Sharing an article: 'Understanding Dyslexia and the Reading Brain in Kids'

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Today we are sharing an article by Holly Korbey featured on http://2.KQED.org regarding often misunderstood Dyslexia and how it relates to kids in their reading and comprehension. Do you have a student who you think has Dyslexia? If so and you are looking for help and understanding take a look at the following article. Also remember, we are here to help your student succeed together! Please visit us at: http://www.lindereducationalcoaching.com/

Understanding Dyslexia and the Reading Brain in Kids

(Getty Images)

By Holly Korbey

OCTOBER 1, 2015

At a recent talk for special education teachers at the Los Angeles Unified School District, child development professor Maryanne Wolf urged educators to say the word dyslexia out loud.

“Don’t ever succumb to the idea that it’s going to develop out of something, or that it’s a disease,” she recalled telling teachers. “Dyslexia is a different brain organization that needs different teaching methods. It is never the fault of the child, but rather the responsibility of us who teach to find methods that work for that child.”

Wolf, who has a dyslexic son, is on a mission to spread the idea of “cerebrodiversity,” the idea that our brains are not uniform and we each learn differently. Yet when it comes to school, students with different brains can often have lives filled with frustration and anguish as they, and everyone around them, struggle to figure out what is wrong with them.

Diagnosing Dyslexia

“Oh, she just hasn’t caught up yet,” is what Zanthe Taylor recalled her daughter Calliope’s teachers saying throughout first and second grades. Calliope, now 12, was in the slowest reading group at her Brooklyn private school, but teachers assured Taylor that Calliope was very bright and would catch up shortly.

In truth, Calliope wasn’t catching up. As peers began whizzing past her in reading, Taylor became more anxious and worried. Their collective frustration levels — both Calliope’s and her parents—soon reached a breaking point, especially after they’d hired a private tutor to help speed up her reading in the fall of second grade.

“She’d have massive tantrums over homework,” Taylor said. Calliope would be happy and fine all afternoon, but when it came time to do homework, she would refuse to begin. “She would scream and cry, then I would scream and cry,” Taylor said. “I once crumpled up the whole assignment and yelled, ‘What are we going to do?’ ”

Then one night, after four months of intensive (and expensive) tutoring, Taylor’s husband, Matthew, was talking to Calliope’s tutor on the phone when she mentioned the word “dyslexia.” A light went on. Taylor recalled that up to that point, everyone had been very careful not to say the word, but the tutor suggested that it might be time to have Calliope officially evaluated in order to receive more targeted instruction.

An intensive two-day battery of tests provided the data that Taylor, by this time, already knew: Calliope had dyslexia. Although she was very bright and displayed above-average social skills, without intense and specific intervention, she would never “catch up” in reading.

Taylor now knows that an overly emotional response to homework is common in those with dyslexia: Calliope didn’t know why she couldn’t read either. Now with a diagnosis and intensive intervention, Calliope is entering seventh grade with her peers. She’s able to accomplish all the work, although she requires more time. “I always disliked the words ‘learning differences,’ ” Taylor said. “But the more I get to know about this, the more I think it’s true.”

This kind of anxiety and frustration can be largely avoided, said Wolf, who is also director of the Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts University and author of “Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain.” She and colleague Martha Denckla designed a simple test to quickly know whether there is a problem in the reading circuit very early on, as early as kindergarten or first grade. Called the RAN/RAS test (Rapid Automatized Naming/Rapid Alternating Stimulus), students are timed on how fast they can name letters, numbers, colors and objects.

RAN/RAS or a comparable evaluation is one of the single best predictors that there’s something different in how the brain is putting together letters with their name, which is like a mini-version of the later reading circuit. While RAN/RAS cannot diagnose a reading problem, it does provide educators with a red flag, suggesting that students may need further evaluation.

In “Proust and the Squid,” Wolf writes that if she were given five minutes with all teachers and parents everywhere, she’d want them most to know that “learning to read, like Red Sox baseball, is a wonderful thing that can go wrong for any number of reasons.” For students accused of being stubborn or not working to their potential, often neither is true: Children with dyslexia need immediate and intensive intervention to connect the pieces of the reading circuit.

The Science of Reading and Dyslexia

The act of reading itself is anything but natural. Human brains weren’t designed to read: There is no “reading center” of the brain, and there are no “reading genes.” Instead, in order to read, each brain must fashion new circuits between parts originally designed to do other things, like retrieving the names for objects. These new circuits must not only combine many processes from different areas of the brain to form a specialized circuit just for reading — in order to become a fluent reader, the circuit also needs to run lightning-fast, nearly automatic.

Wolf has spent her career studying how the brain reads and, in some cases, how it doesn’t. “Because we have no pre-programmed wiring for reading [in the brain], we have to do something very different,” Wolf said. “What the brain does have — which is fantastic — is the ability to make new circuits based on new connections among its already-there parts. So, when I said [in the book] we were never born to read, that is the absolute truth. We weren’t. Each child has to do it by themselves.”

Since each brain must learn to read from scratch, as Wolf put it, “many things can happen along the way.” Dyslexia, originally called word-blindness, is a neurobiological condition describing the failure to read words and letters affecting an estimated 10-20 percent of schoolchildren, depending on whom you ask.

While classified as a “learning disability,” dyslexia is not a brain disorder or a disease, nor is it flipping letters backward. Often the failure to read is in direct opposition to a brain’s cognitive ability, leaving parents and teachers stymied when an otherwise intelligent child can’t spell words they’ve seen a thousand times, or put a sentence together.

Dyslexia, Wolf said, is the result of a brain that’s organized in a different way. In many children, this is because the right hemisphere tries to muscle the strengths of the left, specifically at tasks that are the domain of the left, like many language functions. When the reading circuit is being dominated by the right hemisphere, it takes longer for the information that goes to both hemispheres to get together.

In the dyslexic brain, there are several major areas that could develop problematically. (While there is no singular form of dyslexia, there are several profiles that appear most prominently.)

* Phoneme awareness, or knowing the sounds that correspond with letters and words, is the No. 1 deficiency in the dyslexic brain. “Our language is made up of 44 sounds called phonemes,” Wolf said. “English is trickier because we have phonemes that can be expressed in different letters, and we have letters that can stand for different phonemes. It’s an irregular language, and that adds to the complexity, but the underlying issue for many, but not all, children is problems in the basic representation of those phonemes.” Wolf said there are multiple areas of the brain contributing to our ability to represent phonemes, and that many dyslexic children have issues with developing phonemes, as well as knowing which sounds are assigned to which letters.

* Fluency, or getting the reading circuit to work together quickly, is the second-biggest issue.  “Children can have perfectly represented phonemes, but can’t get the phonemes together with the letters, because there’s a speed-of-processing issue,” Wolf said. “And part of that may well be because that right hemisphere is taking a longer time and trying to do what the left hemisphere usually does, in getting that circuit to work very fast together. That can mean not just the phonemes aren’t represented very well. It might also mean that letters aren’t getting represented very well, and that the circuit is not becoming automatic.”

* Comprehension is the third but no less crucial issue to reading. “After making letters and sounds work together, and getting the whole circuit to work in time, then words have to be connected to meanings and functions of grammar,” Wolf said. “It takes explicit work to get the visual representation, meaning, sound and grammatical function all working together, and that’s what dyslexic children must do.” Wolf said that often this kind of dyslexia doesn’t show itself until the child is older, third grade and up, when a child switches from learning to read to reading to learn.

“Some of our children can read words, but read them laboriously,” Wolf said. “And by fourth grade they’re a major failure and have never become fluent.” Many of these children are bright and have compensated up to this point by memorizing words, but have never learned to read fast enough to comprehend what they’re reading.

Understanding that these developments are nothing more than brain differences that can be aided with systematic and explicit instruction, Wolf said, is a large but necessary step for everyone involved: students, parents and teachers. When children find they’re unable to read or read with much difficulty, they often believe that it’s the result of a bad or broken brain. Some teachers may also unwittingly hold beliefs that reading happens for all children by a kind of osmosis.

Wolf insists that three decades of research has shown that neither are true, but keeping the truth about dyslexia hidden or misunderstood only hurts the students, their parents and the educators trying desperately to help them.

To view the original article source visit: http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/10/01/understanding-dyslexia-and-the-reading-brain-in-kids/?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=202503

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Tired of fighting over school? One of our main roles is to offer mediation between parents and students, as well as the students and school. We can help reduce the conflict in the home by taking over the management of a student. We will encourage them, hold them accountable, and also teach them how to advocate at school. This allows many families to get their relationships back with their children, and leave the worry and stress of school to us.

If you are looking for this kind of help for your student, please contact us today at: http://www.lindereducationalcoaching.com/

Did you know? Linder Educational Coaching's Flagship Academic Success Program

Did you know that here at Linder we offer private coaching with our Flagship Academic Success Program? Most students are bombarded with readings, powerpoints, lectures, homework, tests, and projects, yet have never been taught the strategies to succeed in managing these things. Very rarely do teachers in school have the time or ability to focus on one student and understand the struggles and problems with that student’s learning method. Sadly, there is no required class in study skills for school and, even if there was, there is no system that works for everyone. Each person learns differently and needs to find a way to use his/her natural abilities in school.

With private coaching we work with students intensively, at least a few hours a week at first, to analyze what their current strategies are and how we can improve on them. Each student goes step-by-step through the following aspects of our program:

Evaluate Executive Skills

Executive skills are what allows any individual, student or adult, to envision, plan, and execute tasks, as well as evaluate their performance and learn from mistakes.  Many children have weaknesses in certain areas, and children with ADD/ADHD are strongly deficient in multiple areas. As stated by Dr. Guare, “Executive skills have recently been identifies as the foundation that all children need to negotiate the demands of childhood, and these brain-based skills become more and more critical as children venture into the world with decreasing supervision and guidance. Ultimately, they are essential to successful management of adult life.” Executive Skills are broken down as follows:

• Response inhibition: The capacity to think before you act—this ability to resist the urge to say or do something allows your child the time to evaluate a situation and how his or her behaviour might impact it. For example, a young child can wait for a short period without being disruptive. An adolescent can accept a referee’s call without an argument.
• Working Memory: The ability to hold information in memory while performing complex tasks. It incorporates the ability to draw on past learning or experience to apply to the situation at hand or project into the future. For example, a middle school child can remember the carrying expectations of multiple teachers.
• Emotional Control: The ability to manage emotions to achieve goals, complete tasks, or control and direct behaviour.
• Sustained Attention: The capacity to keep paying attention to a situation or task in spite of distractibility, fatigue, or boredom. For example, a teenage child can pay attention to homework, with short breaks, for 1-2 hours.
• Task initiation:  The ability to begin projects without undue procrastination, in an efficient or timely fashion.
• Planning/Prioritization: The ability to create a roadmap to reach a goal or to complete a task. It also involves being able to make decisions about what’s important to focus on and what’s not important.
• Organization: The ability to create and maintain systems to keep track of information and materials.
• Time Management: The capacity to estimate how much time one has, how to allocate it, and how to stay within time limits and deadlines. It also involves a sense that time is important.
• Goal-Directed Persistence: The capacity to have a goal, follow through to the completion of the goal, and not be put off by or distracted by competing interests.
• Flexibility: The ability to revise plans in the face of obstacles, setbacks, new information, or mistakes. It relates to adaptability to changing conditions.
• Metacognition: The ability to stand back and take a bird’s-eye view of yourself in a situation, to observe how you problem solve. It also includes self-monitoring and self-evaluative skills (“How am I doing?”). For example, a young child can change behaviour in response to feedback from an adult. A teenage can monitor and critique his performance and improve it by observing others who are more skilled.

Create a Goal List with Students and Parents

Using the information from our evaluation, we discuss the primary areas of concern with the family. We then decide on the skills we will focus on first, and create a goal list for each quarter.

Implement a System

We work with the students to teach them effective systems and strategies for them to be successful in school, foster executive function development, and create a harmonious home environment. Parents and teachers work with us to help support and implement the student’s system.

Assess Learning Style
No two people learn and understand information in the same way. We discern the clear tendencies of each child’s learning style, and then work closely with the student to try different methods of studying tailored to their learning style.  We try to provide each student with a set of study skills that is both efficient and effective for them now and throughout their life.
Develop academic skill sets: Evaluate the reading comprehension, math and writing ability of the student and discuss shortcomings with the parents. The goal is to have the student solidly at his grade level and prepared to handle the progressions of future grades. We like to build an ability in the student to handle constructive criticism and work through struggles, and encourage every student to seek recognition for his work.

• Reading & Writing Skills: Build reading skills beyond the basic comprehension and into the realm of synthesis and analysis. Develop writing skills for essays, exams, and SATs. Stress the importance of grammar and organization. We teach strategies for active and engaged reading. We also teach students the analytical skills necessary for academic pursuits. We work with students on vocabulary learning methods to aid in their reading comprehension and writing abilities.
• Study Skills: work with each student as an individual to gauge what their learning style is and show them how to capitalize on their natural learning preferences. Go through an intensive study skills method that is applicable for all their learning endeavors, now and in the future. We focus on memory techniques, active reading strategies, and building a study system.
• Test-taking skills: work with students (and their teachers) to analyze their test-taking skills. Work with the student on how to handle the stress of a testing environment and the different types of tests, as well as build an ability to recall the information from the study sessions.
• Independence: build confidence and knowledge in how to find answers, balance multiple projects, and engage in the learning process. We are very big on a student carrying his own weight. We are here to help, but know when to make them stand on their own. We expect a lot from our students, but they find that working hard on specific tasks and gaining results is much more satisfying than wading through unhappily on their own. We give them the tools to succeed, which is normally all that is missing.
• Mentoring: So much of what we do is provide a role model for the children. Each associate I have hired is exceptional in a variety of ways and each has a different advantage in working with children. As a whole, my program focuses on putting someone in the child’s life they can comfortably ask questions to or seek advice from. As a group, we have a junior Olympic medal, Magna Cum Laude graduations, Non-Profit founders, Teaching Award Winners, and many other magnificent achievements.

Our system is not an overnight fix or a simple subject clarification; it is truly a system of learning skills that take time and dedication to conquer. We hope to make their weekly study time decrease but their productivity increase, which is as much a relief for them as the parents.

Subject Tutoring

While we like to go beyond just basic subject tutoring, we are happy to work with any of the students on specific issues they have with comprehension in any subject. The difference between us and a normal subject tutor: We would rather teach them how to work out a problem themselves, find the answer, or be ok discussing issues with their full-time teacher. We want our students to be resourceful, not reliant.

If you want to set up an appointment for your child today to receive private coaching, please visit: http://www.lindereducationalcoaching.com/

1 Tutor + 1 Student = Better Math Scores, Less Fear

1 Tutor + 1 Student = Better Math Scores, Less Fear

By Patti Neighmond for NPR.org 

Math can be as scary as spiders and snakes, at least in the brain of an 8-year-old child. And that early anxiety about dealing with numbers can put a child at a significant disadvantage, not only in school but in negotiating life and a career. Fortunately, a study of third-graders, published this week in the Journal of Neuroscience, suggests an intervention that can help. One-on-one tutoring does more than teach kids, the researchers say. It calms the fear circuitry in the brain.

"The most exciting aspect of our findings is that cognitive tutoring not only improves performance, but is also anxiety-reducing," says neuroscientist Vinod Menon, the study's senior author and a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University.

Menon and his colleagues knew from their earlier research using MRI scans of the brain that math anxiety activates much the same network of cells that some other common phobias activate — fear of snakes or spiders or heights, for example. And they knew that a behavioral treatment known as exposure therapy helps some people resolve the anxiety of those other phobias. Could the same thing be happening with math tutoring?

To find out, the scientists recruited 46 third-graders who answered questions about math worries and were also tested on simple addition problems while having their brains scanned via functional MRI. Based on their answers, scans and scores in each of the tests, the children were divided into two groups: one deemed to have higher levels of math anxiety and one with lower levels.

Afterward, both groups received eight weeks of one-on-one tutoring in basic arithmetic, a few sessions a week.

Both groups did better in math at the end of the tutoring, Menon says. But most importantly, he says, the kids who had been anxious about math were 20 percent less anxious at the end of the eight weeks — a finding their brain scans confirmed.

The tutoring was highly personalized, says Menon — if a child got stuck on a particular concept, the tutor would work with the student to "get beyond the bottleneck in a non-negative, encouraging way."

He hopes to next study whether computerized tutoring can produce similar benefits and brain circuit changes, and whether the reduction in math anxiety persists as the children advance to more complex problem-solving skills.

48 College Scholarships & Contests! (Be sure to check this one out!)

Attending college can be quite expensive for students and their families. Luckily, there are many college scholarships and contests available to help pay for a college education. Students should seek out and apply for scholarships in which they meet the eligibility requirements. Below are 48 college scholarships and contests with October 2015 deadlines. Only brief information about each scholarship is listed. Therefore, students are encouraged to visit the scholarship websites to get further details about eligibility and requirements.

For more details click here: http://jlvcollegecounseling.com/2015/08/25/scholarships-with-october-2015-deadlines/