More on dyslexia...

Neil MacKay's nine steps for turning a dyslexic pupil into a criminal.

1. Teachers should focus on reading accuracy at the expense of thinking and the other core skills of the national curriculum.

2. Fail to share concerns with parents, dismiss parental concerns, tell them their child is young/naughty/not ready yet.

3. Dismiss, or ignore, achievements or aptitudes in other subject areas because of basic skill weaknesses.

4. Put pupils in remedial groups despite average performance in subjects other than English.

5. Treat escalating bad behaviour as a problem with the pupil, their home, background or environment, rather than looking for causes within their schooling.

6. Ensure the pupil, on transfer to secondary school, is labelled "naughty" rather than in need of support. Ensure none of their teachers is aware of dyslexia or of how needs may have been identified or met in primary school.

7. If the pupil gets support, ensure it is focused on improving reading accuracy at the expense of functional reading with little or no emphasis on learning to learn, planning or organisation.

"Death by phonics" is essential, especially if the pupil prefers to acquire literacy skills in other ways.

8. As attendance and punctuality decline, see it as a self-fulfilling prophecy rather than an institutional failure.

9. Ensure the pupil leaves school with minimal or no qualifications, despite being of average ability.

Reference:

Dyslexics at risk earlyBy John Lewis on Tue, 16 Jun 2009 - ODT

The following article - especially the dissector child is a great picture of my son!

Detailed Processor Versus Slow Processor

And a couple of interesting sites:
Optimum Learning
The Davis Autism Approach
Dyslexia Teacher

Montessori Materials

Following yesterdays 4d workshop I have been investigating different letters I could use for ensuring students have a tactile, visual and auditory opportunity to learn to spell words and explore sounds that go with letters of the alphabet. The Montessori moveable alphabet and the sandpaper letters provide such opportunities! But going a step further, there are some recommendations that sharp contrasts such as black letters on a white background aren't easily viewed by some students who have dyslexia therefore dark blue on a cream background or other pastel background would be preferrable. Anyway, back to the Montessori thing - here are 50 'must read' Montessori blogs FYI.

4d

For dyslexia

For all

I had the privilege of attending a 4d workshop today at Millbrook where Neil MacKay was presenting strategies and ideas for supporting the learning of students who have dyslexia. There is a possablity that these strategies will support my son with his learning difficulties, we will see, but my husband was excited at the prospect of having some different ideas for getting him into his spelling words and reading when I spoke with him at lunch time. The lunch out afterwards at Waitiri Creek was lovely too with the other teachers I attended the workshop with.

The workshop was essentially for parents & teachers - 3 parents and 1 teacher per school - and Neil focussed on things parents can do at home with students who have dyslexia and in a sense for any child!

A couple of things that in Neil's opinion should be banned:

• HOMEWORK
• the words: "You're doing it wrong"
• telling a 'body smart' child to sit still L& learn
• telling a child repeatedly that they got their spelling words wrong - speak with the parent and stop breaking the child's heart repeatedly!

During the workshop we explored ourselves as learners and completed an activity by Eva Hoffman that highlights the areas of interest or enjoyment that we have with the most coloured in bits being the kind of intelligence we have. A free survey was identified at Accelerated Learning to help us identify the intelligence we most use/focus on.

What I enjoyed most is that I could see how many of the strategies could be used in both my junior classroom and with my son at home - and even my daughters!

Strategies

To develop comprehension - work smart rather than hard

use different colours to highlight the who, what, where, when, why in pieces of text/information

Use these to draw a picture of the story

Then ask questions about the text that children can answer.

TCP-QR - this is copyright to Neil MacKay

Paired Reading

Allow students choice in what they want to read then read with them - this means both of you reading at the same time - out loud. The stronger or adult reader reads over gaps the student has and slow down to allow them to catch up. Don't teach or practise the words that trip students up but just read for a purpose even if it is fun! If the student can't keep up when you read slowly the text is too hard. Find something else.

Spelling Challenge

5 words a week max

look at the word

feel the syllables - hand under chin, say word slowly to work out/feel the syllables

Clap the syllables

make the word (in the workshop we used scrabble tiles), jumble it, how many beats? make it, split it in two where the syllables area - split where there are doubles or two syllables - over annunciate the words - need to be able to hear the rhythm & the splits.

say the word

jumble the word

make the word

say the letters - touch each one as you say it

write it.

Writing

Thought dump - great shared writing experience - give opening sentence/idea and group give ideas to one person who writes them on post its and stick on paper - one word or picture per post it.

Choose your best 5 ideas

centre of a page - draw a small picture of your space ship and write...as we came through the clouds we could see... - stick post its on new page draw lines to connect ideas - then go in and add similes and adjectives - only two per idea.

Micromanage this process.

Move on to a second paragraph and work through same process micromanaging it - when we landed...in a group context.

For paragraph 3 allow students independence to go on and write own story.