Archive for Reading Disabilities

Dyslexia affects different parts of children’s brains depending on whether they are raised reading English or Chinese. That finding, reported in the online edition Monday, April 7, 2008, of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, means that therapists may need to seek different methods of assisting dyslexic children from different cultures.

“This finding was very surprising to us. We had not ever thought that dyslexics’ brains are different for children who read in English and Chinese,” said lead author Li-Hai Tan, a professor of linguistics and brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Hong Kong. “Our finding yields neurobiological clues to the cause of dyslexia.”

Millions of children worldwide are affected by dyslexia, a language-based learning disability that can include problems in reading, spelling, writing and pronouncing words. The International Dyslexia Association says there is no consensus on the exact number because not all children are screened, but estimates range from 8% to 15% of students. Read more in this article in The Washington Post online.

  Richard L. Allington, coeditor of No Quick Fix, The RTI Edition, is the second contributor to be featured in IRA’s new series of podcasts, IRA Author Insights. In this podcast, Allington on RTI, the former IRA president discusses research-supported early reading intervention models and issues related to a successful approach to RTI.

For the first few years of school, struggling readers can usually get by. The material is simple, the lessons are repeated often, and intensive remedial help is common. But for some of those pupils, reading ability starts a dramatic downhill slide right around 4th grade. While good readers are sponges for new words and grammar rules, slower readers are left further and further behind. Some never catch up. The National Institutes of Health has awarded $30 million over the next five years to research centers devoted to studying the issue, along with other questions related to reading disabilities. Read more about the study in this article from Education Week.

Bennett Shakoske of Turtle Creek was only in first grade, but he was already beginning to give up on school. He was having trouble reading. It was only when he moved to another district, repeated first grade and found a special-education teacher who used his love of Legos to motivate him that he was able to progress. Years ago, some advised waiting until third grade to get extra reading help to see whether the child would grow out of it. Now experts advise stepping in as soon as a reading problem occurs. “The research over the last 30 years really lays out very clearly you can’t start too early. I wouldn’t hesitate, if I were running a preschool, to try to address these kids’ needs,” said Dr. Timothy Shanahan, immediate past president of the International Reading Association and a professor of urban education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Read more of this article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Dyslexic students were learning to use cameras to communicate during a summer program at Hindman Settlement School in eastern Kentucky. During the three-week program, students are given a one-time-use camera and told to photograph people in the community, one another and things that are important in their lives. Then they learn to write captions, and write a description of what they like about the photos they take. Read more of this article from the Lexington Herald-Leader.

An Obstacle to Overcome, a recent series by the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, examined dyslexia. Part one defined dyslexia and looked at how one family was struggling to help their dyslexic son. Part two examined the help that is available through learning centers, while part three looked at the training and education teachers need to deal with the reading disorder.

 The National Center for Learning Disabilities has released a comprehensive report on No Child Left Behind—Rewards and Roadblocks: How Special Education Students Are Faring Under No Child Left Behind and a companion study, State Testing Accommodations: Their Value and Validity. The reports provide a compelling look at key states such as California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Michigan, Texas, and Wyoming and highlight NCLB’s impact on students who receive special education services in our nation’s schools—almost half of whom have learning disabilities. Findings include improved rates of participation in state general assessments for all states, improved performance in reading and math, and improved performance in 4th grade reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), where there is no corresponding improvement for students without disabilities. Read more of this article from the website ednews.org.

Hundreds of thousands of Texas children who struggle to read aren’t getting the help they’re entitled to because public schools are not following state law. Twenty-two years ago, Texas passed legislation requiring districts to identify and tutor students with dyslexia, a learning disability that affects 5 percent to 20 percent of all children. Today, however, schools still are failing to aggressively diagnose and remediate these children, leaving them to fall further behind academically, suffer emotionally and be at greater risk of dropping out of high school. Read more of this article from the Houston Chronicle.

Racing legend Sir Jackie Stewart said yesterday he hoped new teaching would help increase awareness of dyslexia and prevent sufferers “being left in the dustbin of life.” The three-time Formula One world champion was speaking at the launch in Edinburgh of a Scottish Executive-funded DVD, which is being sent to every school in Scotland. The DVD features Sir Jackie, who was not diagnosed as having the condition until the age of 41, speaking about how he struggled while at school. Read more of this article from The Herald.

As a child growing up in midtown Manhattan, Henry Winkler—Fonzie from television’s “Happy Days”—was anything but cool. He was called lazy, unmotivated and stupid by his teachers, his peers, and even his parents. It was not until 1976, when he was 31 years old, that he was diagnosed with dyslexia. Winkler perservered and, along with children’s media producer Lin Oliver, has cowritten a book series inspired by his true-life experiences growing up with dyslexia. Read more about Winkler’s experiences—and the eleventh book in his series— in this article from The Morning Call of Allentown, PA.

Young children prone to ear infections and allergies appear at a higher risk of developing reading troubles in their elementary school years, according to research. Left unchecked, that can lead to learning disabilities, which typically result in disadvantages throughout life, from poorer overall physical and mental health, an increased likelihood of living with parents longer as adults, and lower incomes. Read more of this article from the Toronto Star.

Former British Education Secretary Ruth Kelly provoked fury when she decided to send her nine–year–old son to a private school because she lacked confidence in local state schools to deal with his dyslexia. Now, a pioneering project at a primary school in Plymouth may spare other parents the same agonizing decision. The 200-pupil Widewell School introduced a pilot project four years ago, in which children are given whiteboards to write down words spoken out phonetically by their teacher and shown to them on colored cards. The cards and the black-on-white representation of the word on the whiteboard are said to aid the memory. Read more about it at The Independent online edition.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has published a two-part series on dyslexia. Part one looks at brain imaging and other research into dyslexia. Part two looks at how school districts accomodate students with dyslexia.

John was a puzzle to grown-ups. Though bright and talkative, the 9-year-old from North Yarmouth, Maine, struggled to read, and teachers wondered whether he had a learning disability. He has perfect eyesight, but an optometrist discovered that his eyes did not work as a team. Over the next three months, John did a battery of eye exercises at the office and repeated many of them at home. It’s called vision therapy, and some optometrists say it is so effective that diagnoses of learning disabilities or attention disorders no longer apply to many of their patients. But not everybody is convinced that vision therapy is the answer. Many ophthalmologists question its effectiveness. Their national organization has taken a position discouraging the practice. Read more about vision therapy in this article from the Portland Press Herald.

Schools in Montana are getting an earlier start in treating dyslexia. But parents there still struggle with getting their children properly diagnosed and in getting specific therapy for dyslexia. Read more about this challenge in this article from the website of The Missoulian.

Imagine a talented footballer forced to take the deciding penalty kick of a match wearing a tight skirt and high heels! Your feelings of frustration might be akin to those experienced by people with dyslexia when forced to function in a way that does not suit their thinking style. A dyslexic author and founder of a major support group shares some of her experience at the News Wales website.

A portable scanner that reads text, making print accessible to the visually impaired wherever they go, is now on sale in the United Kingdom.

Today people with visual impairments have more technology-based ways to experience a text than ever before. But some argue a resulting deemphasis on teaching Braille is causing a decline in literacy among the visually impaired.

Groundbreaking research at Auckland University has found that people with dyslexia appear to be trying to read with a different side of their brains than other people. The research breakthrough, which found that dyslexics try to read with the right side of their brains, may eventually help scientists to work out a way of helping them learn to read. Read more about this research in The New Zealand Herald.

The National Center for Learning Disabilities has released three parent advocacy briefs to help caregivers better understand how key elements of the No Child Left Behind law affect children with disabilities.

An education professor has cast doubt on the scientific validity of the term “dyslexia,” saying experts cannot agree on what it is or how to treat it. The British Dyslexia Association says the claims made by Durham University professor Julian Elliott are inflammatory. Get details in an article from BBC News (UK).

The changes on tap for the reauthorized version of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act are outlined in this Arizona Republic article.

In Victoria, the number of state school students with disabilities and language disorders has grown by almost 10,000 in five years. And the actual number may be higher, experts say. Many academics believe at least 10 percent of school children have extra learning needs. Read more of this article in The Age (Australia).

A new typeface designed to help children with dyslexia learn to read has been developed. The new font, “Read Regular,” looks like ordinary text but avoids using letterforms that can be confusing to people with dyslexia ( for example, b, d, q, and p, which can be inverted or mirrored to look alike). Though Read Regular has not been scientifically tested, anecdotal feedback has been extremely positive. This article appears in The Guardian (U.K.).