Supporting Children with Dyslexia

Hull City Council

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317288787
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Completely revised and updated in light of the new 2014 SEND Code of Practice, this second edition of Supporting Children with Dyslexia provides valuable advice and resources for teachers, TAs and SENCOs supporting pupils on the dyslexic spectrum. This practical resource will help those who are looking for expert guidance and strategies, as well as providing a professional development tool which will encourage outstanding practice at all levels.

Spanning pre-school, primary and secondary teaching, this book covers the key areas to be considered when supporting pupils with dyslexia, including:

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• how to identify a young person with dyslexia
• practical strategies for pre-school, primary and secondary settings
• useful advice to give to parents and carers of children and young people with dyslexia
• useful materials for continual professional development.

Featuring helpful checklists, templates and photocopiable resources, this book provides guidance and practical strategies for identifying and supporting young people with dyslexia that will be of use to teachers, TAs, SENCOs and other educational professionals.

Part I Background information

1 What is dyslexia?

DOI: 10.4324/9781315644363-2

I don’t ‘suffer’ from dyslexia. I live with it and work with it. I suffer from the ignorance of people who think they know what I can and cannot do.

Erica Cook (Mountain Learning Ally member, Learning Systems)

The British Dyslexia Association provides the following information about dyslexia on its website (bdadyslexia.org.uk):

• Dyslexia is a hidden disability thought to affect around 10% of the population, 4% severely.
• Dyslexia is usually hereditary.
• A pupil with dyslexia may mix up letters within words and words within sentences while reading.
• They may have difficulty with spelling words correctly when writing; letter reversals are common.
• Dyslexia is not only about literacy.
• Dyslexia affects the way information is processed, stored and retrieved with problems of memory, speed of processing, time perception, organisation and sequencing.
• Dyslexia can also affect navigating a route, left and right and compass directions.

A video for explaining dyslexia

An excellent short (4.35mins) video clip ‘What is Dyslexia’ by Kelli Sandman-Hurley is available on Youtube (www.youtube.com/watch?v=zafiGBrFkRM). It provides a good explanation about dyslexia and the current neurological advancements in its understanding. It is a useful tool for the SENCO as a refresher for staff or to show parents or an older student with dyslexia.

The DFE definition of dyslexia

Sir Jim Rose produced a report in 2009 called ‘Identifying and Teaching Children and Young People with Dyslexia and Literacy Difficulties’ on the request of the then secretary of state for children, schools and families. The Rose Review’s Expert Advisory Group, which helped produce the report and acceptance of its recommendations by the education minister, achieved many positive outcomes, including a consensus on the working definition of dyslexia:

Dyslexia is a learning difficulty that primarily affects the skills involved in accurate and fluent word reading and spelling.

• Characteristic features of dyslexia are difficulties in phonological awareness, verbal memory and verbal processing speed.
• Dyslexia occurs across the range of intellectual abilities.
• It is best thought of as a continuum, not a distinct category, and there are no clear cut-off points.
• Co-occurring difficulties may be seen in aspects of language, motor co-ordination, mental calculation, concentration and personal organisation, but these are not, by themselves, markers of dyslexia.
• A good indication of the severity and persistence of dyslexic difficulties can be gained by examining how the individual responds or has responded to well-founded intervention.

(Rose Review, 2009)

A brief history of what people have understood dyslexia to be

The history of dyslexia is still being written. The debate, ‘What is Dyslexia?’, is the subject of continued research. It is important to have an understanding of the history of dyslexia, as we are part of it.

It began from a medical deficit perspective in the nineteenth century, transferring to an educational perspective in the late 1970s. It has now come full circle and neurology, psychology and educationalists are collaborating in the current research.

The medical perspective: a pathological condition (the visual theories of dyslexia/acquired dyslexia)

• 1878 Dr Kussmaul, a German neurologist, described patients he was treating as having ‘reading blindness’.
• 1891 Dr Dejerne reported in The Lancet that people who had a reading difficulty had probably suffered a brain injury.
• 1895 Dr Hinshelwood concluded the cause of a reading difficulty was a malfunction of eyesight as a result of a brain defect.
• 1925 Dr Orton proposed an idea that dyslexics had a deficient visual perception of letters, possibly due to a brain malfunction. He called it ‘strepthosymbolia’ (twisted symbols).
• 1936 Gillingham worked with Orton and together with Stillman published a phonic-based, visual, auditory and kinesthetic approach to the teaching of reading. Most dyslexia specialist teachers today use the multi-sensory methods pioneered by this approach. It has its supporters and critics.
• 1971 Lieberman’s research, amongst others, challenged Orton’s theory of dyslexia as a visual problem. He felt the major problem was with phonological processing.

The transition to an educational psychological perspective

• 1978 The Warnock Report into children with SEN stimulated the change that children with specific learning difficulties (SpLD) were no longer considered to be under the jurisdiction of medicine. The role of the educational psychologist began to develop.
• 1979 Frank Vellutino, amongst others, suggested that studies showed that dyslexics had problems with verbal rather than visual functions.
• 1981 The Education Act advocated dyslexia come under the description of specific learning difficulty.
• 1989 Galaburda found that people diagnosed as dyslexic had a superior development of the right hemisphere of the brain. A view that maybe dyslexia was a normal variation of brain development and not a disorder.
• 1994 SEN Code of Practice officially recognised dyslexia for the first time, although it came under the umbrella of specific learning difficulties.
• 1995 dyslexia was recognised under the Disability Discrimination Act.

A neurological basis for dyslexia

• 1996 National Institute of Mental Health team in USA identified regions of the brain that worked differently in people who have dyslexia.
• 1997 SEN Code of Practice mentioned dyslexia as an example of SEN in its own right.
• 2002 Reseachers at Yale University used FMRI technology to show that the brains of children with dyslexia worked differently from their peers during reading tasks.
• 2005 Yale University team identified a gene associated with dyslexia.
• 2007 Researchers at University College London used brain imaging to identify the area of the brain that does not work as effectively in people with dyscalculia.
• 2012 Hornikel and Kraus in the Journal of Neuroscience stated that dyslexia is primarily an auditory disorder that arises from the inability to respond to speech sounds in a consistent manner.
• 2014 Research by Finn et al. at Yale showed that this underlying problem with perception of speech sounds, in turn, affects the development of brain networks that enables a pupil to link a speech sound to the written letter.

Did you know dyslexia is recognised as a disability?

We need to make sure dyslexia is clearly understood and recognised as a disability in the terms of the Equality Act 2010.

Children and Families Minister Edward Timpson, 2012

Schools have a duty to make reasonable adjustments to ensure that those affected by dyslexia are not disadvantaged compared to their peers.

2 What causes dyslexia?

DOI: 10.4324/9781315644363-3

In a few words:

A dyslexic person is predominantly using the right hemisphere of their brain instead of their left to read and spell.

In more detail:

A brain-based problem in the decoding of written language.

The latest research into the causes of dyslexia is saying that the dyslexic brain processes written words differently. There is a greater reliance on the Broca’s area in the left frontal lobe. Strong readers rely more on areas to the back of the left brain close to the Wernicke’s area.

For non-dyslexic readers, this area at the back of the left brain is very active during fluent reading. Words are recognised here at lightning speed.

Dyslexic readers aren’t using these high-powered areas and instead compensate by using the less effective Broca’s area.

Phonological processing impairment theory

We know that dyslexics use different areas of their brains to read. Current research doesn’t yet really explain why the Broca areas or right side of the brain, for example, are less efficient at reading or why dyslexics are using different parts of their brain to accomplish the same function to begin with.

What is known is that the brain regions that dyslexics are using to read are not very good at processing phonemes – the basic sounds of language. Therefore, it is a struggle to make the connection between the phoneme and the grapheme. The individual sounds become ‘sticky’, unable to be broken apart and manipulated easily. This is known as the phonological processing impairment theory (Caylak, 2010).

Wiring of the brain

Dyslexic readers have been found to have strong activity in the right side of their brain. Because of the strength of their right brain, they engage this area while performing language tasks. The right side deals with areas and space and patterns. It doesn’t understand parts of speech, or keep track of letter-order in spelling. It reads words as a line drawing that it has been taught has a meaning. A sketch, not a line-up of sounds.

The right brain knows the drawing represents a watercraft that travels on ...