The Dyslexia Quiz

How much do you know about the most common learning disability, dyslexia? Most people have heard the term, but know little about the symptoms and characteristics of this misunderstood condition. Take this quick true/false quiz below to test your knowledge.

True / False -- If a person is unable to read it means that she or he has a low I.Q.

True / False -- Dyslexia is much more common in boys than in girls.

True / False -- Children under the age of 9 cannot be diagnosed with dyslexia.

True / False -- Dyslexia can be diagnosed in a school setting when a student is tested for a “Learning Disability.”

True / False -- Children who experience reading, writing, and spelling difficulties in 1^st through 3^rd grades almost always outgrow them.

True / False -- When a child experiences difficulties in reading, writing, and spelling, holding him back a grade will help him mature and become more ready to read.

True / False -- You can tell a person is dyslexic when they see things backwards, and reverse letters.

True / False -- Most children and adults outgrow dyslexia.

True / False -- Most classroom teachers can tell if a student is dyslexic and tailor instruction to best help that child.

True / False -- Since dyslexia is a visual problem; the most appropriate method to treat it is with vision therapy, colored lenses, and eye tracking exercises.

True / False -- If you strongly encourage a dyslexic child to read aloud each day, it will help him or her learn and improve his reading skills.

True / False -- Dyslexia is a condition that only appears in English-speaking nations.

True / False -- Dyslexia is rare and only affects a small group of children and adults.

True / False -- Dyslexics are not as intelligent as other people, so they will not be able to make it through college and will be limited in their career options.

The answer to all of the questions above is False! How did you do?

Help for Struggling Kids

Most public and private schools are geared to instruct one type of learner. The traditional school setting is designed to instruct through reading information and then “spitting out” those facts in writing, either by taking a test, answering a worksheet, or writing a report. However, many intelligent kids aren’t able to express their knowledge in this manner.

If your child demonstrates his brainpower in an unconventional way, he or she might be considered an unsuccessful student, could receive poor grades, may be threatened with grade retention, or be required to attend summer school. These outcomes are unacceptable to most parents. But what do you if your child is a non-traditional learner?

In the past, if a child struggled with reading, spelling, and writing he or she could choose an occupation that didn’t require these skills. However, in our modern 21^st century this is no longer an option. For example, if a young man was mechanically inclined, he could make a decent living repairing cars. He could manipulate his environment to avoid reading and writing. But today the job of an auto mechanic has become so technical that he has to rely on written information to repair the car correctly.

This might sound discouraging, but it is not! If you realize that your child is not learning as easily as his peers, you’ve already taken the first step. There are other essential qualities that dedicated parents need in order to assist their child as they overcome their struggles:

1. Commitment and Dedication– you need to be committed to your child and his success, no matter what obstacles may come your way!

2. Endurance – There are no quick fixes! The process of assisting your child will take time. Overcoming learning challenges is not an easy road, but it is always worthwhile.

3. Education – Educate yourself about your child’s learning differences and discover how he or she learns best.

4. Advocacy – Become your child’s advocate in the school system. Being able to explain your child’s challenges and how he learns is essential to their school achievement.

The key to your child’s success will be your dedication to their success. You cannot allow your child to struggle through another school day. Your son or daughter needs help now since they may have an undiagnosed learning disability, like dyslexia. Dyslexia is the most common learning disability and effects up to 20% of our population. If slow, choppy, inaccurate reading, terrible spelling, and poor handwriting characterize your child, he or she needs help and needs it as soon as possible. Waiting will not help or change the situation.

If you take appropriate steps to help your child now, the sky will be their limit in the future!

Classroom Accommodations

While a child is being tutored using an Orton-Gillingham based system, he or she will also need Classroom Accommodations. These accommodations are NOT a change in the curriculum. Instead, they are a slight change in the way a regular education teacher:

• Presents new information
• Helps a student master a new skill, or
• Tests a student

Classroom Accommodations are fair. They are your child’s civil rights – because they provide equal access to education despite a child’s disability. These accommodations allow dyslexic students to master the curriculum and prove their knowledge even though they are not (yet) reading, writing, or spelling at grade level.

Parents: In addition to classroom accommodations, any accommodation your child will need to pass the high-stakes state standardized tests, and to pass the high school exit exam, must be in writing on your child’s I.E.P. or 504 Plan.

How do you get a 504 Plan for your child? Do the following:

· A parent must present written documentation of their child’s learning disability (i.e. testing and written report).

· They must ask for these accommodations.

· Each year the parent must educate their child’s new teacher or teachers on the accommodations their child needs.

· The parent should also visit the classroom from time to time, to make sure the accommodations are implemented properly.

Parable: The Animal Story

By G.H. Reavis

Once upon a time, the animals decided they must do something heroic to meet the problems of the “new world,” so they organized a school. They adopted an activity curriculum consisting of running, climbing, swimming, and flying. To make the school easier to administer, all the animals took all the subjects.

The duck was excellent in swimming, better in fact than his instructor, and made passing grades in flying. But he was poor in running. Since he was slow in running, he had to stay after school. He also had to drop swimming to have time to practice running. This was kept up until his web feet were badly worn, which made him only average in swimming. But average was acceptable in school, so nobody worried about that – except the duck.

The rabbit started at the top of the class in running, but had a nervous breakdown because of so much make-up work in swimming.

The squirrel was excellent in climbing until he developed frustration in the flying class, where his teacher made him start from the ground up, instead of from the tree top down.

The eagle was a problem child and was disciplined severely. In the climbing class, he beat all the others to the top of the trees but he insisted on using his own way to get there.

At the end of the year, an abnormal eel who could swim exceedingly well, and also run, climb, fly a little had the highest average and was valedictorian.

How many of us, like the duck who is excellent in swimming and good in flying, spend a lifetime running “only to wear out our feet” and in doing so, neglect our true gifts?

· To reduce Fear and Anxiety

• Never force him/her to read out loud in front of others
• Never force him/her to participate in a Spelling Bee
• Never have him/her write on the board
• Don’t pass corrected papers down the row
• Don’t allow other students to grade papers or tests
• Never call on him/her unless he/she volunteers
• Make sure the classroom is a safe place to make mistakes

· To Accommodate for Spelling

• Don’t grade his/her spelling tests (unless he/she is easily able to pass them)
• Don’t put a spelling grade on his/her report card – leave that area blank
• Ignore spelling mistakes on written assignments – grade on content, not mechanics
• Don’t force him/her to use a traditional dictionary – allow electronic spell checkers instead

· To Accommodate for Test Anxiety

• Conduct oral review session before test is taken
• Provide a sample test
• Allow open-book and open-notes test
• Perform oral testing
• If oral testing is not available then allow extended time or allow student to take the test at home under parental supervision
• The most difficult type of tests for him/her will be fill-in-the-blank and essay tests. These types of tests will not accurately reflect his/her knowledge and if at all possible he/she should be given an alternative type of test. He/she can answer essay questions orally.

· To Accommodate for Handwriting

No Note Taking!

o Provide a peer note taker with Carbonless Notebook paper

o Or teacher provides photocopies of his or her notes and whatever was on the board

o Or tape record the class

No copying out of the book:

o Someone else copies problems out of the book

o Or photocopy the page of problems (student writes answers on the photocopy)

No handwritten assignments:

o Have student dictate written assignments to a classroom aide, parent or volunteer, into a tape recorder or into a PC using voice recognition software

o Accept typed assignments created on a portable keyboard, laptop computer or classroom computer

· To Accommodate for Written Expression

• Provide alternatives to written reports such as creating a video, mural or making a classroom presentation
• Make report writing a team project

· To Accommodate for Homework

• Shorten homework assignments (parents can act as a timekeeper)
• Avoid sending home unfinished classroom work (shorten classroom assignments instead)
• Be consistent when assigning homework
• Provide a way for parents to determine the homework assignment (homework buddies, mail home the assignment sheet, answering machine, etc.)
• Be consistent when collecting homework
• Notify parent immediately if assignment was not turned in (don’t count it late if parent can find it)

· To Accommodate for Memory

• Calculator or printed copy of multiplication table for math computations
• Ask two-choice questions instead of open-ended questions. (Example: “Who was the first President of the United States? Thomas Jefferson or George Washington?”)

Classroom Accommodation for the College Student – College students with learning disabilities are also entitled to accommodations, but 504 Plans work differently in college and are covered under a different federal law. For more information visit www.wrightslaw.com/flyers/college.504.pdf

“Classroom Accommodations” was complied with the assistance of Susan Barton of Bright Solutions for Dyslexia. (www.brightsolutions.us).

Now Is The Time To Seek Help

Now is the perfect time to get a handle on your child’s struggles and get the kind of help he or she needs to succeed!

Many children and adults struggle with an undiagnosed learning disability that can affect reading, spelling, and writing. There are many misconceptions by both parents and teachers regarding reading instruction. Below is list of reading myths that has been adapted from Michael Pressley’s book Reading Instruction that Works. Below are several common reading misconceptions:

• “Learning to read is a natural process.” People will often suggest that children will learn to read if they are immersed in a literacy-rich environment. If reading was natural, everyone would be able to read and we wouldn’t be worried about the “literacy crisis” facing our country. According to the National Institute for Literacy, 40% of 4^th graders lack even the most basic reading skills.
• “Children will eventually read if they are given enough time.” Research has shown that if a child is not reading grade-appropriate materials by the time he is in the 4^th grade, the odds of him ever developing good reading skills are slim. Of course, it is possible to turn that around with proper reading and spelling intervention.
• “Skilled reading involves syntactic and semantic cues to “guess” words, and good readers make many ‘mistakes’ as they read text.” Studies show that only poor readers use context clues to guess at words. Good readers depend upon the visual information in the word, so he can sound out the word successfully.
• “Phonemic Awareness (the ability to hear sounds within words) is a consequence (not a cause) of reading acquisition.” The evidence showing the importance of phonemic awareness as a valuable pre-reading skill is overwhelming. Children who develop phonemic awareness are more likely to develop good word decoding skills and become better readers.

Don’t let your child become a reading statistic – get your son or daughter appropriate help now!

Dyslexia may also be called…

• Reading Disability
• Learning Disability or L.D.
• Specific Language Disability or SLD
• CAPD (Central Auditory Processing Disorder)
• Auditory Discrimination
• Phonemic Awareness Deficit
• Orthographic Deficit
• Visual Tracking Problem
• Written Language Disorder
• Visual Motor Integration
• Dysnomia or Fluency
• Word Retrieval Problem

A student may have been diagnosed with one of the above. While the student might be exhibiting the symptoms of that disorder, there may be much more going on. The tester may have only looked for only one issue and not diagnosed the complete concern.

Remember, Dyslexia is a language processing disorder that can affect all or many aspects of language – spelling, reading, handwriting, speech, written expression, etc. It is important to have a complete picture of the student’s challenges, so that he or she can receive the most appropriate help.

Vision Therapy: Why You Should Say “No”

Because tutoring takes time, many parents seek faster-sounding therapies, including vision therapy.

The following is a summery of the American Academy of Ophthalmology’s position on vision therapy for learning disabilities and dyslexia:

Conclusion:

To date, there appears to be no consistent scientific evidence that supports behavioral vision therapy, orthoptic vision therapy, or colored overlays and lenses as effective treatment for learning disabilities.

It seems intuitive that oculomotor abilities and visual perception play a role in learning skills such as reading and writing. However, several studies in the literature demonstrate that eye movement and visual perception are not critical factors in the reading impairment found in dyslexia, but that brain processing plays a greater role.

Furthermore, the vast majority of individuals with known ocular motility and eye movement defects appear to read and comprehend normally. Many individuals born with severely misaligned eyes excel in reading and academics.

What are the risks involved in Vision Therapy?

· The costs of vision therapy often are not covered by health insurance and can be substantial.

· A program of vision training may provide false hopes and expectations to educators, patients, and families.

· While students and parents may see “some improvement” with Vision Therapy, delaying appropriate reading and spelling institution is only delaying the inevitable. In order to improve reading and spelling ability, the student must be taught differently.

(For more information on reading research visit www.brightsolutions.us and click on “What We Know Now.”)

To read the American Academy of Ophthalmology’s entire position statement as a .PDF file (you’ll need Adobe Acrobat to read it), www.aao.org/aao/education/library/loader.cfm?url=/commonspot/security/getfile.cfm@PageID=4757

Quotes From Famous Dyslexics

“I barely got through school. The problem was a learning disability, at a time when there was nowhere to get help.”

-- Bruce Jenner, Olympic gold medallist

“I couldn’t read. I just scraped by. My solution back then was to read comic books because I could figure them out from the context of the pictures. Now I listen to books on tape.”

-- Charles Schwab, Entrepreneur

“As a child, I was called stupid and lazy. On the SAT I got 159 out of 800 in math. My parents had no idea that I had a learning disability.”

-- Henry Winkler, Actor/Director

“I barely made it through school, I read real slow. But I like to find things that nobody else has found, like a dinosaur egg that has an embryo inside. Well, there are 36 of them in the world, and I found 35.”

--Dr. John R. Horner, American paleontologist

“My teachers say I’m addled…my father thought I was stupid, and I almost decided I be a dunce.”

-- Thomas Edison, Inventor

“I never read in school. I got really bad grades – D’s and F’s and C’s in some classes, and A’s and B’s in other classes. In the 2^nd week of 11^th grade I just quit. When I was in school, it was really difficult. Almost everything I learned I had to learn by listening. My report cards always said that I was not living up to my potential.”

-- Cher, Singer

“I hated school…One of the reasons was a learning difficulty called dyslexia, which no one understood at the time. I still can’t spell…”

--Loretta Young, Actress of the 30’s & 40’s

“I was one of the ‘puzzle children’ myself – a dyslexic…And I still have a hard time reading today. Accept the fact. Refuse to feel sorry for yourself. You have a challenge; never quit!”

-- Nelson Rockefeller, 41^st Vice President of the U.S.

“I was, on the whole, considerably discouraged by my school days. It was not pleasant to feel oneself so completely left behind at the beginning of the race.”

-- Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister