[senco-forum] [SENco-forum] [SENco-forum] [SENco-forum]dyslexia

I don't think my grandson when aged 2 and half taught himself that - he
thought the big yellow m stood for chips - and we had to pass 5 of them
between his home and ours!

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Judith Stansfield
Farm Cottage, 24 East Road, Melsonby,Richmond DL10 5NF
http://stass.web.onyxnet.co.uk  
01325 718139   07990572365
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-----Original Message-----
From: senco-forum-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk
[mailto:senco-forum-bounces at lists.becta.org.uk] On Behalf Of
SEN at tringham.net
Sent: 09 March 2008 10:13
To: Becta Senco
Subject: Re: [senco-forum] [SENco-forum] [SENco-forum]
[SENco-forum]dyslexia - screening/testing/assessment

Good parents don't teach that M=McDonalds that is just what normal
children pick up.

 They are inquisitive beings and when they hear a sound and see the same
symbol repeatedly (hence the McDonalds!) they usually, if all is working
normally, put these together.  M=McDonalds   and eventually that M='mmm'
and that is the same sound as Mum,  money,  mug,  mat,  etc.,

 Thus if someone was being very unkind they could teach that the sound
'ah'
looks like this '$',    'n'=* and 'd'= %    so the word that we know as
'and' will to them looks like '$*%' although the word sound remains the
same.

I have seen a child with autism & a phenomenal memory  able to spell
anything with no phonics.  He has the word read to him then he uses
letter
names R-O-V-E-R = rover   S-H-A-R-O-N- =Sharon and one correction is all
he
needs to 'bank' a new word.  This is not normal and he reads anything at
all with little or no understanding.

Theorists - love them or hate them someone has to go out on a limb, make
a statement and then try to justify it.  This is fine as long as having
taught the spider to move left or right on command that we do not
postulate that spiders become deaf when their legs are removed!

It is postulated that some with dyslexia or more likely the auditory
processing aspect of this have an inbuilt delay - thus when they see a
letter and hear a sound it is not matched exactly  so  'pans'   is
perceived
one letter late     - p  is ignored     'a' seems to make the sound 'p'
and
'n' seems to make the sound  'a' and  's' sounds like 'n'.   This would
be
easy to see if the ph/gr that they were perceiving were always the same,
like my $*% model, but the next word they see is :    'span' which using
their new code sounds like ' n - pa'   Very confusing.

Now this is where synthetic phonics might help to circumnavigate this
problem  - if you could blindfold a child from birth until they were
taught
phonics!   Instead SP has to re-teach some children with learning
difficulties in the same way as it is re-teaching those for whom English
is not a first language be they Chinese, Indian or Eastern European, in
just the same way as dyslexia tutors teach initially if that is what is
needed. These students all need re-coding and take varying lengths of
time to grasp the concept as seen by the Ruth Miskin TV show.

However, some, and usually the ones with dyslexia go on to need 1:1
help. Julie might argue that this happens in her system without a label
- Wave 1/Wave 2 and then at the end of Wave 3 some 1:1 with.........a
TA?  Most LA's are resistant to the idea of using 'specialist' teachers.
These are not magic they just have a lot of strategies up their sleeves
and because they have been using both formative + summative assessment
much longer than most class teachers they can find the route to
individual success much quicker.

Eventually I hope all teachers have this skill, but until then those
with dyslexia find themselves left high and dry until Wave 3 when their
self-confidence is shot to pieces and they have no love of learning -
their primary reason for being placed in a school. As while they may
have grasped the 44 phonemes they cannot manipulate them the same way
that others can. My daughter could not blend. She was taught clean
phonemes but still used the 'schwa' to make cat/kerater/catter.
Synthetic phonics is great in that it does something similar to what
dyslexia tutors have always done.  There is a great downloadable chart
here http://www.syntheticphonics.com/ showing not only the 44 simple
sounds, but explains the more complex variation similar to the DI or
other dyslexia based sound unit teaching lists.  In the end blends were
offered to my daughter as digraph units treating 'bl' etc in the same
way as 'ch' ie 2 letters to make one sound - problem gone. The same is
done for trigraph - 'dle'  or for 'tion/shun'.  It is not possible to
use
left to right SP but a combination of SP/AP   for words such as
'c-a-n -dle.'

As for whole words they have to be taught as whole words with supports
such as colour or pictograms or whatever it take to make it stick
otherwise how do you deal with saw/was without having explain spelling
rules.  As my daughter says she knows all the complex variations &
spelling rules just as she knows all her punctuation marks -she just
doesn't remember which one goes where.  This is what is lacking for some
when for others these irregular words or spelling rules just 'are'.
They never have to be consciously learned.  They just heard them, saw
them and used them - no phonics involved. As you say both whole words
and phonics have a place. Its just that I leave room for using whole
word, SP & AP in whatever way the child needs to learn

Sharon

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