Summary: Thirty percent or more of the students in your class read poorly. These children cannot read well because a region in the left hemisphere of the brain does not convert symbols to sounds or store written text. They are at all levels of intelligence, yet all are smarter than they appear. Conclusion: You need to teach general education subjects to students without requiring reading. It is the law in Texas. Texas actually has the best collection of laws regarding dyslexia in the country. If schools were following the law, every dyslexic student would be identified early, given reading instruction using an Orton-Gillingham method, and would have received multisensory instruction for all other subjects at all grade levels. Schools would be using technology to mediate dyslexia, and the teachers would be constantly updated on the latest scientific discoveries. In addition to the Texas Dyslexia Handbook, originally published in 1985, the following legislation has been enacted. This list is posted at http://www.dyslegia.com/state-dyslexia-laws/.
Is this the first you have heard of these laws? Unfortunately, even though the laws exist, they are also "unfunded mandates" so schools often do not view them as priorities. However, parents can still hold schools legally accountable. For the sake of the children, schools need to follow these laws. The latest scientific discoveries have completely upended what most educators believe about dyslexia. In the past ten years scientists have been able to actually watch brain activity while students are reading using functional MRIs. In the past, we only had a collection of dyslexia-related symptoms from which to draw conclusions. We were guessing. Now scientists can see what is happening. We don't have to guess anymore. First, scientists at Yale, led by Dr. Sally Shaywitz, discovered that there is a section in the left hemisphere of the brain that does not show activity in dyslexic students when they read. It is the part of the brain that connects symbols to sounds and stores written text. Instead, scientists see activity in the right hemisphere and the frontal lobe. Read about the work they have done at http://dyslexia.yale.edu. Just last year, researchers at MIT and others (John D. E. Gabrieli, MIT's Grover Hermann Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and Cognitive Neuroscience, Fumiko Hoeft and colleagues at the Stanford University School of Medicine; Charles Hulme at York University in the U.K.; and Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli, also at MIT) conducted a study using functional MRIs that took these discoveries a step further (http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/dyslexia-iq-0923.html). In the past, students were only considered for a diagnosis of dyslexia if they had been assessed with higher intelligence. The MIT study disproved this theory. These functional MRIs revealed that all children tested who had trouble reading, regardless of perceived intelligence, were missing the specific required brain activity in the left hemisphere. There is a reason some students have trouble reading, writing, and spelling, and it has nothing to do with intelligence. The section of their brains that connects symbols to sounds and stores written text does not work. It is biological. It is genetic. It has nothing to do with their eyeballs, but is the result of how information is processed in the brain. Dyslexia is completely normal. A dyslexic brain is a normal brain. It does not like reading, but it loves creativity and holistic thinking. On the first page of the Yale website they have posted these words. "Dyslexia is seen as a hidden disability, but it is also a hidden source of great abilities."The earlier studies assigned dyslexia to twenty percent of the student population. Those numbers only included students with perceived higher intelligence. After the MIT research we must calculate that there may be thirty percent or more. To help you understand the difference in brains, please watch this short animation. There are several differences. First, the non-dyslexic person has simple brain activity occurring in the left hemisphere. Words are forming at the middle and are stored in the rear. The dyslexic person's brain has no activity on the left but five times more activity in the other sections of the brain. The dyslexic person's eyes are moving, scanning the text to discover the contextual meaning of unknown words. The dyslexic person's lips are moving because the brain is compensating with the area used for speech. Finally, the non-dyslexic person is reading much faster. This animation illustrates several other common traits of a dyslexic person.
It would be so easy if dyslexia were a cookie-cutter, neat, fit-in-a-box type assessment. Unfortunately, it is not that way at all. While every dyslexic person has the same brain activity (less on the left, and five times more on the right and front), no two dyslexic students are outwardly the same. There are various symptoms, but each individual has his/her own set. While reading, writing, and spelling are always difficult, some students will eventually outwardly appear to read quite well. Others will never read well enough for it to be useful. Often in education, the dyslexic student who appears to read sufficiently well, can be the one at greater risk. The teacher will assume that the child has been cured. But the brain functions are still the same. This child will be a poor speller, read slower, and read less accurately. The Yale and MIT scientists believe that a dyslexic person stores words like pictures, or sight words in the memory area of the brain in the frontal lobe. That is why for some children, they are poor readers for years and then bam - suddenly they start reading books. Over time, they have collected enough of these word pictures in memory for it to be useful. But then . . . they can come across a book that contains too many words and phrases not in picture memory. Reading hurts again. Other dyslexic students will appear to read quite well, but can only read for a very short period of time. When the brain works five times harder to read, it wears you out! Remember that a person who is not dyslexic has a different brain arrangement for reading. Words form phonetically in the left center and the written text is stored in the left rear. It is really a wonderfully efficient system. A great truth each teacher must face is that the child in your room who cannot read, may have the highest IQ. Or they may have a low IQ, and yet that is not the reason why they cannot read. It is a mechanical function and has nothing to do with intelligence. All of these children who do not read well are smarter than they appear. What does this mean for teachers and students? Contrary to some popular educational philosophies, students should learn reading in reading classes, but must not be required to "read-to-learn." Since our schools are so behind in understanding and diagnosing dyslexia, official diagnosis cannot be required for accommodations. After all, what is our goal? Our goal is that all children have the opportunity to learn every subject despite a reading disability. Plus, if you leave these students out, you leave out many of the scientists, engineers, artists, composers, and authors! For example, a good scientist has the ability to imagine, project, and see the big picture. You may know that Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, and Leonardo Di Vinci were all dyslexic. Here is our model. We give students the opportunity to learn by seeing, hearing, touching, doing, smelling, tasting . . . and/or reading. Let the students choose. They know what they need. If reading is easier, they will choose reading. If listening or watching is easier, they will choose video and audio. Our goal is that they learn. We will accommodate their learning styles. Two traditionally favorite activities are terrible for dyslexic students . . . worksheets and conventional cooperative learning projects. When you give dyslexic students worksheets, you could just as well give them blank sheets of paper. They cannot process these in a useful manner. The problem with conventional cooperative learning projects is a bit more complex. While the activity, the experiment, the verbal collaboration is good, there are other elements that are not. If you hand out written instructions to the children, the dyslexic students cannot process your directions. Then, they are behind at the beginning because they do no know what they are supposed to do. In addition to this, dyslexic children do not work well in loud, confusing environments. Their brains are already thinking holistically, creatively engaging sights and sounds. Loud and confusing environments are too much. Think of your dyslexic students as RDCE kids. RDCE is an acronym for Reading Disabled Creatively Enabled. Unfortunately the term "dyslexia" comes with a century of baggage and myths. It is still the common belief that dyslexic people see things backwards while they do not. Confusing left and right is a common symptom, but not every dyslexic person has it. Dyslexia has nothing to do with vision, it is actually auditory, because the brain does not convert symbols to sounds. Conclusion: In education we talk about different learning styles, but seldom implement action. When you let children choose how they get information and communicate information, you have accommodated their learning styles. You will be pleasantly surprized with the results. Please view the following videos for additional information.
| |||||||
| Written by Marilyn Hagle. |