Journey into Dyslexia

Journey into Dyslexia

I have been waiting for this documentary to come out on DVD. I just purchased it and can't wait to see it.

JOURNEY INTO DYSLEXIA presents profiles of dyslexic students and adults who share their experiences of struggling in school and then succeeding in life. Academy-Award winning filmmakers Alan and Susan Raymond examine the complexities of this differently structured brain and debunk the myths and misperceptions about dyslexia.

Dyslexia is a specific leaning disability that is neurobiological in origin and typically manifests through difficulty in reading, writing, spelling and math. It has nothing to do with intelligence, birth defects, or a mental illness of any kind, the home environment, level of education or economic status.

Dyslexia persists throughout one's lifetime and is prevalent in every culture in the world. In the U.S. it affects as much as 10% of the population.

Surprisingly, however, Journey into Dyslexia reveals that many adult professionals who once struggled to learn in school consider their dyslexia a unique gift and the defining reason behind their success.

For more info: http://videoverite.tv/pages/film-JID-about.html

New type face for Dyslexia

A team from the University of Twente, in the Netherlands, has developed a new 'Dyslexie' typeface, designed to help dyslexic people read more easily.

It's based on the notion that of the 26 letters in the standard Latin-based alphabet, as used in English, many of the letters look similar - such as v/w, i/j and m/n - thus people with dyslexia often confuse these letters. So by creating a new typeface where the differences in these letters are emphasized, it was found that dyslexic people made fewer errors.

Video (no audio):
http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2011/06/30/dyslexie-a-typeface-for-dyslexics/

Project website (in English):
http://www.studiostudio.nl/en/project-dyslexie/

Acting for Kids with Disabilities

http://angelsonstage.org/index.html

I was just introduced to this group that does productions with kids with disabilities. What a wonderful experience.

Assistive Technology

We recently purchased an assistive technology for learning disabilities: Kurzweil.

http://www.kurzweiledu.com/kurz3000.aspx

It is a cool software that reads what you wrote back to you so you can hear your mistakes. It reads your text books while highlighting th text and allows you to highlight and take notes in the program while you are reading, then push a button to have the highlighted areas turn into a study guide. There is a lot you can do with it to help with learning. We are just beginning to use it but I wanted to highlight it as a potential resource. It can be used from elementary school thru college.

Mom vs Monkey

Last nite I was helping my 10 year old daughter get herself organized for upcoming practice spelling tests and real spelling tests. Because of her dyslexia she has this very convoluted, though logical way of taking spelling tests: she groups the words together so there is some kind of logic to them.

So I was writing up templates for the spelling tests. They looked something like this:

-ch
1.
2.
3.
4.

known words
1.
2.
3.
4.

-ic
1.
2.
3.

glued sounds
1.
2.
3.
4.

Weird words
1.
2.
3.
4.

Each of the titles is color coded, so I had to write the template and then color code properly. Then I had to put a box around "weird". And that is were it all fell apart. On one of the templates, I forgot to put a box around "weird". My daughter took one look at it and said to me, "I should have hired a monkey"!

I cracked up! She was totally slamming her mother, who has an MBA!

For a non-dylexic, I was doing the best I could!!!!!

Math Issues

Kids with dyslexia can have a lot of trouble with rote math facts. No one ever told me this. All I ever heard about are reading and writing issues. But it makes perfect sense....why would random numbers make any more sense than random letters.

So that hard stuff is multiplication tables, adding and subtracting facts, etc.

The easy part is word problems because there is logic and sense around them!

This is a skill

Knowing that you are overwhelmed and need a break IS A SKILL!

When your child comes to you and says, "I am overwhelmed and I need a day off of school", then listen to them!

In 20 years, it is not going to matter that they had a day off of school. Give them the time they need to regroup and start over the next day.