Overlearning

In recent weeks there has been a bit of debate going on in academic circles about diagnosis of Specific Learning Disabilities in Reading, what most would know as dyslexia.  It was put to me that diagnosis of dyslexia muddles the terrain a bit in that it implies something intrinsic in the child that needs remedying, as against implementing evidence based reading programs so that all children learn to read.  In my humble mind both elements are true.

 

We do need to implement evidence based phonics programs so that all children learn to read.  And we have the research that demonstrates if evidence based phonics programs are implemented then all children on the normal distribution curve shift to the right.  Alison Clarke, Speech Therapist from Melbourne demonstrated this in her recent YouTube video, and it was also demonstrated through the Sounds Write Report to Schools in August 2009.

 

But what is also true in my experience, is that children with dyslexia do have something inherent in them that needs to be acknowledged and which also informs how evidence based phonics is brought to them.  In the normal heterogeneity in human brain wiring for the processing of speech sounds, some brains, to greater and lesser degrees, don't do so well in this particular area.  I am not a neuroscientist and acknowledge that my knowledge about such scientific matters is poor, however, I see the manifestation of unstable processing of speech sounds in the children I work with every day . 

 

Although the hearing of these children is perfectly fine, the processing of those sound bytes can, and does, got a bit awry.  The brain of some of these children will simply process different sounds as the same.  In other children they can sound out the discrete sounds in a word but their brains jumble some of those sounds up so that the child experiences incredible difficulty in blending them all together.  It can often take up to ten attempts to blend the sounds together, and not because they aren't trying or not thinking, they are just manifesting what their brains have processed and cobbled together (or not).  And for many it will manifest in spelling.  Unless a child says the sounds as they write (and sometimes even when they do), then what actually gets written on the page can be a bit of a lottery.

 

But all of these manifestations of the processing difficulty that underpins dyslexia can be remedied, through the best of what we have learned from linguistics and science.  I also see this everyday.  Reading remediation through evidence based phonics is therapy, and working with it is truly an art.  But what is different for these kids in comparison to those in the normal curve who are not on the extremes of heterogeneity in phonological processing wiring, is the amount of overlearning required for the brain to build the neural pathways associated with correct processing of sounds; the amount of overlearning required to build correspondences between sounds and symbols (letters); and the amount of overlearning required for building correct images for whole words (via the previous two elements).

 

These kids need state of the art processes for learning.  And they need much, much, much, more exposure and practice than kids who don't have brains not organised for accurate phonological processing.  It takes more effort just to get the sound platforms right, and then it takes more effort to get the correct spellings associated with those sound platforms and then it takes more effort again to keep working with both enough for full images of words to be built.  Which is why academics such as Dr Sally Shaywitz emphasise the importance of additional time for these kids.  I also recommend that if they are required to learn class spelling lists then the lists need to be reduced.  Otherwise we are asking kids with a disability to expend way more energy and time than anyone else.  Do we ask that of any other disability group?

 

I think it is important that all students with dyslexia and their parents accept and understand the foundational issue in the child's brain in processing speech sounds.  Whilst the lack of neural wiring can be remedied through evidence based teaching of phonics, a trace of the issue always remains.  Reading will possibly remain slower than others throughout their lifetime; spelling will possibly always remain difficult and require ongoing use of strategies learned during phonics instruction; and the manifestations of dyslexia will absolutely surface during times of stress.  Children, and parents, need to understand this, and somewhere along the way children need to develop self management skills to reduce the impact of the 'dyslexia' and to cultivate awareness and strategies that calm a troubled mind. 

 

One bright young lady I work with commented on the difference she has observed between those kids who obtained their diagnosis early and those whose parents waited much longer before organising an assessment.  In her mind she has had time to accept, understand, accommodate and advocate on behalf of her dyslexia, whereas later diagnosed kids don't seem to have integrated their disability into their lives, and suffer.  I am not sure whether the timing of the diagnosis makes a difference to acceptance of a disability but it crossed my mind several weeks ago how difficult it must be for a child with dyslexia to accept that there is something intrinsically awry within.  But, my observation is that when ones 'accepts', things become easier, whilst denial is so much harder to maintain.  And so I hark back to my assessment in my introduction.  Implementation of evidence based phonics is vital, as is acceptance of inner machinations that create difficulties in skill areas in school and life.  Put them together and we get maturity on many levels.

PINK (Parents Involved iN Kids) Literacy Groups

NAPLAN results are out.  If, like me, you have a child with learning difficulties, the natural comparisons that occur between children in the classroom can lead to a crestfallen youngster at the end of the day.  "What does it mean?" was the question I was asked.  She had already had conversations with other children in her class and she knew what they scored.  So why were her 'black dots' so different?

 

Her initial response was one of anger.  She had assumed that her classroom teacher (who is not her literacy teacher) had marked her NAPLAN.  She felt she had put in a big effort (for her) to improve in literacy, and the person she assumed had marked her NAPLAN hadn't even been present in the classroom to SEE the effort she had been making.  Her indignation hid her hurt - she loves her classroom teacher.

 

In her experience (and mine) she has also made huge progress in the two terms since the NAPLAN testing was conducted (but how to convey the time lapse?).  Literacy instruction at her school has become much more focussed, she has been working with a tutor and short literacy activities are integrated into our daily routines during the week.  I KNOW she has made progress, I am within listening distance of her home tutoring lessons, I see her desire (something I have never seen before) to write, and I hear her read.  She has made so much progress!

 

But her results are not within the average range of the normal distribution curve.  My daughter's literacy is in the 'red flag' zone, whilst the school, on average is not.  So what happens for these kids?

 

From my experience in working with children with dyslexia and other learning difficulties (usually attention) my view is that it is a big ask of schools to come to grips with the nuances of each child's learning difficulties; to find the funds to hire people to do the individual remediation required (of both the original difficulty plus the resultant poor habits developed in response to an inability to perform classroom tasks); and to find people skilled in doing the work required (which at times can be very demanding).  What choices therefore do parents of children with learning difficulties have if they want to support their children in continuing to put in effort and to make gains?

 

The first factor parents need to consider is relationship.  Learning only occurs in the context of a fabulous relationship.  Fabulous relationships create a feeling of being supported.  Anxiety is the biggest impediment to learning - it knocks out the prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain necessary to new learning.  Fabulous relationships are the antidote to anxiety.  In a fabulous relationship the person working with the child is attuned to what is going on and is able to shift and move in response to their observations.  In a fabulous relationship, self awareness is supported, the core of the child is enticed into discussions about what is being learned, where work needs to be improved and how they think they are going.  Parents need to think about where they want their child to experience that fabulous relationship.  Solely with a tutor?  Shared between a tutor and themselves, or solely with themselves?  (My daughter's learning difficulties have been the impetus for much of my learning in recent years and the resultant decisions I have made.  Whilst I have learnt a lot technically, it is our relationship that has really blossomed.  Our relationship enervates her mental health (and learning) and mine.)

 

The next question pertains to financial resources.  Tutoring is not inexpensive.  Research tells us that for the 'unnatural' task of reading, in neurologically typical children at least 2 hours per week is required if learning is to  have a chance of being transferred into long term memory and automaticity.   For neurologically 'atypical' children the time required to be invested in effortful engagement in the learning of a concept is longer, i.e. we need to be spending more time with children actively and effortfully deepening their experience of what is being taught. 

 

In a nutshell, where do you want the fabulous relationship with your child to occur?  And do you have the resources to finance the decision you make?  And if you don't have the resources to 'pay someone else', what do you do?  Our children with learning difficulties and learning disabilities need all the support and encouragement they can get.  It's tough for them being in a 'NAPLAN red flag' zone in a school.   If you ever want to have a look at what your child is expected to achieve in literacy go to the Australian Curriculum website, scroll down, and open the links to work samples.   But don't lose heart, I believe that collectively, we, as parents, can bring much to the literacy lives of our children - and we don't have to do it alone.  Which is why I am creating the PINK (Parents Involved iN Kids) LITERACY support program.

 

My intention is to run 4 sessions on consecutive Sunday afternoons on:

• A Simple (but powerful) Approach to Literacy with your children.
• Resources that can be used as the framework in a Simple Approach.
• How to work with those Spelling Lists from a Simple Approach perspective.
• What you need to know from your child's school.
• Games and activities for 10 - 20 minute relationship (and Literacy) building sessions in the home.
• What we can do to facilitate the development of writing.

These four sessions will be run as a program and are suitable for parents who wish to support their children's literacy on their own, and those parents who wish to support their children's literacy in partnership with a skilled tutor.

 

Following the program I am offering the opportunity for interested parents  to work together throughout the year, supporting their children, working with resources, sharing their learning and learning from each other and myself.   These learning sessions will be held once a month on Sunday afternoons.  Scheduling of the initial four afternoon sessions is yet to be finalised.  Anyone interested is welcome to contact me on 0417 949 179 for further information and costs.

 

How Parents Can Help Their Struggling Reader

Parents of struggling readers can have a hard time, particularly if they are not flush with resources to access good expertise that can offer research based information, guidance and support.  When I was working in schools it was heartbreaking to find parents accessing (and paying substantial amounts for) snake oil, particularly in some of our less resourced suburbs.  To pay for ineffective services and products when the parent is already stressed trying to understand and help, is not good.  The relationship becomes another area that needs remediating if the child is eventually to learn to read.

Having been through that experience myself, this is my list of recommendations to parents wishing to help their struggling reader.

1.  Relax and focus on connection rather than achievement.  Your relationship with your child is the factor that makes the most difference if you are going to try and bring understanding and reading skills to them.  You have probably been struggling for months or maybe years, taking another month to relax and just focus on having quality meaningful time with your child is not going to do more harm - it will help!  If you bring stress to their experience of words then you are exacerbating what they experience at school.  When tutoring I am aware that our one hour per week may be the only time the student gets to enjoy being around words.  This experience is important.  As  a parent you are in a powerful position to bring more of a good feeling to their experience of words, so work on the feeling in your relationship first, then engage in words.

2.  Look for ways to relax have fun with your child/children around words.  For years whilst my daughter was young I read to her every night.  Grimm's fairy tales mostly, I found they had a different feeling in comparison to the majority of modern day authors.  (Thankfully there are some wonderful exceptions.)  But when she got older, homework became the focus of my attention and I let go of our precious time each day in which to enter another world.  Instead I worked with her on her reading skills. She has improved, a lot, but something was missing from our relationship (and my own enjoyment).  So I reignited reading at night.  I started off with books she really loved when she was little and have moved into books from the library which I know she could read but which I read.  She now makes sure I am reading each night ... and with her growth in reading skills and development, our reading time is enriched.  I know she is following as I read, she tells me she could read what I am reading, we talk about where the story might be going, she recaps the story each night before I begin, and we talk about whether a book is 'grabbing' us or not.  We discard it if it isn't!  As per my recent blog I have also found a couple of community events around story writing and illustration.  Once upon a time my girl wouldn't have been interested in the slightest about attending, now she's quite keen.

3.  Learn about how literacy should be taught.  Attend Dyslexia Speld Foundation (South Perth) parent film nights and information sessions.  Look up government funded literacy resources (libraries often have flyers) and access them if you are eligible.  Learn about how you can help your child via incidental (in the moment or when they make mistakes) teaching.  Learn about the power of 'saying the sounds and reading the word'.  Learn about the power of your pointer finger!  Borrow books from the library at DSF (or buy them) or better still write your own with your child, that they have the skills and alphabet code knowledge to read.  Don't read books with words in them that have sounds and their corresponding spellings they haven't covered yet. 

4.  Don't interact with them in ways that suggest you are looking for whether they have advanced or not.  In other words, don't test them all the time.  If you know there are words in what they will read that they don't know, play with it beforehand.  If they still have difficulty provide it form them.  Have blank paper and pens on hand, to tease out the sounds of words.  Don't jump in too quickly.  Once they start to blend sounds together they want to see if they can succeed and become annoyed if we jump in too quickly because of our need to have them reading words.  This is what happens in schools.  We rush and cram them so that they look like they are reading. Lots of sight words, reading for meaning, cueing from pictures, all so it looks like children are reading.  And our testing in schools can look like children are progressing.  But they aren't really reading, they aren't using the skills of reading, and then when we test them again in High School (when words are more complex) we wonder why they have dropped behind again? They were never at level in the first place. 

5.  Hire a good remediation tutor.  Make sure they are using a well researched evidence based literacy program.  Can they articulate the deficits in your child's reading skills and how they are going to turn them around?  Have they provided you with a plan that explicitly lays out what they will be doing and when?  Are they available to guide you when you have questions?  Is it possible at all to have them and your child's teacher talking?  Based on questions you have put to the tutor and the information they have provided in remediation plans and reports are you feeling confident about what they are doing?

6.  Ask questions of your school. What literacy program are they using?  Is it one included in the DSF catalogue (which means it has some research and evidence behind it) or is it one without the research?  What is the sequence of sounds and spellings that will be taught?  Where is your child up to?   Are they using Look, Say, Cover, Write, Check?  Why?  (It is not recommended for children with reading difficulties - or most of the others.)

7.  Develop your own literacy skills.  A significant number of children with dyslexia also a parent with dyslexia.  If you don't know how to read, then learn to read, model learning to read for your child.  Not only will you go up in their esteem but you will be a powerful influence over their engagement with learning to read.

For any parent searching for information and guidance, there is an information session in my home (Spearwood) this Sunday 1.30 to 3.30 pm.  The cost is $35, if you would like to come along, give me a call on 0417 949 179.

Parent Information Session

I know what it's like to be the parent of a child with reading difficulties!  My personal experience was really the start of my journey in developing my understanding and igniting my passion to make a difference to children with learning difficulties and/or dyslexia.  In the beginning though I struggled to understand anything.  I spent money on seminars and interventions that were never going to support my child learning to read - learning to read, write and spell would only come through a great teaching relationship and an evidence based intervention program.  But in the beginning I was looking for a quick fix that didn't require my time - because as a working mother, time was something I was very short of.

When my early endeavours didn't bear any fruit, I then decided that I simply had to take the plunge and tutor my daughter myself.  I attended a substantial amount of training and started working with her at home. The training involved learning lots of steps and procedures, sure, grounded in what we know about dyslexia and how to remediate it, but it didn't provide me with an overall understanding that pulled our knowledge together.  I felt panicky most of the time and in this state I really wasn't going to make a positive difference for my daughter.

And then I attended the Sounds Write training .... I had read related research by Diane McGuinness, a psychologist who conducted extensive work on understanding our language system.  Finally I found information that brought coherence to the work that needed to be done with children.  Everything fell into place - and I was properly trained in how to teach!  I have heard and read of teachers with 30 plus years of experience in attempting to make a difference with children with reading difficulties/dyslexia but who had previously had limited impact - until they too came across some form of program originating out of the D. McGuinness material.  They commented that it was only when they came across the simple understanding that linguistic phonics offers were they able to relax and feel assured that they could achieve what they set out to do.

So I breathed again, and set about working with students and my daughter.  Something that felt stressful overnight became a pleasure, fun, something to be enjoyed with children.  My relationship with my daughter changed, and it continues to grow in richness as I learn more about bringing curiosity with words and language and reading to her.  John Walker (Sounds Write Co Founder) and Mary Gladstone (Sounds Write Australia) brought amazing enthusiasm and expertise to their training sessions and follow up support.  Thank you to DSF for being the conduit - I have benefited enormously from the trainings they have offered.  Through my exploration of many, many, websites I have also made a connection with Fiona Nevola (Sound Reading System UK) and have benefited from the material she has developed and graciously allowed me to bring into Australia.  I continue to read work by Diane McGuinness and the internet now makes it possible to be networked into conversations about the day to day issues of working with children and in schools.  But of course my biggest teachers are the children I am privileged to work with.  My understanding and interest has come a long way - and now I would like to share it with other parents so that they too can hope to move on from confusion and distress.

I am running a 2 hour information session for parents on Sunday 15 June, 1.30 to 3.30 in my home in Spearwood. The cost is $35.  If anyone is interested in coming along please contact me via email on g-mavor@ausconnect.net.  Places are very limited so get in early.  I look forward to seeing you there and connecting with other parents compelled to make a difference to the literacy lives of their children.