Dyslexia Included

A Whole School Approach

Michael Thomson

• Publisher: David Fulton Publishers
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134005413
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Bildung Allgemein

This practical book provides teachers with techniques and suggestions to help dyslexic pupils. Written by a team of experienced practitioners who work in a specialist school, it offers clear guidance and tried and tested strategies to help those who need support in this area.

The book addresses reading and spelling difficulties and also other aspects of pupils' learning difficulties, including: accessing the curriculum; dyspraxia and motor development problems; learning mathematics; the use of ICT; developing phonological coding; and understanding dyslexics' behaviour.

Teachers and teaching assistants working in specialist and mainstream primary and secondary schools should find the book useful. It is also relevant to those doing specialist courses in dyslexia.

1 Continents and valves: an evidence-based approach to dyslexia

Marian McCormick

Marian sees her role as ‘unplugging’ the phonology of our children. This chapter starts off with an overview of some important theoretical approaches relating speech to phonological (sound) coding and written language. She then describes an approach to observation, assessment and remediation for those severe ‘non-starting’ dyslexics, who need help in basic sound-symbol associations. The focus is on the beginning stages and having the most theoretical material, makes this a natural first chapter. The title ‘Continents and valves’ refers to an East Court child's version of ‘consonants and vowels’.

Spelling in alphabetic scripts essentially means representing speech sounds. Thus spelling is visible phonology.

(Frith 1980)

Have you ever looked at a child's draft written work and felt your stomach lurch as you see in front of you evidence of seemingly undigested spelling rules and word lists? Have you felt despair mount as you examine spellings taught on numerous occasions or corrected repeatedly over months? Experienced a rising panic as you become gradually aware that the spelling errors that you had hoped would lessen as the child developed are not only still present, but show little sign of improvement despite your concerted efforts?

Dyslexic children can demonstrate a wide range of spelling patterns within the space of one piece of work. These can range from complex words correctly spelt to spellings that are interpretable but creative; to indistinguishable words or ‘small’ words which have been taught many times, but can still be difficult to decipher in the context of an essay.

Looking at children's spellings can shed light on:

• what they understand about how the sounds of their language work;

• which sounds they consider to be similar to one another, and which sounds they consider to be different;

• how they build sounds into larger units such as syllables and words;

• • how many sounds they can hear in a word;

• which sorts of sounds or combinations of sounds they will not be able to spell because they do not recognise them as individual units.

This chapter is aimed at teachers who have children whose difficulties with early literacy development are persistent or pronounced; who do not respond to the techniques and materials that have been proven to be effective with large numbers of other children; and who appear to be losing both ground and confidence. It does not pretend to offer a failsafe solution, but shares a practical approach that has been tried and tested in the classroom with some of our most severe dyslexics.

Brief theoretical background

One of the most important underlying explanations (of dyslexia) … is that there is a linguistic problem, in particular a phonological weakness, that impairs the process of learning to read and spell … an impairment to a phonological processing system that is not dedicated to reading or spelling tasks per se, but is used in all forms of phonological tasks … Some of the most characteristic indicators of phonological problems are the following:

• problems in segmenting words into phonemes

• problems in keeping linguistic material (strings of sounds or letters) in short-term memory

• problems in repeating back long non-words

• problems in reading and writing even short non-words.

(Lundberg and Hoien 2001)

1. Literacy and speech

Although the typical dyslexic can ‘talk’, there exists a strong relationship between children's acquisition of literacy and their phonological or sound processing skills. Children with literacy problems often have difficulties with speech and language development. In some children these difficulties are easy to spot, as their words can be difficult to understand, especially in conversation. In others, the signs are less distinct, becoming obvious only when the child tries to say a long or unfamiliar word. For a few, the underlying difficulties with language processing only become evident when they need to try to find a particular word to express an idea, recall the name of a person or object, or become confused about the meanings of words that sound very similar.

Children with speech and language difficulties often experience problems with learning to read and spell; the difficulties in their speech and language are frequently reflected or reproduced in their reading and spelling attempts; or become evident as they try to understand the written word.

Research has consistently found a high degree of correlation between these two sets of skills.

The high rate of co-occurrence for speech, language and literacy problems arises from the fact that each have their roots in the same speech processing system; established to deal with the demands of the spoken language system, it is later exploited to support the acquisition of literacy skills.

(Stackhouse and Wells 1997)

2. Speech and phonological processing

The speech processing system forms part of the language centres of the brain. It is a general term, which refers to all the skills included in understanding and producing speech. It is primarily involved in the development of spoken language, and is only later used to support the acquisition of literacy skills.

Phonological processing skills are part of the larger speech processing system. They are involved in the identification, recognition, analysis and production of speech sounds – picking up small but significant differences between words; categorising, sorting and sequencing them for understanding, storage and use; setting up phonological representations in the mind. The phonological system is built around the development of sounds (phonemes) and the relationships between them.

There are two basic relationships: sequential and contrastive.

Sequential relationships are those that involve the left-right organisation of sounds. Sequences of letters have different meanings when organised in different sequential relationship to one another: for example apt, tap, pat; stop, post, tops; shelf, flesh.

Contrastive relationships are those in which the child substitutes sounds which he views as having similar features:

or

f-in instead of th-in,

g-oat instead of c-oat.

These relationships are important for both speech and spelling as the majority of spelling errors will reflect problems in one or other of these basic concepts, and it is therefore a useful means by which to categorise difficulties.

3. Phonological processing skills and early literacy development

The acquisition of literacy skills makes different demands on the child's processing skills at different points of the developmental progression. At each critical stage the child must bring specialised resources to the learning situation if the development of literacy is to proceed. If the child does not, for whatever reason, have access to these resources, they will be at risk of compromising their progress to the next developmental stage, or being able to learn the skills inherent in that developmental stage.

Phonological processing skills are seen as cognitive prerequisites – specialised resources or essential skills – for the successful development of skilled reading and spelling. They act as a bridge between speech sounds and letters.

Phonological processing skills are characteristically weak in dyslexic ch...