I'm actually going to spend the next 2 days getting some dyslexia training! No idea what format or who is delivering it - but hey! However, if I spend the next 2 days hearing about the theories behind it and not how to help children with it I will not be a happy bunny!

Oooh, what a hornets' nest 'dyslexia' is.

I can tell you now that the best way to help children with 'dyslexia' is to make sure that they get systematic, explicit phonics teaching. Lots of practice with learning phoneme/grapheme correspondences, reading decodeable books and breaking words into their component phonemes fro spelling. This may, or may not, be the advice offered!

Much of what is labelled 'dyslexia' is really bafflement on the part of the child because they haven't been given this systematic teaching when learning to read.

Try this:

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A New Definition of Dyslexia

(unfortunately it's a very irritating site, with unwanted adverts popping up all the time)

jaydee,

Just found this on another thread, but didn't want to hi-jack it.

You say:

Quote:

I have just spent 2 days discussing dyslexia and the latest thinking on 'literacy difficulties' (there is now thinking that dyslexia does not exist as a seperate condition). We were advised to move away from emphasis on reading and writing tasks, to set work that allowed the child to achieve (eg, shorter worksheets with glossaries), to seriously reconsider the need for homework ( the average child with dyslexia has to work 10 times harder to get through the school day so homework comes at a time when they are exhausted), give each child a list of the 100 most common words for reference (apparently if you can read that you can read 50% of text!), use tick sheets filled in by staff to record oral knowledge instead of setting writing tasks. The 'Somerset' experimet split children with literacy difficulties into 4 groups, one group had no intervention, one had self esteem building work, one had self esteem and reading help, one had reading help. The group with self esteem ONLY showed the best improvement in reading ability.

It seems to me as if whoever was running your training has virtually implied that 'dyslexic' children can't really be taught to read and write properly. What a cop out! No mention of systematic, explicit phonics teaching (flagged up by the paper I gave you the link to as being the best way to 'remediate' dyslexia.)? Just teach them 100 words, which may comprise 50% of written communication, but unfortunately are the words which don't actually convey any information, as they are words such as 'and', 'the', 'said'. Just try analysing a passage byt taking out all but those 100 words and see what it communicates!

Sorry, it makes me very angry that these children are further disabled by the 'experts' who are meant to be able to help them!

Sorry if I misled you in the post maizie, I typed it quickly while trying to reassure sue that her grand daughter's problems were certainly not tot fault of home. The training certainly covered use of phonics, the use of the most common words was as an aide memoire, not a cop out. The tutor recommended teaching children to read and write in a way that allowed them to succeed, not to constantly put pressure on them. For example using paired reading techniques to scaffold reading. She didn't advocate any one phonics method because she said diffferent methods worked for different staff and pupils in the way they were delivered it and learnt, it was a case of finding what was right for each individual pupil. Altering teaching methods to suit the learning styles of the individual pupil to the pupil's benefit was what she was advocating most. I found her very interesting and have certainly gone back to school wondering how we can best make waht we as staff do be the best for the child. For example, we had a trip to the beach on Friday and one child with literacy problems was the one who was paddling in the water, finding the crabs, assembling items of interest, using great vocabulary - all as requested by the teacher for their topic. I took lots of photos and have asked the teacher to let me type up the child's oral report - she would find writing it so hard and it would undermine all the good investigation work she did, we will let her pick some photos to caption though so that she still does some writing. Another child I have asked that I do paired reading with her to boost her reading skills, she loves books and we have borrowed talking books for her , but as I ahve only seen paired reading done with children working together, until this course it didn't occur to me to do it adult to child - blinkers lifted!

Sounds like you have got lots of ideas jd there are certainly quite a few out there I agree with Maize though that these children can be taught phonics skills. I've just completed a 2 day course at the Helen Arkell dyslexia centre not too far away from us and came away with 100's of snipets of information to make the childrens lives easier.

We use Jolly phonics and toe by toe, decodeable reading books, clear fonts on all displays, visual cues for context and a number of other things already but it was good to get some new ideas.

Just out of interest did anyone mention coloured over lays?

We use reading rulers, which some children like and others don't.

we used colour overlays for students too

We had loads of Y7s last September who came flagged up as using overlays. Blow me, not an overlay in sight now, and their reading hasn't got any worse!

I do think that a coloured overlay helps to make the words look clearer on the page. Most books are printed black on (bright) white, which is the very worst combination possible, for anybody! We have the reading rulers and I find that they instantly make the words look more clear - and I don't have any problem with reading

the colour preference for overlays can change too, so they need retesting as well....and the lighting/tiredness can affect whether they need to use them or not...some days i can read black on white , other days it moves around and is more difficult...and the font makes a difference too

If we think that the child will benifit from coloured overlays and know that we will get no joy asking parents to get child properly assessed can I do any harm by using them in school? (by overlay I mean reading rulers)

there is training, we had a specialist teacher who came in and tested but she was willing to train us to do the testing, the school just needs to get its own pack to use

there must be a link for the training, i will have a search

you can always try using coloured paper and photocopying work onto that, cream and blue are supposed to be 'dyslexia friendly' colours

a colleague of mine had all his work on our course on blue paper

dq,

What is so special about the overlays themselves? We have a Y7 who does have blue tinted glasses (yes, I was exagerating ever so slightly) and he came to me on a quest for a reading ruler on the day he forgot his glasses. I couldn't find the reading rulers but did have some coloured plastic (from a plastic folder). He tried it out and pronounced it to be a satisfactory substitute to use that day.

I don't think it did it any harm, but you've set me wondering.

well i do wonder myself about what is special and how they work, and im not an expert, but from the way i see it it just makes the page easier to read and stops what is known as the 'rivers of white' which occurs when the brighntess of the white contrasting against the black print causes the print to 'move' about

when we use handouts at college we use pastel colours which helps to stop this too, and from experience of courses myself i must admit i prefer colours for handouts

i dont know if i can but will try to get the email of the specialist teacher, i know i had it somewhere, and see if she can give me a definitive answer..i did have at least 3 boys who had overlays suggested as a strategy, and when asked they did say it helped their reading in class situations

must admit though, none of my boys would ever have used tinted glasses, but an overlay was ok to use!!! street cred and all that!!