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Dear Guild member,
Back issues of The Dyslexia Review have been added to the Guild members web portal. The Review started out in 1969 as ‘The North Surrey Dyslexic Society Review” and offers great historical insight into how far the subject of dyslexia has come as well as Dyslexia Action as a charitable organisation. There are some great articles in the back issues on such subjects as working memory, rapid auditory processing, executive functioning and bilingualism. To help you navigate around, I have produced indexes so you should be able to find what you need but if not please contact guild@dyslexiaaction.org.uk
Talking of historical archives, those of you who attended the Dyslexia Guild conference in June may have heard Dr Robert Evans speak about “The Dyslexia Project: Introducing a new project in the History of Dyslexia”. Maggie Snowling is involved with this project to map the history of dyslexia which is based at St John’s College, Oxford. If you think you may have some valuable resources or suggestions for the archive, please fill out the survey here
You can watch Dr Evan’s and other conference presentations here |
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Training courses
Guild members can now get a £30 discount on our Professional Practice Award for Specialist Assessors. This Level 7 Continuing Professional Practice award is designed to enable specialist assessors and teachers to improve their professional practice and further explore the assessment and teaching intervention processes in depth.
Each of the three units features theoretical input, a series of practical activities and a reflective element to drive practitioners to a constructive self-evaluation of their own professional practice. If you would prefer to book the individual units within the award you can still get a £10 discount on each one. Just remember to log in before you apply and the discount will be applied automatically. Entry dates are available throughout the year.
Click here for course information and how to apply
Exam Access Arrangements
Qualified specialist assessors are eligible for this course which renews best practice in Access Arrangements and filling out Form 8’s? The Course also provides and update on the latest regulations from JCQ for 2016-2017. Dyslexia Guild members get a discount on our EAA Form 8 course and booking is now available for the course starting 21 September. We also offer a new online course for support staff who assist professional staff with Exam Access Arrangements.
Further start dates are offered in November, January and March, more details here
Postgraduate course modules starting in January 2017
For those interested in becoming a specialist teacher or specialist assessor at Level 7, applications are now open for the January 2017 start date (applications close beginning of November).
For more details see here
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Five million adults lack basic literacy and numeracy skills
 They lack basic reading, writing and numeracy skills essential to everyday life according to analysis for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. The Foundation said the figures painted a troubling picture of people being let down by the education system or left behind in the modern economy, with little opportunity to improve their skills. It comes ahead of their strategy to solve UK poverty, which will be published next month.
More on this story here:
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Harry Potter and the Cursed Child adapted to help readers with dyslexia
In September, publisher W.F. Howes, will publish an edition of the book for dyslexic readers. It will be published using specialist fonts and paper, with a suitable layout and glossary, so all readers can enjoy the book. The Dyslexic Readers’ Edition of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child features blue text printed on a beige background, slightly thicker paper, larger letters, wider margins and a simple sans-serif font throughout. Research shows that this format is less distracting for those with the condition. A glossary that spells characters’ names and wizarding terms phonetically is included for readers who might be discouraged by unfamiliar words.
More on this story here |
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Children’s author Liz Pinchon used her dyslexia as inspiration in her Tom Gates books
All the Tom Gates series of books – the latest, Super Good Skills (Almost), is set during the school holidays – contain space for doodling and games, plus places to comment and useful advice (like how to trick your sister into thinking you haven’t eaten the last Caramel Wafer biscuit). More than just a story, these books are as actively engaging as possible. No wonder teachers, parents and children are in love with them. “I didn’t know I was dyslexic at school, but I remember being a year behind,” says Pichon.
A turning point was when an American friend of her mother sent a humorous book called The Bad Speller. “My work had always been covered in red pen – my spelling is shocking but that cheered me up. It wasn’t that I didn’t like books. I loved them. I just took longer to read than anyone else.” Pichon admits that she could never have planned to create a series like Tom Gates. “I just kept thinking, if I was that age, what would I have liked to read? “When you think back to your own childhood, it’s worth remembering your memories aren’t childish. They are of things that were very important to you. That’s what I draw from.”
For more on this story click here |
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Sheikh Hamad opens dyslexia clinic in Dubai
From the age of nine, Sheikh Hamad was taught at Mark College Somerset in the UK, a specialist school for children with learning difficulties. He spent 19 years in Britain but when he returned to the UAE he realised that there were still many stigmas attached to dyslexia in this country, with many people mistaking the condition for laziness.
He envisaged a clinic to help parents and children and to raise awareness of dyslexia. The Royal European Pediatric Clinic in the J3 Mall in Dubai, will give seminars to parents to help them understand the learning difficulty and to look out for signs of the condition in their children. Sheikh Hamad also works with Dyslexia International, a non-profit organisation linked to Unesco that serves the interests of children and adults with reading difficulties."I am honoured to be with them and be given the title of advocate for children and adults with dyslexia world wide, and I will be in Unesco representing them," he said.
Dr Antonio Martins, chief medical officer at the clinic, said that learning disabilities were a challenge to society because 20 to 25 per cent of children suffered from them. He hoped his role at the clinic would give children an opportunity in society because these individuals have difficulty in school and often leave early, making it difficult to integrate."
For more on this story, click here
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Babies’ spatial reasoning can predict later math skills
 Spatial reasoning measured in infancy predicts how children do at math at four years of age, finds a new study published in Psychological Science.
"We've provided the earliest documented evidence for a relationship between spatial reasoning and math ability," says Emory University psychologist Stella Lourenco, whose lab conducted the research. "We've shown that spatial reasoning beginning early in life, as young as six months of age, predicts both the continuity of this ability and mathematical development."
Emory graduate student Jillian Lauer is co-author of the study. The researchers controlled the longitudinal study for general cognitive abilities of the children, including measures such as vocabulary, working memory, short-term spatial memory and processing speed. "Our results suggest that it's not just a matter of smarter infants becoming smarter four-year-olds," Lourenco says. "Instead, we believe that we've honed in on something specific about early spatial reasoning and math ability."
The findings may help explain why some people embrace math while others feel they are bad at it and avoid it. "We know that spatial reasoning is a malleable skill that can be improved with training," Lourenco says. "One possibility is that more focus should be put on spatial reasoning in early math education."
In addition to helping improve regular early math education, the finding could help in the design of interventions for children with math disabilities. Dyscalculia, for example, is a developmental disorder that interferes with doing even simple arithmetic. "Dyscalculia has an estimated prevalence of five to seven percent, which is roughly the same as dyslexia," Lourenco says. "Dyscalculia, however, has generally received less attention, despite math's importance to our technological world."
For more on this story, click here
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Dyslexia Screening Bill passed in Tennessee USA
Tennessee has passed a new law that could help schools identify kids with dyslexia. Lori Smith, of Clarksville, and her daughter, Ryann Smith, are the faces behind the new screening bill. They insist that every student, no matter what grade they’re in, is screened for dyslexia every year.
Before Ryann was diagnosed she says she would take a test at school and do terribly. She would then bring the same test home and her family would read the questions aloud to her and she would ace everyone. Ryann actually got in front of state lawmakers and told them it took her almost three years to figure out why she was struggling with reading.
Her parents put her through testing and she was on month's long wait lists, even went to a private psychologist. “You do have high school students now who have slipped through the cracks all these years and with dyslexic students they’re able to cope they’re able to do well so sometimes they don’t show up on a teacher’s radar that they have a reading struggle because they make pretty good grades,” said Lori Smith, Ryann’s mother.
“In my class there’s probably like five of us who probably have dyslexia and I’m probably the only one who knows it,” said Ryann.
Click here for more on this story
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The brain region exclusively dedicated to reading has connections in place before we learn to read
A new study from MIT reveals that a brain region dedicated to reading has connections for that skill even before children learn to read.
By scanning the brains of children before and after they learned to read, the researchers found that they could predict the precise location where each child’s visual word form area (VWFA) would develop, based on the connections of that region to other parts of the brain.
Neuroscientists have long wondered why the brain has a region exclusively dedicated to reading — a skill that is unique to humans and only developed about 5,400 years ago, which is not enough time for evolution to have reshaped the brain for that specific task. The new study suggests that the VWFA, located in an area that receives visual input, has pre-existing connections to brain regions associated with language processing, making it ideally suited to become devoted to reading.
The MIT team now plans to study whether this kind of brain imaging could help identify children who are at risk of developing dyslexia and other reading difficulties.
“It’s really powerful to be able to predict functional development three years ahead of time,” Saygin says. “This could be a way to use neuroimaging to try to actually help individuals even before any problems occur.”
For more on this story, click here
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Gene associated with dyslexia interferes with processing of speech
 A new study led by University of Texas at Dallas researchers shows that the gene contributes to poor speech processing and dyslexia. While previous studies have tied the DCDC2 gene to dyslexia, Dr. Michael Kilgard, a neuroscientist at UT Dallas and one of the study’s co-authors, said the new findings are the first to demonstrate that the gene is required for normal auditory processing of complex speech.
According to Kilgard, there are two theories about the cause of dyslexia: a visual or memory theory, and the auditory theory. “This study puts more weight on the side of the auditory theory,” he said.“We now have evidence that strongly suggests that people with dyslexia don’t actually hear all of the sounds they need to hear,” he said. “If you have trouble hearing the sounds in your language, you will have trouble learning to read later,” he said. “Armed with this information about a genetic link, we may be able to determine who is at risk for reading problems before they have trouble — before they even start learning to read.”
For more on this story, click here |
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Web reading app developed by two teenagers
A web reading app specially designed for people with dyslexia, learning disabilities, visual impairment and even senior citizens has been developed by two Indian teenagers. The app, called Oswald, allows users to customize how web pages will look in their browser. It can be downloaded for free in the Chrome web store.
Read more on this story here
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Learning difficulties and winter conception link
 Learning difficulties are more common in children conceived during winter months, new research has found.
A study led by the University of Glasgow discovered the seasonal pattern was observed in children who had autism or conditions such as dyslexia.The correlation is being linked to low vitamin D levels in women who conceived between January and March. Prof Jill Pell, director of the Institute of Health and Wellbeing at the university said: "We weren't able to measure vitamin D in these children, but it is a plausible explanation. "We know that vitamin D is essential for healthy brain development in babies, and the first few weeks in pregnancy are a critical period when the brain develops.
"In the United Kingdom in the winter months we don't have enough sunlight for our bodies to actually produce vitamin D and other studies that have been in animals have confirmed that if you have animals that are low in vitamin D their offspring have brain problems and if you give vitamin D they are avoided."
For more on this story, click here |
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Epilepsy Research gives insights into how the brain reads
Reading is a relatively modern and uniquely human skill. For this reason, visual word recognition has been a puzzle for neuroscientists because the neural systems responsible for reading could not have evolved for this purpose. “The existence of brain regions dedicated to reading has been fiercely debated for almost 200 years,” said Avniel Ghuman, an assistant professor in the University of Pittsburgh Department of Neurological Surgery. “Wernicke, Dejerine, and Charcot, among the most important and influential neurologists and neuroscientists of the 19th century, debated whether or not there was a visual center for words in the brain.”
In recent years, much of this debate has centered on the left mid-fusiform gyrus, which some call the visual word form area. A recent study by neuroscience researchers addresses this debate and sheds light on our understanding of the neurobiology of reading.
The team studied epilepsy patients who agreed to have electrodes implanted in their brains. Their main goal was to reduce seizures, but it gave doctors and scientists an opportunity to also examine how their brains decipher written words. Epilepsy surgeon Mark Richardson performed the procedures.
“In some patients with epilepsy that doesn’t respond to medication, the only way we can potentially stop the seizures is to locate the place in the brain where they’re starting,” Richardson said.
Richardson said they used the electrodes to stimulate different parts of the brain, map their functions and find the connection to seizures. During the study, they also used those electrodes to stimulate the parts of the brain used for reading and recognizing words.
For more on this story click here
or here
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Next Issue
Next issue of Guild Gallery will be sent out December 2016
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Learning is all about motivation. When we really want to learn something, we generally succeed, even when the going gets tough, says Matthew Youlden, linguist, lecturer, translator, interpreter and polyglot.
Children’s laureate Chris Riddell, backed by all eight former children’s laureates including Quentin Blake and Julia Donaldson, has made a powerful and passionate call for the Department of Education to end the “disadvantageous school library lottery” that has seen hundreds of school libraries lose a dedicated librarian over the last decade.
Keith Topping, professor of educational and social research at the University of Dundee, is behind two academic research papers which have concluded that boys between 5 and 18 years old take less time to process words, skip parts and may choose books that are too easy for them.
A study has found a link between healthy diet and reading ability in a group of six to eight year olds. The findings are part of two wider studies – the Physical Activity and Nutrition in Children Study at the University of Eastern Finland and the First Steps Study at the University of Jyvaskyla.
