[senco-forum] Developing listening skills in secondary pupils

When I worked with severely dyslexic children the dyslexic resource base

Dictation was the one thing that worked for a severely dyslexic student that 
I taught.  First of all we used Acceleread Accelewrite which raised his 
nonword score from 1st to 24th percentile then we did dictations 3x weekly 
with more from Mum at home, using text to speech software.  The previous 
year we had followed the standard dyslexia intervention but come the 
Septmeber my student had forgotten most of what he had learned.  Practise of 
the connection between speech and print through dictatiosn led to him 
becoming a reader.

Perhaps it depends how you pre-teach basic skills, then use dictation? 
Dictation for the purpose of learning to read/spell, with the right tools, 
can be very helpful.  Dictation for note-taking and dissemination of 
information at secondary school is probably another matter.

Philippa

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <Olanys at aol.com>
To: <senco-forum at lists.becta.org.uk>
Sent: Thursday, August 17, 2006 8:13 PM
Subject: Re: [senco-forum] Developing listening skills in secondary pupils

> When I worked with severely dyslexic children the dyslexic  resource base
> teacher informed the staff that these children were not to  take down 
> dictation
> under any circumstances - it is a nightmare for them and a  futile 
> exercise
> when pre-printed information sheets can so easily be provided  with very 
> little
> extra effort by teachers.
>
> Taking down dictation involves a myriad of skills and stages, many of 
> which
> are extemely difficult for pupils with SpLD and for some impossible and 
> very
> distressing...not to mention unnecessary. The same applies to the awful 
> time
> consuming task of copying from textbooks in these days of scanners and
> printers.
>
>
> Training  children who struggle to do so is a cruel waste of time and 
> effort
> for all  involved. I also think exercises like this are an unnecessary 
> waste
> of time  after a long and arduous day trying to cope at school and endure
> homework.
>
>
>
> Best wishes,
> Aly
>
> Chair Auditory  Processing Disorder in the UK/APDUK
> www.lacewingmultimedia.com/APD.htm
> www.apduk.org
>
>
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