The Education of Dyslexic Children From Childhood to Young Adulthood

The Education of Dyslexic

Children from Childhood

to Young Adulthood

Sally E. Shaywitz, Robin Morris, and Bennett A. Shaywitz

 

This is again a very well-written, clear summary of dyslexia.  The current definition of dyslexia is this:

 

Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurobiological in origin. It is characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and poor spelling and decoding abilities. These difficulties typically result from a deficit in the phonological component of language that is often unexpected in relation to other cognitive abilities and the provision of effective classroom instruction.

 

The authors pay particular attention to the notion of fluency:  in the past, diagnosis and remediation for dyslexia often centered on word-coding ability only, thus missing many struggling readers who had somehow learned to "read words" but were doing so very inefficiently and with low comprehension.  The authors also focus on the neurobiological basis for dyslexia and on the fact that, despite good intelligence, good motivation and good instruction, some people cannot learn to read fluently, because of the way their brains are wired.

 

The authors talked about the importance of early detection of dyslexia, because intervention programs are more effective when they begin earlier.  There is a problem with the current method of diagnosing dyslexia - that is, in finding a significant discrepancy between a child's IQ and his or her reading ability - because one must wait until about Grade 4 to see a significant gap between these two emerge.  Other strategies for earlier detection include programs that offer good quality reading instruction and frequent testing to all children in Grade one, to better find the students who fail to respond to this instruction. 

 

As in the previous paper, the common remedial interventions for dyslexia are frequent, structured programs to teach phonological awareness.   However, since dyslexia is a persistent condition, accomodations must also be made for students with dyslexia.  They must be given the opportunity to learn course content and experience age-appropriate literature  through recorded texts; they must have access to assistive technologies including speech-to-text and text-to-speech software; and they must be given additional time on examinations to fully show their learning.

 

THOUGHTS: 

Good article - lots of repetition from the previous one, though.