches to learning arithmetic/math concepts. Can be a great start for school!

Click on the link below and it will take you to a page on our website where you can view the program.

Dyslexia Victoria Online Summer Dyslexia Teaching Program

Happy trails;
Howie deGraaf

Dyslexics Need to Read the Beginning & End of a Story First to Understand & Remember

Dyslexics read the end of a story first

If you,  your child, friend, family member or a student you are working with is Dyslexic you might have noticed that books or stories with chapters can be confusing or hard to comprehend and remember.   Dyslexics think in the “big picture” or the whole story. In order to understand the chapters many Dyslexics need to know the beginning and end of the story before they read the middle of the book.

When we assess adults we ask them how they read a book.  One gentleman said “You are going to think it’s silly. I do it wrong.” We encouraged him to tell us and wouldn’t think it was silly or wrong.  He said, “I read the beginning, then go to the end which ruins any surprises in the story and then the middle.  If I don’t do that, nothing makes sense and I tend to lose interest. Also if I don’t read the end first I forget the chapters I’m reading immediately, I keep forgetting where I’m at in the story and get bored!”

These Dyslexics are the people who watch a “who done-it” movie where the story starts with the end and they guess the rest of the story  in the first half of the movie and tell you!   I’m Dyslexic and still remember watching the movie “Sixth Sense”. I knew Bruce Willis’ character was a ghost in the first 10 minutes of the movie. I saw him being shot at the beginning of the movie and all the hints and details that followed gave away the plot because I knew the “big picture” or end of the movie first – he was shot and died.

Whoever the Dyslexics are in your life, if following a story is difficult for them encourage them to  try reading the end before the middle and not resist their impulse to do the “wrong thing”. They will probably get more out of the story once they have the “big picture” and will not only remember the book better but tend to retain more detail than the average person.

Dyslexics in grade two to three start to read chapter books with the rest of the class. Often Dyslexic children fall  behind because of their issues with spelling and reading but also with comprehension and memory of what happens in the chapters. With appropriate teaching methods for spelling and reading for Dyslexics along with trying reading the beginning and end chapter of story books first, these children can often catch up with their classmates or at least improve their ability to get through a book. They tend to do much better with book reports and other school work connected to the books due to their clearer memory and understanding of the story. Many of the students we work with start to enjoy reading chapter books rather than dreading and hating reading.

One of the benefits of reading the end after the beginning is how it can make studying more effective. Usually it is easier for Dyslexic students or employees learning new information to read the beginning of a chapter in a textbook or course, the end or summary and then go back to the beginning and read through the chapter. Highlighting key ideas and words and creating a mindmap of the chapter will round out this study method and help the Dyslexic student or employee comprehend and retain what they are reading.

Cheers!
Karen (Karey) Hope
Co-founder of Dyslexia Victoria Online

Right and Left Brain Employees Communicate Differently, Sometimes Really Differently

If you’re right brained and have a job working with anyone left brained, particularly supervisors, you may have noticed how difficult it can be to communicate with them.  They probably don’t understand you at all – what you need to be able to do your job properly, why you ask so many questions, why “just do it” just doesn’t cut it.  We right brainers don’t think the same way as the lefties and since the world spins for them, they think it’s our fault when we don’t understand them.  They’re not bad people really.  They just don’t get it, and don’t see why they should.  In their minds, we either need to change to suit them or we’re not suited to the job.  Well, it’s time to tune them in and do a little educating of our own so they can learn to communicate with US, and take advantage of our enormous often misunderstood and untapped potential.

Here’s an example.  Your supervisor – we’ll call him Leftie – tells you to clean up the office storage room.  And then he walks away.  You stand in the storage room looking at overflowing boxes and shelves full of mismatched paper and ancient supplies and the painting the son of the big boss gave him as a birthday present, the broken Halloween and Christmas decorations, the video equipment that belongs in a museum, and Leftie’s box of autographed baseballs he’s trying to flog to the rest of the staff without the big boss knowing about it.  And you ask yourself, what does he mean by “clean”? Do I throw it all away? Do I tidy and sort and categorize? Do I dust the shelves and polish the floor?  Do I ask the big boss what he wants done with his son’s masterpiece?  Do I give Leftie his box of baseballs and run the risk the big boss might possibly stop by for a chat?  So you go to Leftie’s office and wait at the door while he’s on the phone.  He ignores you for ten minutes and then hangs up giving you a look dripping with sarcasm and says, “What?”  You start to sweat because you know he’s going to blow up the second you start asking questions.  So you try stammering out the first question and he looks at you with arched eyebrows for about five seconds then interrupts and says the dreaded words, “Just do it!”

You trudge back to the storage room and stand there looking at the mess and wonder what to do.  You might even stay there a long time thinking of a hundred possible ways you could “clean” and be totally paralyzed as a result, because we righties tend to be perfectionists and like to do things right the first time, in the quickest amount of time.  In the end, not exactly sure what Leftie wants you to do, you move a few boxes around and tidy up a bit and fix a shelf maybe, throw out what looks like trash on the floor and then return to your desk.  Leftie shows up not long after asking why you’re sitting at your desk when you haven’t finished the job he assigned you, and then marches you past all your co-workers like he’s hauling you off to the principal’s office.  He flings open the storage room door and in a condescending, frustrated and angry tone, he orders you to throw certain items away, label the boxes and stack them in the corner, hide the masterpiece behind the shelves along with the baseballs, donate the video equipment to the local school, and buy some new shelving.  Then he stalks out of the room without a glance back in your direction.  Your heart pounds and you know he’s making a mental note for your next review.  But now you can get on with the job.

You might ask the perfectly reasonable question, how would even a left brained person know what to do in this situation? Since Leftie didn’t give any instruction at all, what could he possibly expect from ANY employee? But this happens all the time.  I’ve seen it over and over again.  And what I’ve noticed is the left brained employee will usually dive into the situation and do what they think the supervisor wants, whether they understand it or not, and not ask questions.  They may get some or all of it wrong, and often not even finish the job, but Leftie will give them an “A” for effort and initiative and probably not go as hard on them as he would on you for being unable to even start the job without asking a bunch of annoying questions.

We’ve all been so conditioned NOT to ask questions from our earliest classroom experiences – how many teachers really like to be interrupted?  They will ask if anyone has a question, but often what they really mean is, “which dummy out there didn’t get what I was just saying and how much time do we have to waste answering their question?”  And this problem exists very much the same way in the work place.  Asking a question is almost the same as saying, “I’m an idiot and didn’t get it the first time”.

We right brainers are what I like to call “reality thinkers”.  We think the same we live: in the real world.  And we see the WHOLE world in front of us, at least as it relates to whatever we’re doing at that moment in time.  That means we see every possible direction we can take and every option for solving a problem.  Try going five directions at once and see how far you get.  But that’s what happens in our brains.  If we’re in charge and can lay out our own path, no problem. Our analytical brains will leap instantly into action, envision the end result and come up with multiple charts and maps to get it done before our chair is cold.  But if someone else is making decisions, we need specific, concrete answers to all our questions, or we can’t move in any direction.  That’s just how we’re wired.

Once we have answers, we can solve multiple problems in multiple ways, faster than just about anyone else.  We’ll figure out the most efficient, accurate and complete way to do a task and often set standards or create procedures that others will follow for years after.  We can come up with the best way to do something, because we’ve first thought about ALL the ways to do it and then distilled those down to the best possible solution.  But to get there, we need INFORMATION, which means specific and complete answers to all our questions.

So, to all those Lefties out there, your right brained employee is just dying to do a great job for you but you need to give them the time of day.  You need to be patient, encourage them to ask questions and give complete and specific answers, and you will get amazing results.  To all those righties out there who are trying to communicate with a Leftie, tell them why you need the information and keep telling them until they get it.  Then dazzle them.

Cate Frearson
Wandering Writer for Dyslexia Victoria Online

Blog, Web Changes, Book Recommendations and Distance Learning Courses – May 9, 2010

Hi, Howie deGraaf here.

By the time you read this,the old website should be gone and you can visit the new website. Karey Hope and I created the old site. It worked okay but we are not, in any way, website designers. Back in 2005 we figured the most efficient way to get people to learn about how we see the best way to approach Dyslexia Awareness and the best way to teach Dyslexics was to get onto the Internet. So we went online and got some advice and gave it a try. The old one worked but it was getting too complicated, the basis of it was formed by three people  (Karey, Andrew DuToit, a programmer by trade,  and myself).

The original co-founders of Dyslexia Victoria Online are Karey Hope and her mother Jan Turner. With three people designing that website, the focus of it was a little too broad. There were too many categories and it really was a little difficult to navigate. Last summer Jan officially retired due to a series of health issues. Since then Karey and I have made some significant changes to the website and the business. We are  using the website less for teaching and more for communicating with people. We hope to use the website to help get people going in  the right direction.

One of the newest products we offer is a pair of distance learning courses.“Course One – How the Right Brain Learns and Thinks” includes teaching aids, a study guide and workbook that teaches the individual how to understand Dyslexia as a Learning Difference and how to teach to it. The next course “Course Two – How to Assess and Evaluate the Dyslexic Student” includes instructions on how to assess for Dyslexic issues, and by using the instructions, how teach to these issues.

By the end of this year we should also have re-written the original books as well. The information in the books is going to be the same but we are adding many new concepts and teaching strategies. We are also making some formatting changes. Some of the language will be updated and we have found lots of images we want to put into them as well to demonstrate the teaching methods. We discovered the effectiveness of these images as we began to put more of them into our assessment reports,  presentations and workshops.

Our assessments have been going extremely well and very soon, perhaps in a month, there will a new testimonial section on the website with comments from the parents of the children we have created specialized teaching programs for.

One parent recently mentioned summer is rapidly approaching and she thought we should prepare for it by creating something special for parents who are helping children get ready for the new school year during the summer break. We hadn’t thought about the summer months as being any different from the rest of the year but really the summer can be a terrific opportunity for children to prepare for the upcoming school year. This parent said that most of the recommendations, that are the basis for the specialized teaching programs we make for the student, are actually just little bits of practice of specific skills but done on a consistent basis. With that in mind Karey and I have made a couple of special offers for parents for the summer. The assessments are going to include a couple of our books as well as some practice exercises that can be done completely independently from school work. I am offering sales on our books as well.

To help you learn more about our theory and perception of Dyslexia we are offering a 2 for 1 sale on two of our E-books from May 15th till the end of the summer:  “Dyslexia or Being Right Brained” and is a great to use as a primer guide on how we handle teaching to Dyslexia. Largely it explains why we don’t consider Dyslexia as a Learning Disability but rather simply a Learning Difference. The second book“Teaching the Dyslexic Student: Spelling and Reading” discusses Dyslexia Spelling and Language Arts issues and teaching strategies including why understanding Learning Styles is especially important when teaching a Dyslexic individual. It also contains the “The Spelling Notebook” which is a tool for helping Dyslexic students record spelling words they are having difficulty with. One of the big changes we are making to this book, in the reformatting later this year, is the addition of “The Fourteen Steps to Teaching  Dyslexics to Spell and Reading”. This mini manual has been extremely successful in helping Dyslexic students with spelling and reading. Parents and teachers have been contacting us to say that the results of using these teaching strategies have been rapid, often with results in less that a week. To anyone ordering the e-book “Teaching the Dyslexic Student: Spelling and Reading” we will include the download of the “The Fourteen Steps to Teaching Dyslexics to Spell and Read”.

So if you are thinking about helping your Dyslexic child get a head start on the next school year perhaps starting by using the two books I have mentioned would be a part of that plan.

Order both books today with our summer program!

Good luck and hope you have a great summer.

Howie deGraaf
Editor Dyslexia Victoria Online

Dyslexia and Spatial Awareness

One of the most interesting observations we often make when assessing Dyslexics is their exceptional ability to be spatially aware. Right-brained and Dyslexic individuals think primarily in images , not words and some Dyslexics find thinking in words almost impossible. This ability to think in images can make a right-brained person very strong spatially.

People who are more left-brain dominant tend to be focused on what is in front of them at that moment but a right-brain person can be aware of the whole room, outside the room, outside the building, the city, etc. at any given moment. This is one of the reasons right-brain people lose focus, go off on tangents and sometimes have difficulty following conversations.

Let’s try a visualization exercise.  Hold a coffee cup up and try to imagine looking in the cup from above like you were floating on the ceiling looking down into the cup.  Then  visualize seeing it while lying on the ground looking up at the bottom of it. Lastly  from the opposite side you are holding the cup. When we do this exercise with someone who is more left brain dominant in their thinking style they will look at us like we are crazy and say I don’t know what you mean and “no, I can’t do that. What are you talking about?” If we ask the same question of a right-brained dominant or Dyslexic person they will answer, “Of course, can’t everybody?”

We had one child that we assessed who in another exercise, could not only visualize walking up to her bedroom and describing her room while sitting in the kitchen, she pointed to the ceiling in the kitchen and told us approximately where her room was located. She had been very curious about this and had her dad help her determine where it was.

Another fun one with children is having them imagine they have shrunk to a very small size and crawled through the ear of an elephant, behind it’s eyes and down its trunk and as they are imaging it we ask them to describe their travels and what they see moving through the elephant’s head. “Righties” find this fun and can get very detailed in their description of their route. “Lefties” are often confused and don’t have any idea how to do this.

Correctly knowing their right from their left is another Dyslexic issue. One way for us to test a person in an assessment for this directionality problem is to ask them to point to our right hand with their left hand while they are sitting across from us with both of us having our hands on the table. If they point straight to it correctly without hesitating they have either mastered this skill or they might be more left-brained dominant. Otherwise we can watch their eyes and see them imagine standing up, walking around behind us and then determining the correct hand. They do this because they can be mentally everywhere in the room at the same time and consequently can get confused with verbal information, orders, tasks, directions or instructions. This is one reason it can be very difficult for some Dyslexics to follow instructions going somewhere or use a map because they can have serious directionality problems.

Other Dyslexics can have incredible visual memories finding their way by mentally seeing where they are going in their minds. And at the same time they still may have difficulty with left and right. My daughter, Gen is very Dyslexic, has difficulty with left and right but she also has one of the most amazing visual memories I have ever observed.  We got a puppy when Gen was two from a part of a town we had never been to before.  We didn’t return to this area until  she was six when we were visiting another house in this area. Gen started to comment on the route and what was coming up and then pointed to the house we bought the puppy at. We were astounded. She was two and in a child safety seat.

We have a family business that requires appointments at people’s houses.  Gen works in our business and we would often go to these meetings together. Some of the routes to these houses were very complicated requiring many turns onto other streets. Gen would drive and I would tell her the directions from the map we brought. When we would leave the appointment Gen never missed or hesitated making turns on the trip back to main roads.  I asked her once how she did it and she said it was like a movie in her head and she would play it backwards.

We know one “left-brained” supervisor who ran a survey crew having tremendous difficulty working with one member of his crew. When this employee was holding the survey pole he would be asked to move “3 cents to the left”. The word “cents” which was short for “centimetres” confused the employee because in his mind it could mean coins, the word “sense”, “scents”, etc. Secondly, the word “left” – did his supervisor mean his left or the supervisor’s left?  We suggested he might be Dyslexic. We  were told later that it turns out he was Dyslexic.

Dyslexic children will get confused in the classroom not fully understanding instructions or explanations by their teacher and either not be able to do their school work properly or to do it all. They can be delayed learning to tie their shoelaces, be uncertain about left and right, physically uncoordinated, clumsy or accident prone.

The benefit of being spatial and thinking about everything three dimensionally is the wonderful ability to see everything in one’s mind from many different directions. This becomes an amazing tool for problem solving, thinking outside the box and inventive ideas. There are many professions that can be a good fit for Dyslexics with this special kind of processing: construction, architects, engineers, athletes, scientists, mathematicians, inventors, interior or exterior design, teaching, marketing and sales, culinary arts, woodworking, carpentry, performing arts, computers, electronics, mechanics, graphic arts and photography.

So we Dyslexics that get lost all the time, have a tendency to knock things over, turn right instead of left ending up in the wrong place and get instructions wrong embarrassingly too often should not despair. The advantages of being spatial can substantially outweigh the disadvantages. Famous people such as Thomas Edison, Magic Johnson, Walt Disney, Einstein, Churchill, Wayne Gretzky, Richard Branson and Bill Gates would probably agree.

Cheers!
Karey Hope
Co-founder of Dyslexia Victoria Online

LEARNED SOMETHING NEW FROM A DYSLEXIC CHILD, AGAIN

reading and spelling is hard for a dylsexic child in grade one

Last week we did an assessment on a bright, enthusiast, polite, smiling, happy 6 year old girl. This assessment has affected me like none we have done so far.

Her parents told her teacher that they were concerned about her lack of progress with numbers, letters, colours and other seemingly simple tasks for a child her age. Lucky for her she is in a small independent school with small class sizes. Her teacher listened to the concerns of the parents and agreed that her progress was not where it should be. This teacher had heard of the work we do and contacted us to see if we could shed some light on this issue. The parents agreed to us doing an assessment on their daughter.

We met her early in the morning at her school and were introduced to her by her Mom and younger brother. Like we always do with our assessments we assured her that this was not a test and there were no right or wrong answers, we were just there to see what she was good at and what she needed help with. We did our regular testing procedures with letters, colours, numbers, cause and effect, word families, etc. It soon became obvious to us that she had quite a few Dyslexic issues, which we had expected after speaking to her teacher. What affected me so deeply were her reactions to the exercises we had her do.

As I have said in earlier articles, I am not Dyslexic but I am very right-brained. I never had problems with words or numbers but I did have trouble with tasks that were explained unclearly and I always need the big picture explained, still do. So I wasn’t ready to experience the fear and anguish this young girl experienced doing our exercises. Anything that had to do with individual letters, the alphabet, counting numbers, copying letters were all tasks that she absolutely hated. She threw the paper on the floor and refused to do the tasks, she was polite but adamant that she couldn’t do the work. In earlier assessments I had experienced students who were a little older and had already started making their own accommodations to these learning tasks. Yes they had issues but were starting to understand some of the abstracts involved in learning their school work. This little girl was stalled, she was at a wall that she was not going to get over or around without some drastic changes in her schooling.

The co-founder of Dyslexia Victoria Online, Karen Hope, has experienced this degree of difficulty with Dyslexia with her own children. In her books she even states that some Dyslexics just don’t understand the abstractness of our language and numbers and time and directions. She says that many Dyslexic kids won’t get it till they get to the second or third grade or older. Having experienced the anguish the young girl went through I now know what that looks like. There really is no use in trying to teach abstracts like this to Dyslexic children at such an early age, at least not with the common methods being used in schools today. Where we live in Canada there is a push for literacy skills called “Success by 6”.  I’m sure it is an achievable goal for most kids but not for the ones we work with.

I know I have rambled a bit but the point I am trying to make is more of what we keep saying. These Dyslexic individuals learn differently than the majority of students. I saw how ineffective regular teaching methods were for this child. This is not a blog just about things that don’t work though because we did make progress with her during that single session.

There is a specific 14 step program Karen created for teaching Dyslexics how to spell and read using their particular learning strengths. One of the steps involves turning a word into an image that the child can visualize. It works very well and our young client responded to it almost immediately. With just a few minutes of training she was able to spell and print three age appropriate words that were impossible for her to do earlier that day using traditional methods taught at the school. We had other success with her too. She is really fortunate because the school she attends understands that students learn at different rates and we are going to work with those teachers and create teaching methods that work for her.

Go to our website and try our book “Teaching the Dyslexic Student: Spelling and Language Arts”. It contains the 14 step method and other Dyslexic appropriate teaching tools as well. Actually, these teaching methods work very well with non-Dyslexic student too.

Happy trails
Howie deGraaf

If you have questions please email me at:degraaf@dyslexiavictoria.ca