14% of US adults don’t read well enough to understand a newspaper story written at the 8th grade level or fill out a job application.
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March-April 2010 IDA-UMB Literacy Links
36th Annual Conference 2010
Join IDA-UMB at its 36th Annual Conference, held April 23 & 24 at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul campus!
This year’s special guest and keynote presenter Dr. Maryanne Wolf will speak on “Implications for Dyslexia’s Intervention,” and be on hand to sign copies of her groundbreaking work, Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain.
• 3 All-day workshops
• 3 Keynote Presentations
• 14 Breakout Sessions
• Vendor Exhibits
• Book Signings
• Silent Auction
Link here to download a pdf of our full conference brochure, or to register online.
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Design vs. Dyslexia:
Innovation Promises New Hope for Children with Dyslexia
Science Daily (Jan. 27, 2010)
Reprinted with permission. University of Cincinnati (2010, January 27). Design vs. Dyslexia: Innovation promises new hope for children with dyslexia. ScienceDaily.
Reading and retaining information. That’s the challenge faced by the one in five children who have some form of dyslexia.
Overcoming that challenge could soon become easier for educators and children thanks to pioneering design research from the University of Cincinnati’s internationally ranked College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP).
Renee Seward, UC assistant professor of digital design, presented her innovative electronic project, titled “Reading by Design: Visualizing Phonemic Sound for Dyslexia Readers 9-11 Years Old,” at the Southwest International Reading Association Regional Conference in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on February 5, 2010.
She will likewise preset her research project during the March 2010 International Technology, Education and Development Conference in Valencia, Spain. (In Spain, Seward is scheduled to be a virtual presenter.)
In developing this toolkit to help educators more effectively assist children with dyslexia, Seward has developed an online tool that creatively employs sight, sound and physical movement to increase the reading and retention abilities of children aged 9 to 11 who have dyslexia. (A separate portion of the project employs physical tools and employs touch to aid educators and children.)
The project was inspired by the struggles of a friend’s child to read.
How “Reading by Design” Works
“In my work, said Seward, “I want to deemphasize the 26 letters of the alphabet and emphasize the 44 common sounds of the English language. I do so by helping educators employ children’s senses, from the visual to the kinesthetic.”
The key, she added, is knowing that dyslexia is not rooted in problems with visual perception. It’s rooted in memory. Individuals with dyslexia have difficulty recalling and making a quick connection between a sound and the letter representing that sound.
“The child is able to read the letter ‘b.’ He or she is unable to quickly recall that we associate that symbol with the sound, ‘buh.’ That’s dyslexia in a nutshell.”
So, in the toolkit she is developing, Seward begins with the smallest units of sound and helps children associate them with letter forms. With the touch of a mouse, a teacher working with a child can scroll over the letter “p,” and the “p” will the morph to display common items associated with the “puh” sound: (peach, peppermint, pie, pea, and piano).
The “Reading by Design” toolkit has a number of other activities:
• Sound elements and creative visuals working in concert to reinforce reading retention and recall;
• Common sounds – like the “oooohing” of a crowd following a great basketball play (along with the visual of a basketball player making that play) – depict and reinforce the connections between visual vowel combinations like “oo” and “ew” and their appropriate phonemic sound;
• Horizontal lengthening of words with long vowels to denote that vowel and the silent “e” (in words like “note”). The child can experience the lengthening word with a sweep of the mouse to the right, thus integrating movement into memory;
• Also, when moving the mouse over long vowels, the cursor will not move up or down, only in a horizontal lengthening of the vowel to the right – in order to visualize the phonemic value of that vowel. Again, the rightward sweep of the mouse also incorporates the child’s arm movement into memory formation and retention;
• Silent letters appropriately take on a shadow form or repel the mouse;
• A cursor that moves just like a finger following the text (common to how most children read during their early years).
Testing the Toolkit
Seward likens her project to a parent holding a child’s bike as the child learns to ride. Little by little, the parent is able to forego providing complete support and moves to an occasional steadying hand until, ultimately, the child is riding under his or her own power.
She explained, “This electronic toolkit is a scaffold that can be built upon and then taken away.”
Seward continues developing the project and is in the process of writing a grant application in cooperation with Allison Breit-Smith, UC assistant professor of teacher education, and Beth O’Brien, assistant professor of educational studies, in order to begin user testing.
In developing the project, Seward has worked with the following specialists in order to obtain feedback:
• Susan Colberg, associate professor of visual communication design, University of Alberta;
• Educational psychologist Nilda Cosco, education specialist, North Carolina State University;
• Educational researcher Peggy Coyne, research scientist at the Center for Applied Technology, Boston, Massachusetts;
• Joy Sykes Leonard, doctoral student, Carnegie Mellon University;
• Fletcher Academy, private school in Fletcher, N.C., specializing in teaching dyslexia children and those with ADHD.
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The Reading War is Over
By Lee Baker
“Reading is the greatest gift we can give a child. And now, we have research-based methodology to ensure that all children will learn to read,” explains Mike Savage, Education Coordinator, Forest Hills Elementary School, Eden Prairie.
Savage enthusiastically supported the passage of new legislation requiring candidates for pre-kindergarten and elementary school teachers’ licenses to demonstrate proficiency in comprehensive research-based methods of reading instruction. This methodology consists of five components: phonics, phonemic awareness, fluency, vocabulary and comprehension. Savage explains that classroom test scores increase significantly when students are taught using this sequential approach to literacy.
“Implementing this literacy model means that all teachers will have to check their good ideas at the door,” remarked Savage. “Using this model, teachers have strategies at their fingertips that allow them to customize instructional methods tailored to the needs of each child.”
Savage explained how this literacy model has been working at Forest Hills Elementary. Every student has a 120-minute literacy block that is broken down into three tiers. For the first 30 minutes, all students receive the core classroom instruction. Nobody is pulled out for separate instruction, so all the children are exposed to the same grade level content. The second tier is a 60-minute segment of small group instruction. Students cover the same content that was covered during the first 30-minute tier, but different groups work on that content at varying levels commensurate with the reading level of each group. Students then move to the third tier, a 30-minute class focused on scientifically based reading interventions.
This three-tiered model allows teachers the chance to evaluate the progress of their students every week and act on behalf of students that aren’t making progress. Savage added, “What’s crucial about implementing this research-based model is for teachers to have the time to teach it, and know how to teach it.”
Bringing this research-based instructional methodology into the classroom does more than just help students learn to read. It raises the bar for the expectations teachers have for their students. It’s easy for teachers to put labels on their students, such as skin color or economic class. Too often students coming from backgrounds of poverty are labeled as being underachievers. In turn, teachers maintain low expectations for these students. The danger of labels is that they perpetuate underachievement. This new model doesn’t allow a child’s background to hold them back.
Savage started teaching at an elementary school on the north side of Minneapolis. He became a teacher because of his love for children. Savage wanted to provide a caring and nurturing classroom environment for children where they would find success and excitement about learning.
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Dyslexia: A Brief for Educators, Parents, and Legislators in Florida
The following is an excerpt of a technical report authored by Joseph K. Torgesen, Barbara R. Foorman, and Richard K. Wagner of the Florida Center for Reading Research. Concluding comments inform an approach to RTI intended for the State of Florida. Full report can be downloaded in pdf here.
Purpose
Dyslexia is a term that has been applied since the early part of the 20th Century to many students with reading difficulties. The term comes from medicine, but its broadest application is within education. Many educators, however, remain confused about the term in spite of the fact that major advances in our understanding of dyslexia have been made through scientific research over the past 40 years. The purpose of this technical assistance paper is to briefly describe what is currently known about dyslexia, focusing particularly on methods of early identification, prevention, and remedial instruction.
What is Dyslexia?
The most widely accepted current definition of dyslexia is the following:
Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurological in origin. It is
characterized by difficulties with accurate and / or fluent word recognition and by
poor spelling and decoding abilities. These difficulties typically result from a deficit
in the phonological component of language that is often unexpected in relation to
other cognitive abilities and the provision of effective classroom instruction.
Secondary consequences may include problems in reading comprehension and
reduced reading experience that can impede growth of vocabulary and background
knowledge.
This definition is the one used by the National Institutes of Child Health and Human Development which has sponsored the majority of recent research on dyslexia, and it was also adopted by the Board of the International Dyslexia Association in 2002. The individual elements of this definition will be discussed in turn.
Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurological in origin. Dyslexia is a term used to refer to a specific type of learning disability. It is important to acknowledge that students may struggle in learning to read for many reasons, including lack of motivation and interest, weak preparation from the pre-school home environment, weak English language skills, or low general intellectual ability (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). In fact, the family and socio-cultural conditions associated with poverty actually contribute to a broader and more pervasive array of reading difficulties in school-aged children than do the neuro-biological conditions associated with dyslexia. Students with dyslexia represent a subgroup of all the students in school who experience difficulties learning to read. The primary evidence that students with dyslexia have a problem that is inherent, and not the sole result of poor teaching or lack of experience, comes from twin studies showing that dyslexia is substantially heritable (Olson & Gayan, 2001), and from brain imagery studies showing differences in the way the brains of dyslexic students function (Shaywitz, 2003).
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Upcoming Events
PACER Workshop Series
Special Education: What Do I Need to Know?
March 18, 2010
6:30 to 8:30 p.m.
PACER Center
Download the PACER brochure here, or register online through PACER here.
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Product Pointer
WordSift Highlights Key Language in Text
Here’s a free, online tool from Stanford University that “sifts” through text, summarizes and pinpoints main ideas, provides visual representations of the main themes and provides related vocabulary with which students may otherwise struggle.
WordSift automatically ties in with Thinkmap’s Visual Thesaurus and Google images (instant mindmapping images for visual learners and those with working memory issues) that represent its concepts. This tool is an amazing visual springboard for learners who would otherwise be overwhelmed trying to understand the broader concepts of content. View a quick video tour of WordSift at www.wordsift.com/site/videotour/newFeat.
Leaving Johnny Behind: Overcoming Barriers to Literacy and Reclaiming At-Risk Readers
The 1955 ground-breaking report Why Johnny Can’t Read spawned a massive research effort designed to end the reading wars and bring legitimacy and coherence to classroom practice. But scientific evidence replicated over five decades has gone largely unheeded.
Leaving Johnny Behind: Overcoming Barriers to Literacy and Reclaiming At-Risk Readers by 35-year veteran teacher and administrator Anthony Pedriana, takes over where Why Johnny Can’t Read left off, outlining the discrepancies between reading ideology and reading science and urging a unity of purpose among reading practitioners. Pedriana’s painstaking research highlights the history of the disparate methods of literacy acquisition, and offers an explanation for why current reading remediation in our schools leaves “Johnny” behind. A must-read for educators, parents, and literacy advocates. Visit www.leavingjohnnybehind.com to order your copy.
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