Month: September 2016

Would you let your dyslexic child have electric current therapy?

A radical new treatment in Italy might offer help for children in Britain Tom Kington Watching her 15-year-old son disappear into a hospital room to have electrodes strapped to his head was a tough challenge for Francesca Matteucci. The Italian mother had reluctantly allowed doctors at the Bambino Gesù hospital in Rome to pass an …

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The right music can hit the sweet spot between predictable and chaotic for which the brain has a strong preference.

Dean Burnett Many people listen to music while they’re carrying out a task, whether they’re studying for an exam, driving a vehicle or even reading a book. Many of these people argue that background music helps them focus. Why, though? When you think about it, that doesn’t make much sense. Why would having two things …

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The Highly Sensitive Person

Elaine Aron has studied the highly sensitive person (HSP), an easily overaroused and overwhelmed individual who is sensitive and often anxious. Aron believes that evolution has favored the careful, reflective style that tends to accompany the highly aroused individual, and not high arousal itself. If understimulated and sometimes impulsive people like those with ADHD, live …

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Is Mandarin too hard a language to learn for dyslexic schoolchildren?

Imogen Blake More and more schools are eschewing traditionally-taught modern languages such as Spanish and French in favour of teaching the world’s most widely spoken tongue: Mandarin. But for those with learning difficulties such as dyslexia, mastering characters instead of an alphabet can be a gruelling, uphill struggle when English can still be a daunting …

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Gut Check: When an Intelligent, Creative, Dyslexic Student Researches High School Drop-Out Policies

Just reading  the title for this post, maybe you can understand the confusion and heartbreak in our home.  Our 17 year old son has been researching what our state/county policies are on dropping out of high school.  Why?  It’s because some days he gets extremely frustrated being in a school system that doesn’t understand him. …

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From Dyslexia Trust, Oxford Vision & Coloured Filters

Summary – Recent research by the DRT and others has suggested that magnocellular (M) neurones in the brain play an important role in reading and that M- deficits contribute powerfully to reading problems because the M system is so crucial for directing visual and auditory attention and eye movements to letter and word features and …

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primary school children will have to sit new computerised maths exams from next year

Education secretary Nicky Morgan recently announced that primary school children will have to sit new computerised maths exams from next year. The tests will go up to and include the 12 times table and schools have been warned that they will be held to account if pupils do not make the grade. This initiative has …

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Background speech hindered toddlers’ ability to learn words, according to a new study.

The environments children are in, including how much and what kinds of stimulation they are exposed to, influence what and how they learn. One important task for children is zeroing in on the information that’s relevant to what they’re learning and ignoring what isn’t. A new study has found that the presence of background noise …

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Why dyscalculia and Irlen syndrome deserve the same exposure as dyslexia

By Chad_Welch MAGINE dyslexia, but with numbers. That is what this Neath woman has to deal with every day. Nichola Hill-Williams suffers from dyscalculia and Irlen syndrome, both of which, she says, deserve more exposure. Such are the difficulties that come with the conditions that in the past they have inhibited her from getting jobs, …

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This Is What It Feels Like To Have Dyslexia

One in five people suffers from dyslexia, according to the Yale Center for Dyslexia & Creativity. If you aren’t one of them, it can be difficult to empathize with precisely what dyslexic people experience while reading. Developer Victor Widell created a website that simulates dyslexia and allows visitors to experience the learning disorder firsthand. Widell’s …

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Careers Advice

Stewart Segal, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, argues that schools can’t be experts in all types of FE provision – but a new national careers service would help In an announcement this week, the government has finally realised that it needs to strengthen its guidance to schools on careers information …

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Technology evolves to aid students learning with dyslexia

By: AMY ARMSTRONG It is pretty challenging to keep up in elementary school when one is learning to read but the letters are backwards or transposed or appear to be out of the sequence the teacher and one’s classmates are seeing, learning and enunciating. Enter special needs tutor Julee Faso-Formoso, whose own child was diagnosed with …

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‘Unworthy’ practical subjects are just as important as academic ones

By Keith Budge Leading a school with a working farm and a strong tradition, not only in design but in doing and making, I am always keen to enter the fray when discussion turns to the ‘academic vs vocational’ debate, as happened with head teacher, Andrew Fleck’s comments, picked up late last year. It is …

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Schools to be forced by law to give equal weighting to vocational and academic routes

State schools will be forced to give vocational routes as much weight as academic options when giving careers advice to their pupils. Ministers are plotting legislation that will attempt to overcome “outdated snobbery” against technical education and apprenticeships, according to the Independent on Sunday this morning. What form this legislation will take is unclear, although …

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Schools ‘manipulate’ predicted grades, leading head claims

Ann McGauran The head of Watford Grammar School for Girls said she would let girls “choose” their predicted A-level grades if other schools were “manipulating results”, official minutes show – raising questions about the role of teacher predictions in university entrance. But head of the school, Dame Helen Hyde, then told Schools Week she “would …

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New Writing Tools

Despite the abundance of technology that I surround myself with (laptop, phone, second monitor, tablet, camera, ridiculously heavy and terrible iPad charger) the two tool that never outlive their welcome in my daily repertoire is a pen and notepad. I’ve tried using a whole range of different organization apps, to do lists on my phone …

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Specialized Glasses May Treat Lazy Eye, Early Study Shows

A company called Xpand is offering programmable glasses that can treat children with amblyopia, which is also known as lazy. Typical lazy eye treatments require kids wear an eye patch for a couple of hours each day, writes Popular Science, because the patch helps strengthen the weaker eye. The glasses, named Amblyz, have programmable LCDs, …

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Learning Apps

Judging by the number of learning apps available to classrooms around the country, the education technology market aimed at elementary through high schools is booming. There are more than 3,900 math and reading apps, classroom management systems and other software services for schools in the United States, according to LearnTrials, a start-up that helps school …

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Dyslexic kids

I wear this label with pride!” I am…. D etermined Y earning for knowledge S mart L ogical E ntrepreneurial X traordinary I ngenious C reative I wear this label with pride!

A-levels are not the only route to university, says Ucas

A-levels are not the only route to university, with a range of alternative qualifications securing a degree place, says the admissions service, Ucas. Ucas urges parents and teachers to be more aware of other options, as rising numbers of students apply to university without the traditional three A-levels. Ucas figures show more UK students are …

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Aakash Odedra’s Inked & Murmur dances into identity issues at PuSh Festival 2016

Aakash Odedra was 21 when he realized his first name began with a double A. The British dance artist was flipping through his passport, something he’d done many times, when it finally clicked into place. And it opened up a whole world of meaning for the dancer, who had lived with dyslexia all his life. …

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23 things parents of dyslexia want you to know

By Melissa McGlensey Somewhere between 5 to 17 percent of school-age children in the U.S. are affected by dyslexia, according to the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity. For dyslexic kids, reading, writing and spelling can be some of the most challenging activities — and ones they’re required to do nearly every day. Despite dyslexia’s relative prevalence, misconceptions still …

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