Children with Dyslexia

Something happened to Callum in the autumn term 2011.  A normally cheerful child he has, however, always been the child who falls over, loses, forgets or breaks things and struggles with schoolwork.  In November the phrase 'I'm rubbish' crept into his vocabulary and homework became stressful and resulted in tears.

Callum's Mum had spoken to me two years ago about her concerns with his progress at her son's school.  Not yet at his seventh birthday, I suggested she help him as much as possible but persuaded her not to go down the assessment route which results in a label.  As I told her, there are few specialist teachers or education psychologists who will assess a child before they are seven.  Callum is now 8 years 10 months and we are thinking that this has gone on long enough.

Callum's difficulties have begun to cause him problems socially and emotionally.  He loves his Saturday drama group and is the only one of three siblings to attend, the intention to find him something that is special to him that he enjoys.  This is important - to find an interest, passion or skill that is not shared with siblings who are succeeding at school..  Initial assessments concentrate on strengths so parents can help by identifying these and encourage them at home.  But now, Callum has refused to audition for parts, despite getting into the final ten at an audition in September.  This has been followed by refusing to audition for a school production.
'I won't get it.  I'm rubbish,' was all he would say when asked.  If your child is already saying this there will be more work to be done.

Last week his mother was ferrying several classmates to an event, when one of the children chimed up that 'Callum's the messiest writer in the class'.  She felt herself cringe on  her son's behalf.  Mum is also aware that Callum's work is never put up on the wall and very little work comes home from school.  With Parents' Evening looming after half term, his mother asked for a preliminary 'chat' with his teacher prior to Parents' Evening.  This was initially refused with the evening imminent.  'But, she said, 'I just want to have a quick word about Callum.  More hesitations  .... but she persisted, adding,'so that you can have a think and talk to other people before that evening.'  Eventually, it was agreed and the result is that Callum has been moved speedily into a 'special spelling group'.  Why this had not been done before is unclear.

Mum was clearly distressed the week before half term as she feels helpless to support him.  She is not a trained teacher and is not in a position therefore to train as a specialist dyslexia tutor.  One route for her may be to take up a place on a Teaching Assistants' Course.  When I studied for my Diploma in Specific Learning Difficulties, I was the only person on the course who didn't have dyslexic children.  Most teachers were there to learn how to help their own children.  In reality this does not always work as even if you have the qualification you will find there are barriers to teaching your own child.  I have often had a child brought to me by a mother who is a trained specialist.  'He won't do it for me,' is the common complaint.

I agreed to do some subtle basic assessments on Callum.  He already has Test and Exam phobia, failing anything that is presented as such, whereas his classwork is acceptable.  Poor exam and test grades which do not reflect oral ability is a key factor with dyslexia.  Callum's low self-esteem is such that I knew he would not want to come into a room with me and 'do tests'.  I therefore sat with him in their lounge while the other children were occupied with other things.  We had an easy chat about school and what he does not like (everything apparently).  I asked him if he could say long words and the answer was 'no'.  Will you try some for me I asked.  He tried four words - preliminary, philosophical, statistical and millennium - all without success but we had a laugh about it and I said I couldn't say 'preliminary' either.

We discussed learning times tables but he has learnt the 7x table by reciting 7, 14, 21, 28, 35 and so on, so if you ask him what are four sevens he cannot tell you.  I then asked him if he could tell me the months of the year.  He made errors and backtracked from May to start again, finishing eventually by reversing October and November.  When I asked him to say them backwards he said 'no way'.  I know that his grandfather has always demonstrated signs of Dyslexia and Callum told me he confused 'b' and 'd' giving me examples.  'I write deing instead of being,' he said.

I, therefore, know that Callum has 5 indicators on the Bangor and know him well enough to predict this will increase to a possible 8 my next visit.  Interestingly, his siblings were writing poems for a competition run by Buxton Press in association with Derby University.  Callum had disappeared when they began composing, one on a laptop and one on a lined file pad.  This reluctance to write is a key indicator of Dyslexia.  If a child avoids writing or produces very little written work, he or she should be investigated for Specific Learning Difficulties (Dyslexia).  Any parents reading this would be advised to approach their child's school if this is the case with their child.  The simple things I demonstrated above could also be tried with the child either as a game or in conversation, but privately!  Take care not to let siblings laugh at the child who cannot pronounce big words.  Likewise they should not laugh at his writing, awkward stumbling reading and poor basic calculations in maths.  I suspect that, for Callum, this has started to happen in school and caused him to label himself 'rubbish' at everything.

I asked Callum if he would read me some words on a card which he did happily.  On this test his score was average.  Then I took a deep breath and asked if he would write some words for me as I wanted to see how many words he knew.  Percentiles express the child's achievement as compared to a similar age group. 

If this story strikes a familiar chord with you, you have the right to ask to see the SENCO at your child's school.  SENCO stands for Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator.  More tests can then be carried out. 

I hope to be able to start giving Callum specialist tuition.  He already has a tutor who is not a specialist, but he likes her and she is doing very useful things with him.  However, he needs someone to deal with his poor phonological awareness and specialist tutors are trained to do this.  He also needs strategies for dealing with his difficulties.

And what can Mum do?  Well Callum was able to spell words such as - him, make, cook, must, enter and light so I have shown Mum how to build large groups of words using these basic patterns.  As he can spell the syllable chunk 'ter' he should be able to add 'er' to 'light' for example.  This will have an esteem building effect on Callum.  His spelling mistakes demonstrate good knowledge of sounds but poor ability to 'hear the sounds in words'  Examples are crecd for correct, recke for reach, metereal for material, sprise for surprise, sercall for circle.  They are what the specialists call 'phonological alternatives'.  A very good attempt was made at 'explain' ie 'explan'.  This is therefore good news despite the low average score for spelling.

Callum's error with 'reach' suggests he needs some work with 'ch' as he has confused it with 'ck'.

I will keep you posted with Callum's progress as we meet.
So watch this space.

Meanwhile explore the British Dyslexia Association website on this link
http://www.bdastore.org.uk/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=1

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Dyslexia Marking Guidelines

While many universities have their own guidelines for marking the work of dyslexic students, I have been sent on a dyslexia forum the link below which is very comprehensive and goes some way to explain the difficulties faced by students with dyslexia.

Young people with dyslexia should not be put off the idea of going to university as there is a considerable amount of help for them via the Disabled Students' Allowance.  Once the student is diagnosed and his or her needs assessed, they will, if they qualify, be awarded specialist tuition and a wide range of assistive software which will help them to complete essays, dissertations and other projects and complete their course.

The marking guidelines below are typical of those present in other universities.

http://www1.aston.ac.uk/current-students/hub/danu3/staff-resources-info/marking-the-written-work-of-students-with-dyslexia/

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ICT in Education (2) - How to make the most of technology

After my last post about the benefits of children learning to touch type in readiness for Further and Higher Education and even in the world of work, I circulated it to some ex-colleagues in the College where I worked for five years  in the Learning Support Department. 

One ex-colleague friend now works at another college.  She replied and asked permission to use my ICT in Education article in a Staff Training/Development session.  Of course I was delighted, my only request, that she put my blogspot link on the PowerPoint or handout. I say this in case other readers would like to use my material.


Now for more tips for students with dyslexia, with regard to WORD.  I mentioned the use of Shift F7 for a thesaurus.  It is important to have the cursor on the word you are researching and the word has to be the root word.  For example if you want a better word than 'got', you need to type 'get' and then search with Shift F7, if you want a better word than 'requests' which is plural, you need to delete the 's' at the end of the word before searching.  There will be many choices when the thesaurus opens, so it is good to teach about nouns and verbs while doing this, something many students, even the non-dyslexic ones, have never really mastered.

It is important to insert page numbering on any essay.  This may seem unnecessary when you start an essay and only have achieved two pages (around 500 words) of a 3000 word essay.  However, I have lost count of the times a student has presented me with a sheaf of papers from her bag which spill on to the floor and which take the first fifteen minutes of the session to sort into order.  I am a great believer in the use of Footers and Headers during the essay process.  A useful addition to the Footer is the date.  This is something I do with my writing.  This ensures that when you take a look at some sheets of paper, say a chapter you have been working on, you know immediately if this is the most up-to-date version.  I have had students renaming their essay as a number ie 1,2,3, and so on which is not conducive to finding the most up to date version.  Number 1 will remain at the top of the Documents list long after you have reached version 30!  A name in the footer will ensure that any stray pages are identified as yours and the title of the essay will also avoid any mix ups in hard copy files.


Before starting an essay, set up the footer and header information and page numbering.  Then save the document with the name of the essay.  Students will get in a muddle if they name documents, letter or essay.  Give it the title that is on the assignment brief eg Essay Ethics Year 2.  This document name will allow the student to scroll easily to all the documents prefaced 'essay' and then to the current one in progress.  I have seen memory sticks with very intelligent organisation with different folders for the years of study, a folder for general uni information and a folder for personal documents.  Students will have individual needs suited to the course they are studying.


WORD also has a search function - Ctrl F.  This is useful when the document has become lengthy and complex.  I always advise using headings for paragraphs which are linked to the essay brief and which ensure they keep writing to the point of the paragraph and don't go off at a tangent in the middle of a totally unrelated paragraph.  Many tutors will not want headings in the final product but that is no reason not to use them when the essay is under construction.  This use of the search function will ensure that the student can quickly find the necessary point in the essay where they wish to insert, for example, a quote or a definition or some extra information.  This search function is useful if a student has mis-spelt the name of a scholar who is being quoted.  It may be that she/he has spelt it correctly some times and not others.  Using the search function for the incorrect spelling and replacing it with the correct one using Find Next will allow the correct spellings to be skipped and the incorrect ones to be replaced.

My ex-colleague who responded to my blog link has a dyslexic son and has asked questions about assistive software which i will address in a later post.

More about using WORD to enhance student writing in future posts. 

Please comment or ask questions which I will try to address. in later posts

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ICT in education

This is only my third blog and I am learning all the time.  On my second blog I managed to change the settings and set up some labels, sometimes known as tags on internet material so that keywords are picked up in the search engines.

I am prompted to write on the subject of ICT and its important place in education as, when performing a simple search for my own blog, I landed on Diane Brooks' blog (Di's Blog) www.dianebrooks.blogspot.com .  Diane has taught in primary schools and now teaches ICT in a  New Zealand university.  At the moment I don't seem to be able to comment on her article but when I have learnt a little more about blogspot.com I shall indeed be agreeing with her views on how the teaching of technology in schools is not really serving our children's needs in later schooling, GCSE essays, A Level projects and in Higher Education.  More about this later but here is how it all started for me.

Preferring a future with my boyfriend to the pursuit of A Levels and Teacher Training College, I persuaded my mother to let me leave school after only five weeks in the sixth form but, on her insistence, I was enrolled quickly on a Secretarial Course at St Albans College of Further Education.  Amazingly, this is now part of a nearby university and I sometimes wonder what happened to the excellent courses there.  We studied Monday to Friday, 9-5 with one evening finishing after 9pm.  There was much to learn, such as shorthand, typewriting, Law, Accounts, Commerce, Secretarial Duties and Office Practice and those who had no O Level English were steered firmly in the right direction.  We all left at 17+ literate and numerate and yet we were considered the 'drop outs' - those who were not staying on for A Levels and University.  Imagine that these days.  My fondest memory has to be Friday afternoons and typing to music - drills which have stood me in good stead.  Sadly, drilling and rote learning has been considered inappropriate over recent years but I can testify to its results.  After one year I was typing at 60 words per minute and writing shorthand at 130 wpm.  My wonderful FE teacher Enid Lyall told me that I didn't need to forget a career in teaching as, if I did well in the secretarial exams, I could go on to teach those subjects.  I never forgot her words and, as soon as I had achieved my desire for three babies, I enrolled at Mid Herts College in Welwyn Garden City (now part of another university no doubt) on a Teachers' Certificate in Typewriting Course.  Within a few years I had teaching experience and another Teachers' Certificate, this time in Office Practice.

I have my mother to thank for the skills I learnt at St Albans and my subsequent teaching career.  Once my youngest daughter was at school, I taught Secretarial and Business Administration subjects in a college of Further Education, now Uxbridge College www.uxbridge.ac.uk for 19 years.  All students on our courses undertook an intensive Sight and Sound keyboarding program on a daily basis for two weeks.  The keyboarding was then reinforced and developed through daily Typewriting classes, drills from the board and textbook exercises until all demonstrated automaticity in touch typing.  Few students had learnt this skill before, although they would often insist they had 'done' typing at school despite hammering the keyboard with clenched fists and two finger attack.  Once we had reformed the bad habits, we saw our role as extending the breadth of the student's knowledge of English - use of a dictionary was mandatory in my classes, something recalled by an ex-student of mine when we met years later.  Nowhere was this more essential than in audio-typewriting classes where homophone misuse such as hear/here was common.  Of course, eventually, students learnt word processing and the courses began to include spreadsheets and databases.  No doubt they now include social media and hopefully learn the pitfalls as well as the plusses of this use of technology.

For the past eighteen years I have been teaching dyslexic students in Further and Higher Education and also some private pupils from primary and secondary schools both in Middlesex and then here in Dorset after I moved eleven years ago.  I have stressed to both students and parents the need for good keyboarding/touch typing skills.  I am firmly convinced that this is a basic skill which should be taught as pedantically as Literacy and Numeracy.  Playing with the mouse and getting pretty pictures on the screen is just not enough for any pupil.  However, students with dyslexia have difficulty learning, reading, writing and remembering, so, if the skill is acquired early on, it can help with writing essays, coursework, projects and research.  It is one less thing to worry about and no student will ever say they regretted the time it took to acquire the skill.

Essential for the student with dyslexia (try googling 'dyslexia,uk' for more information) is a laptop for their use and their use only.  It is possible to get free assistive technology such as mindmapping programs and voice recognition programs which adapt to the student's own voice - hence the reason they should have their own computer.  There will be more on assistive software in a later post.

For now, there are also free fun touch typing programs such as dance mat  http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/typing/.  This program will record the pupil's progress so that they can work for a set time each day or, say 4-5 times a week.  Each time they log on, the program remembers the stage they were at.  The animations are great for primary schoolchildren.  Even teenagers will love it.  There is also a good touch typing program available on the internet for free download at www.sense-lang.co.uk.  My own favourite and much loved by my grandchildren was one called Type Faster, available at  http://www.portablefreeware.com/?id=650 .  This program does not have the animation that Dance Mat has, but I tested this on a seven year old and a four year old and both demonstrated good concentration and the motivation to 'type like Nanny'.  If this post is ringing bells for you, you need to learn the skill first yourself and be a role model for your dyslexic or non-dyslexic child/teenager.

Accurate touch typing skills are not only needed by dyslexic children and teenagers, they should be learnt by ALL children well before they need the skill for written work.  Only then can they concentrate on the quality of their writing.  If spelling is an issue, they can be encouraged to right click on the 'wiggly red line' to find the correct word.  If the difficulties are serious they should be encouraged to use a voice recognition program for homework and then learn some basic editing skills.  More of this later too.

Meanwhile,  parents, find out if your children are learning to touch type and use a keyboard efficiently.  Do they know that in WORD, Shift F7 is the thesaurus and they can experiment with 'better' words to explain what they want to say?  In Higher Education my experience was such that I never met a student who knew how to use the thesaurus in Word.  I demonstrated it once and they never forgot it so I had to wonder what they had done at school.

If you are a teacher reading this, what is happening in your school?  I would love to hear from you.

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