To mark Dyslexia Awareness Month, Newsmakers’ education correspondent offers some reflections on the struggles of the one-in-five people living with the widely misunderstood learning disability.
Ms Rae, If only it were that simple.!!!! The act of learning to read is complex and nobody really know exactly what the secret is. Parents who read regulary and often to kids DO have more successful readers. BUT it is no guarantee. If there were a so-called "science of reading," can anyone think teachers/educators wouldn't have latched onto it? The battle between the whole word method vs sounding the word out - letter by letter has gone out since public school began. Some languages are far easier to learn to read in, for example, Spanish where the letters don't have a variety of sounds, i.e. an A always sounds the same, neither long, short, nor in between. English is among the most difficult sound to symbol alphabets. Just look at the silent letter in English, like the H. We don't hear THE H in the word FIGHT, AND WE DON'T HEAR THE LETTER G either. Our own word, English has a soft S vs the usual hard S. Complicated indeed. So sounding words out is only one of the many techniques a good teacher educator uses. Your examples of these super-stars as victims of dislexia, would be absurd if it weren't so counter-intuitive. All of these people discovefed that they had other talents that were less dependent on reading and more dependent on visualization, on gifted motor activity, on hand-eye coordination, on memorization. As a school psychologist with LAUSD, I encouraged parents to please spend as much time on your child's strengths as on his weaknesses. I say HIS deliberately bc boys are far more prone to reading difficulties. Don't ask me why? I wonder to this day why Jon read less well than his little sister. YOU are right Ms Rae, that SPECIFIC LEARNING DISABILITY was devastating to my little neighbor, but with a lot of support and that means more than tedious "sounding out" practice, Jon did learn to read, It never became his favorite subject, but he loved math while his little sister was just OK in arithmetic. Also look up the original meaning of the word dislexia. It was a medical term for stroke victims who'once did read, but could no longer due to the damage to the brain. Children don't have dislexia, they have specific reading learning disabilities.
Ms Rae, If only it were that simple.!!!! The act of learning to read is complex and nobody really know exactly what the secret is. Parents who read regulary and often to kids DO have more successful readers. BUT it is no guarantee. If there were a so-called "science of reading," can anyone think teachers/educators wouldn't have latched onto it? The battle between the whole word method vs sounding the word out - letter by letter has gone out since public school began. Some languages are far easier to learn to read in, for example, Spanish where the letters don't have a variety of sounds, i.e. an A always sounds the same, neither long, short, nor in between. English is among the most difficult sound to symbol alphabets. Just look at the silent letter in English, like the H. We don't hear THE H in the word FIGHT, AND WE DON'T HEAR THE LETTER G either. Our own word, English has a soft S vs the usual hard S. Complicated indeed. So sounding words out is only one of the many techniques a good teacher educator uses. Your examples of these super-stars as victims of dislexia, would be absurd if it weren't so counter-intuitive. All of these people discovefed that they had other talents that were less dependent on reading and more dependent on visualization, on gifted motor activity, on hand-eye coordination, on memorization. As a school psychologist with LAUSD, I encouraged parents to please spend as much time on your child's strengths as on his weaknesses. I say HIS deliberately bc boys are far more prone to reading difficulties. Don't ask me why? I wonder to this day why Jon read less well than his little sister. YOU are right Ms Rae, that SPECIFIC LEARNING DISABILITY was devastating to my little neighbor, but with a lot of support and that means more than tedious "sounding out" practice, Jon did learn to read, It never became his favorite subject, but he loved math while his little sister was just OK in arithmetic. Also look up the original meaning of the word dislexia. It was a medical term for stroke victims who'once did read, but could no longer due to the damage to the brain. Children don't have dislexia, they have specific reading learning disabilities.
I am a proud dyslexic and look forward to tomorrow’s exhibition, thank you Cheri and Monie!