Understanding Dyslexia and Other Reading Disorders

1. Understanding Dyslexia and Other Reading Disorders

2. Education Reform Agenda December 2008 - Christie outlined a package of reforms to make teacher effectiveness and student achievement the driving forces behind every policy and practice • The Christie Reform Agenda (http://www.state.nj.us/education/reform/) • Education Transformation Task Force (http://www.state.nj.us/education/reform/ETTFFinalReport.pdf)

3. February 2010 – The Christie Reform Agenda • Putting New Jersey's Children First By Challenging the System • Demanding Accountability, Rewarding Highly-Effective Teachers and Empowering Parents • Make teacher effectiveness and student achievement the driving forces behind every policy and practice

4. Literacy in United States

5. Rationale for Reform Agenda • Classification rates for special education are 15-25% of general population of students • Many students with reading disabilities are never identified • 85 % of all children receiving special education have deficits in language and reading • State believes it is in the public interest to study the practices and strategies that benefit students with reading disabilities and to examine polices that affect this population

6. Reading Disabilities Task Force Recommendations - August 2012 (http://decodingdyslexianj.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/ Reading-Disabilities-Task-Force-Final-report-2012.pdf) 1. NJAC 6A:14 Special Education Code include the definition of Dyslexia

7. cont. Reading Disabilities Task Force 2. All students be screened for potential indicators of dyslexia at kindergarten entry and at every point of entry into a school or district AND identified students be given multisensory intervention to address all components of reading instruction: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and reading comprehension.

8. cont. Reading Disabilities Task Force 3. By 2015 require all instructional pre-service teachers and newly certified reading specialists to pass a written test on the foundations of teaching reading 4. Offer new instructional certification 5. By 2015 require a minimum of 20 hrs of the required 100 be devoted to research methods of screening, intervention, accommodations and the use of technology . 6. Professional development for all professionals on literacy

9. New Legislation • Bill A3608 Definition of Dyslexia included in Special Education Code • Bill A3606 Teacher Training • Bill S 2442 Screening for Reading Disorders • State Board of Education will develop an endorsement to the certificate for teachers of students with reading disabilities to include dyslexia.

10. New Legislation • Bill A3608 Definition of Dyslexia included in special education code • Bill A3606 Teacher Training • Bill S 2442 Screening for Reading Disorders • State Board of Education will develop an endorsement to the certificate for teachers of students with reading disabilities to include dyslexia.

11. What Do You Know About Dyslexia? Dyslexia Benchmark Assessment Time

12. Definition of Dyslexia from the International Dyslexia Association “Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurological in origin.  It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities.  These difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language that is often unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities and the provision of effective classroom instruction. Secondary consequences may include problems in reading comprehension and reduced reading experience that can impede growth of vocabulary and background knowledge.”

13. Learning Disabilities Reading Disabilities 80% Dyslexia Subtypes

14. Special Education Code • A specific learning disability can be determined when a severe discrepancy is found between the student's current achievement and intellectual ability in one or more of the following areas: • (1) Basic reading skills/ DYSLEXIA • (2) Reading comprehension; • (3) Oral expression; • (4) Listening comprehension; • (5) Mathematical calculation; • (6) Mathematical problem solving; • (7) Written expression; and • (8) Reading fluency.

15. More statistics • At present, there is no genetic or neurological test to diagnose or predict whose problems are primarily neurobiological. • About ¾ of the children who show primary difficulties with basic reading skill early in reading development can be helped to overcome those difficulties to a large extent. • About 5% of the population will have enduring, severe reading disabilities that are very difficult to treat given our current knowledge.

16. Dyslexia • Greek origin Dyslexia • poor /impaired language • Occurs on a continuum from mild to severe • Life-long condition

17. Dyslexia is A specific learning disability that is neurological in origin.

18. specific learning disability/neurological/brain-based This means that the person’s reading, language or writing problems arose from factors within the individual that have a basis in “wired in” aptitudes for language learning and reading.

19. Characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities.  These difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language that is often unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities and the provision of effective classroom instruction.

20. Phonological component of language A deficit in this area manifests in difficulty pronouncing, remembering or thinking about the individual speech sounds that make up words.

21. Dyslexia • Weakness in phonolgical processing i.e. speech sounds • Distinguishing and manipulating sounds • Associating sounds to letters • Isolating and blending sounds • Segmenting words into syllables

22. Dyslexia is • Often unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities and the provision of effective classroom instruction

23. “Secondary consequences may include problems in reading comprehension and reduced reading experience that can impede growth of vocabulary and background knowledge.”

24. What It's Like Being Dyslexic?

25. Truth about Dyslexia • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqWjybh3_7o&list=PL35BDB00602DB86E0 Today show interview • Dyslexia is NOT primarily a visual problem; it is a language-based problem. • Dyslexia does not mean seeing things backwards and is not necessarily indicated by reversals of letters or words.

26. Truth about Dyslexia • Dyslexia or reading disability occurs in people of all levels of intelligence, even the gifted. • Dyslexia is usually inherited but can occur in any family • Boys and girls are affected by dyslexia, with boys affected somewhat more than girls, but not overwhelmingly so.

27. Truth about Dyslexia • Dyslexia is not caused by lack of motivation or interest in reading. • Lack of motivation to read and write may be a consequence of dyslexia because reading is very taxing and difficult.

28. Variability in the aspects of the disorder • Severity ranges from mild to moderate • Duration • Responsiveness to intervention • Relative difficulty a person has with related aspects of reading, spelling, writing, math or language learning. • Coexisting conditions, or existence of other types of problems with dyslexia, such as anxiety, attention or word retrieval difficulties. • Coexisting strengths, or areas of talent and interest that enable a person to do well in life, such as visual-spatial, athletic or intellectual gifts.

29. Early Identification Critical For most children, problems can be remediated with programs at the kindergarten and first-grade levels that take about 30-45 minutes per day.

30. Related Problems are not “wired” to learn language easily problems learning the meanings of words problems comprehending academic language as they progress through the grades.

31. How the disorder may manifest in preschool • Late in learning to talk; he prefers nonverbal gestures and facial expressions. • Acquire vocabulary very slowly at a time when typically developing children are learning several new word meanings every day. • Mix up the pronunciations of words much more or for a longer period of time than other children, for example aminal for animal; psgettifor spaghetti even after multiple corrections. They may have persistent trouble with difficult speech sounds such as /th/, /r/, /l/ and /w/.

32. How the disorder may manifest in preschool • May not enjoy looking at or following the print when books are read aloud. • May confuse the names of letters and numbers. • Seem impatient when read to or disinterested in books. • Does not enjoy word play—making rhymes, traditional nursery rhymes, etc. • Letter names and shapes may be hard to remember even if the child is encouraged to play games such as matching.

33. How the disorder may manifests in preschool • Some children in preschool readily learn to identify and write letters but oral communication that involves comprehending questions, directions, and explanations or responding appropriately may be challenging. • A child may be confused about the meaning of the words who, what, where, and when. For example, when asked “where is your doll?” a child may answer “I wear my backpack to school.” • Other preschoolers may do fine with listening, speaking, and verbal comprehension. Their problems are confined to print-related activities that do not become apparent until kindergarten or first grade.

34. Kindergarten and First Grade:Beginning to Read • A particularly slow process to learn the alphabet. • May start to show frustration and anxiety by late Kindergarten as they realize they are not catching on as quickly as their peers. • May have difficulty detecting and creating rhyme. • Does not understand that the letters in the alphabet represent speech sounds in words.

35. Kindergarten and First Grade:Beginning to Read • May have trouble with: • Remembering the names of letters and recalling them quickly. • Recalling the sounds that the letters represent. • Learning to recognize common words (family names; names on signs or objects, such as cereal boxes; or the most common words used in writing) by sight or automatically. • Spelling the sounds of words in a plausible way so the words can be recognized by the reader.

36. Phonemic Awareness v Phonics • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIoZoh7EpGo

37. Second and Third Grade Input/ Reading Output/writing spelling • Poor word recognition • Poor decoding abilities • Poor spelling (encoding) • Poor spelling, with speech sounds omitted (e.g. afr for after), wrong letters for sounds used (sing spelled san), and poor recall for even frequently used little words, such as when, went, they, their, been.

38. Second and Third Grade • They may read word by word, without expression because they are using all their available attention to determine the meaning of each individual word. • Their reading is dysfluentand is marked by many decoding or word recognition errors. • The child tries to guess at unknown words on the basis of pictures, the story theme or one or two letters in the word, instead of using knowledge of phonics to decode the whole word from left to right.

39. Second and Third Grade • Spelling, handwriting, and written composition are almost always the latest developing skills for the dyslexic student. • Many children do everything they can to avoid writing. • May have inordinate difficulty with the symbol-usage parts of writing (spelling, punctuation, letter formation and spacing).

40. Second and Third Grade • They can study for spelling tests and do quite well, but in their minds, spelling words are not organized around a particular pattern so they forget how to spell those same words a week later. • So many tasks, including remembering which way the pencil goes, spelling the most common words, and organizing thoughts into sentences and paragraphs, can be daunting for the dyslexic student.

41. Transition to Reading to Learn • What curricular expectations do you see as posing a significant obstacle for children with dyslexia? Third to fourth grade Storing Information http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2CIjD1gEiE

42. Intermediate Grades—fourth to sixth • The core difficulty—input and output • Reading printed words accurately and fluently—remains • Reading is slow and laborious • Reading comprehension is poor • The child’s spelling is poor and often impairs writing

43. Is it Dyslexia? • The dyslexic child will typically do poorly when asked to read lists of single, common words that are taken out of the context of a paragraph. • He will do even more poorly on a test of reading nonsense words. This requires the use of letter-sound correspondences, or phonic patters, a skill that is deficient for students with dyslexia.

44. Intermediate Grades—fourth to sixth The dyslexic child in the classroom • may resort to either maladaptive or avoidant behavior • may becoming hostile or resistant to school in general; • May become antisocial • May become withdrawn

45. Intermediate Grades—fourth to sixth Alternatives /constructive strategies • relying on other sources for information including electronic media; • obtaining help with note-taking, technology use; • learning to self-advocate • adapting coping strategies.

46. Transition to Middle and High School • What additional demands will impact students with dyslexia?

47. Middle and high school • Different teachers with different expectations, and physical and intellectual transitions require adjustments. • The volume of work and the amount of self-direction required, as well as the demands on time and space management, may all exceed the student’s coping skills.

48. Middle and high school • Delivery of remedial instruction also becomes more and more difficult as students progress to higher levels. Middle and high schools seldom give credit for remedial reading and writing courses. • School counselors and specialists tend to focus on academic accommodations. These services are necessary, but specialized academic skill instruction is also needed to continue any gains previously made and accommodations cannot substitute for reading and writing instruction.

49. Middle and high school In addition to the core language, reading and writing problems with which the student began, the student’s most apparent needs shift: • note-taking skills, • notebook organization, • schedule compliance • time management, • independent study habits, • homework completion and • strategies for dealing with a slow reading rate.

50. Accommodations 4th –High school • Technology is a vital tool for the dyslexic student at this stage. • Children who struggle with handwriting can become competent with a keyboard. • Students can scan their reading assignments into a computer that then reads the words back through a print-to-voice synthesizer. • Computers can help the student become organized and self-motivated. Technology should only be taken so far, however, critical reading and writing skills still should be taught directly so the students become competent and bridge the gap between their skills and those of their classmates.