Dyslexia

There has been much speculation and discussion about the idea that people with dyslexia seem to have particular strengths in areas of the brain responsible for perceptual reasoning or visual spatial tasks. Visual spatial tasks or visuospatial processing refers to strengths in tasks that are based on the ability to work with pictures not words. Strengths in visual spatial tasks in the everyday world translates to the ability to understand maps, make origami, figure out puzzles, assemble things, read graphs of data, build complex structures with Legos, make model airplanes, excel at woodworking, draw, direct a school play, make creative videos, [...]

When a child is diagnosed with dyslexia, parents often want to know what the road to reading and spelling success will look like.  While this road varies from child to child, there are certain landmarks that characterize the journey.  These include initial success with word attack which leads to improvement in automatic word recognition and eventually improvement in spelling.  The following case study describes one child and her experience.** Karen’s mother Anna came to Commonwealth Learning Center when Karen was in the middle of second grade.  Karen’s speech was remarkable for phoneme reversals – She said the word breakfast as bress-ket, the word animal as aminal, [...]

Many of the people who we consider as changing the course of history for the better were dyslexic. These people were not only able to think outside of the box, but they had the ability to shatter the limitations of the current thinking of their day. They were visionaries who gave birth to ideas that have impacted history in remarkable ways. These revolutionary thinkers are not limited to one area of pursuit, but have contributed to the world in all areas. They were inventors & scientists, political leaders, writers & journalists, filmmakers, actors & entertainers, athletes, artists, designers, architects, lawmakers, military [...]

Dyslexic second grader Olivia is learning to read and spell words with the digraph ch.  Her learning center teacher asks Olivia to trace the letters ch with her fingers while naming them. She teaches Olivia the key word chin and the sound /ch/.  Throughout her reading lesson, Olivia works with this new sound: she points to and reads ch words in isolation and in sentences, selects pictures that begin with /ch/, and writes dictated words with the target sound on dotted lined paper.  When she spells a dictated word, Olivia segments the sounds in the word with plastic chips and then names the letters while writing them.  Olivia’s [...]

The continuing research into brain physiology and the connection to dyslexia is providing more answers in order to understand what dyslexia is, how we can diagnose it, how it is related to language and to reading, and the remediation that works. Dyslexia is related to the susceptibility of some genes to develop differently during fetal development which is the biological condition of dyslexia. Children with dyslexia often show symptoms of other neurobiological conditions, including ADHD.  The use of cutting edge technology, including fMRI’s and scans, helps identify the genetic markers of dyslexia and gives us the opportunity for earlier interventions. Dyslexia is not related [...]

Shane is a very bright fourth grader who has a strong vocabulary and enjoys when his parents read to him.  He is creative, artistic, and loves to build complicated structures with Legos. Mathematics comes easily to him, particularly geometry.  He loves social studies and science particularly when it involves hands-on activities, but Shane struggles to read and spell basic words.  Shane has dyslexia. October is National Dyslexia Awareness Month and since at least 1 in 10 people has symptoms of dyslexia, it’s important to know the facts. Let’s start out with the official definition and then unpack the meaning. The International [...]