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Posts by Emma

A lifeline for dyslexic reading help?

A new toolkit of reading books is making a difference to how dyslexic children learn to read, and recently released research into the brain may be showing why it is succeeding to such a great extent.

Dyslexia is a condition that remains shrouded in mystery, and yet neuroscientists are continuing to make small progressive steps to understand these differences in the brain.

Dr Laurie Glezer, at the Georgetown University Medical Centre has been leading a research project into how the brain processes words. When we read, our brains are instantly able to recognise words because we have stored them in a ‘visual dictionary’, and one camp of neuroscientists believes that we also pick up the sound of the word (phonology) at the same time.

However, Dr Glezer’s teams have been monitoring brain activity whilst the reading activity takes place, and their findings clearly suggest that all we use is the visual information of a word and not the sounds. These findings could help in understanding and treating dyslexia.

Emma Plackett and Helena Rogers of Reading Revival Ltd have developed a reading toolkit that they claim has consistently helped dyslexic children learn to read when everything else schools had used had failed. Interestingly, it does not rely on a phonics approach, but encourages children to build a ‘visual dictionary’ of words.

This is achieved with carefully crafted reading books for children, blending plenty of practice with words already learned with a carefully managed sprinkling of new words to increase reading confidence. Not only that, but they have consistently show that a child with reading difficulties can reach a reading age of no ability to that of approximately a seven year old in around one to two terms.

This new research is now shedding light on why it is essential to take an open-minded approach when deciding how to help a child to reading fluency. If this simple toolkit can make such a difference using a whole word methodology, and if it maximises the brain’s natural ability, we should be embracing any way that helps children achieve their learning potential.

Emma Plackett

Time for a truce

The whole word versus phonics debate over the best way to teach a child to read has raged for many years now. However, the one thing we do all agree on is that we want children to learn as confidently and enjoyably as possible, so why don’t we lay down our weapons and collaborate?

I’ll admit this sounds like a naïve dream. On one side we have those who passionately advocate a phonics based approach, breaking down the words into sounds, teaching these and once the child has learned the sounds, constructing words using these phonics building blocks.

In the other corner we have those who insist that a whole word approach is most effective, teaching children to recognise words by sight, because many English words don’t follow phonetic rules. We snipe at each other, citing examples of when our preferred method has triumphed as evidence to why the other method should not be used.

And never the twain shall meet.

But what if we did meet in the middle? Let’s start with what we know. We’ve all got examples of when our method works, so it stands to reason that there must be merit in both the methods. Also, when you look at it, both methods aren’t exactly poles apart because they both require children to memorise chunks of letters, albeit in sound chunks or word chunks.

So why can’t we be allies? If our method works with a child, then great. If the child doesn’t respond in the way we’d hope, rather than do more of the same, why don’t we test-drive another method? We don’t have to fight exclusively for one side.

Let’s pride ourselves on being experts in teaching children to read, and not confine ourselves and our children to one camp or another.

Just think how far we could move literacy forward with all the tools available at our disposal. I’m game if you are?

A sample blog entry

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