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.

b' and 'd'

Many students have difficulty remembering the orientation of 'b' and 'd' when reading and writing.  Students on the spectrum of dyslexia in particular find it difficult 'bedding down' the correct orientation for 'b' and 'd', 'p' and 'q', 'm' and 'w'.  So the challenge is to find a strategy that enables them to quickly make the correct orientation and to practice it to the point of automaticity i.e. to build the neural pathway and to strengthen it to the degree that kids who are hard wired to see patterns and make connections, do with less effort and explicit instruction.

Various approaches are used.  At the very basic level all letters are made up of circles (whole or in part) and strokes.  Sometimes teachers use the terms 'bats' and 'balls'.  For the letter 'b' students are verbally instructed that the bat comes before the ball whilst for the letter 'd' the ball comes before the bat.  But we know from brain research that visual presentation of material always wins out so using verbal language to create the correct neural pathway may not be the most effective.

With my students I have them put their hands in front of them, palms facing them and ask them to close their

fingers.  They then have 'b' and 'd' directly in front of them.  If I link this movement to the word 'bed' then they have an easy and quick method of comparing their hands to letters in front of them to determine if the letter is a 'b' or 'd' and therefore if the sound to be spoke is a /b/ or /d/.

A couple of weeks ago a friend informed me that her son (with dyslexia) had worked out his own way of knowing how to differentiate between 'b' and 'd'.  She then showed me that when we start to make the sound /b/ our lips are tight together and in a straight line, i.e. the 'bat' is first when we say /b/.  Similarly when we start to make the sound /d/ our lips are round and open, i.e. the 'ball' comes first when we say /d/. Since then I have learned that this technique is promoted by reading therapists worldwide.  But be prepared.  Just because they have learned to use the hand or mouth technique to differentiate between /b/ and /d/, children will need to check using their technique every time they encounter the sound or letter.  Otherwise they will continue to guess - incorrectly.

Out of the mouths of babes .....

Loving Words

I was going to say one of the reasons I got involved in understanding reading and how to teach it was because I wanted to be able to influence children's relationship to the written word and the joy that can come from it.  Actually that wasn't the one big reason - THAT was watching my daughter struggle with no observable support from her classroom teacher at that time.  Back THEN I thought that getting children to read was simply about finding the right program to teach them.  What I FINALLY realised was that yes, there is overwhelming evidence that a great phonics program really does make a huge difference, but what I saw at the level of one on one tutoring was that how I was in my being and how much enthusiasm I brought to the learning experience was of equal if perhaps not more, importance.

I love books, I love to read ... and at my age I should probably be sitting around, enjoying the simple pleasure of reading, a lot.  I am happy when I am reading and playing with words.  So how do I bring this to my tutoring of young charges, who, more often than not, have been totally put off reading because they were either not taught correctly and/or just had too much difficulty with the task.  I go back to being able to influence children's relationship to words on a page, the fabulous stories they convey, the pleasure of turning a page, the texture of paper, and the feelings of pride when we construct our own stories.

I am a trained bookbinder.  I have conducted many workshops with adults and children on making their own books.  I have not yet progressed on to writing my own book, but who knows, maybe one day.  

The book, 'Homemade Books to Help Kids Cope' by Robert G. Ziegler, M.D. is a book I hold as one of my most treasured.  I love the idea of writing stories for children who need help with understanding.  I love the idea of parents writing stories for their children and I love the idea of translating these stories into little homemade books if people want to take it one step further.  If children have a negative relationship with words then my aim is to engage them through sensate rich creativity.  Using the process outlined in this book, simple bookbinding skills and kids' interest in writing stories and adding their artwork, I aim to increase the power of the learning and change their experience to one of awesome enjoyment.

I start with a Sounds Write lesson in which children sort words of the same sound into different spellings.  We know from our research that solid spelling skills required repeated exposure (and for many children, lots of repeated exposure!).  We also know that the more senses we engage the more meaning is made of what is being learned and the more rich and solid the neural pathways that are constructed.  In Sounds Write the sorting process is taught and can be followed up with worksheets.  I have taken it one step further.

Here I have taken the story writing template outlined in the book mentioned above and invite children to write a 'decodable' story using as many words with the target sound as possible.  All other words may only be constructed from sounds they have covered.  Any frequent words with irregular spellings will also need to have been covered in the Sounds Write Sequence and Scope.  Its a challenge but not as difficult as it may seem.  And if children are really motivated I invite them to add their own artwork or for those especially keen I am happy to bind up a simple book which they take away.  As these stories and books are constructed I will post them on my blog.

Here is one I constructed with daughter last year - only we haven't got around to adding the artwork!

Published decodable books can be expensive to buy and come along with professional artwork.  We all need resources to support our work using good phonics' programs.  Older children can be put off with some of the 'younger looking' resources available to them.  In addition to being more multisensory and then more potentially powerful, perhaps writing one's own story and illustrations is also more grown up.

Taking the 'S' out of Viper

Whilst looking at this card in the latest local card collection craze my daughter stated that the name of the character was 'Visper'.  This didn't quite sound right so I asked her to look at the word more carefully and tell me again what the name was.  "Oh," she said, "It's Viper."  I asked her why she said 'Visper' the first time around.  She said she didn't know.  And what about you?  Any hunches?

For many children in early primary school they are taught the sounds of letters through pairing with pictures, and in the case of the /S/ sound it is often paired with a picture of a snake.  In my daughter's case her brain has wired into it that the picture of a snake always implies the presence of an /S/ sound. This pairing has been learned to automaticity, which simply means that whenever she sees a picture of a snake in a pose similar to that used on the picture cards of her early primary school, it means an /S/ sound should be around somewhere - even if it isn't represented in a written word.  In her case neural pathways about the pairing of sounds and pictures have been instilled.  What hasn't been learnt to automaticity is that the eyes need to look for representations of sounds via letters in written words if they are to be read accurately.  In an attempt to make the learning of letters interesting and what some might term multisensory, teachers innocently embellish their teaching practices with things like pictures and stories and movement which often distracts the neurological wiring children really need - which is the pairing of sounds with letter representations.

This situation can also be seen with children who have learnt 'l' or 'r' blends to automaticity .  This is where a consonant is paired with an 'l' or an 'r' for example and children are taught to learn through repetition words that begin with 'fl' and 'br'. What I can then encounter in tutoring sessions and in the classroom are students who, when they come across words beginning with an 'f' or a 'b', automatically add in the 'l' or 'r' blend.  For example, a child may be presented with the word 'bend' but through the repetitive learning of 'bl' blends they then automatically read the word as 'blend' even though no 'l' is present in the word.

There are a sizeable number of literacy programs available to schools and parents. And unlike some other countries, in Australia anyone can create their own program and market it to the general public and our educational facilities.  There is also a long history around what is regarded as the 'best' approach to teaching children how to read.  In the middle of all this we continue to have significant numbers of children failing to learn to read, or worse still, learning to hate reading.

For me, the Sounds Write Phonics Program is impressive.  It pares reading back to the three skills of blending, segmenting and phoneme manipulation.  Sounds come first - in every teaching interaction. Superfluous buffering of teaching through the use of pictures, blends, onset & rime, stories, are extracted, allowing the teaching methods to directly create the neural pathways needed for reading.  The alphabetic code (how the alphabet is used to represent sounds in words) is sequentially, cumulatively and explicitly taught.   Dynamic lessons coupled with 'safe' relationship support learning.  For a taste of the Sounds Write program I highly recommend that teachers and parents purchase the Sounds Write Phonics Program App from itunes.  At $2.99 for the Initial Code this is a great way to start.  And for those of you interested in the science behind the practice I highly recommend the blog 12 Jan 2014 post Linguistic phonics: a practical example by John Walker (Founder and Creator of the Sounds Write Phonics Program) to be found in his blog The Literacy Blog.