The  Dyslexia Correction Interventions -detail

 

When a reader with dyslexia can’t “call up” a meaningful picture, like for abstract or sight words, or when reading words they don’t know the meaning, they get confused and use their dyslexia to get lost in the space we would call his imagination. Their mind is looking for previously stored images because their imagination is running wild.  That is, a dyslexic reader leaves the real world to look for visual meaning in their mind. When a dyslexic reader can’t find a meaningful picture or image, they focus harder and look for short-term help,like leaving out words, changing letters around, or ignoring the word or phrase and moving on to the next comprehension challenge.

Most people with dyslexia are blessed with a very powerful, active, and unlimited talent: imagination.  That is partly why we refer to dyslexia as a GIFT, a super cool talent.

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Dyslexia ans Math:  Visual-spatial thinkers are often confused by the words and symbols which describe Math functions. When the foundation concepts for all Mathematics concepts (plus/minus/divide/multiply) as well as a list of about 20 typical Math terminology in word sums (add/more/less/each/equal/loss…) are mastered, learning to do Math becomes easy.  We don’t ask the dyslexic client to learn and remember that 9×9=81, we show him WHY it is 81. That is Math mastering.

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Like with Dyslexia Correction, the first step to master Math concepts is to enable children and adults to control disorientation. Once students can be sure that their perceptions are accurate, they can resolve any confusion about Math with methods that build upon their creative and imaginative strengths.

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The reasons causing reading and writing confusion have to be identified and eliminated first before resolving disorientation.

This is necessary before the learner can progress, because otherwise, they will continue to misperceive letters and words. If one word sometimes looks like bat, and at other times looks like tab or pat or tap or tad – there is no hope that the student will ever be able to accurately recognize the word. A parent or teacher might think that the learner has memory problems and encourage drill and repetition, whereas the learner is confused and frustrated because the tutor seems to be showing him different words each time.

Stress release and Energy setting: The client will be shown techniques to reduce concentration stress, resolving tension headaches, and remaining in a relaxed productive and creative state. The client will also be given control over experiences of change (time or speed) and control over their energy levels such as hyper- or hypo-activity.

Resolving Letter Confusion — The Clay Alphabet

From this:

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To this in one day:

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All triggers in alphabet letters which may cause disorientations are eliminated by creating the letters of the alphabet in clay.

We use clay because it is a three-dimensional medium and also involves a creative, participatory act and a sense of ownership of the alphabet.  This young lady constantly confused the E and the F with each other, making it very confusing for her to read words containing these letters.  It took less than 10 minutes to permanently eliminate the reasons for the confusion.

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Putting Pictures to the Words: Meaning Mastery will be done by sculpting  3-D clay models of the dictionary meaning (definition) of the abstract words.

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Models of “two”, “to”, and “too” are from www.symbolmastery.com

Model of the most frequently used word in Afrikaans : “die”

Easier Reading:

As picture thinkers, dyslexics are used to look holistically at the word. They find it difficult to sound out letters of a word and most often find it difficult to read the word from left-to-right.  Their struggle to sound out written words leaves them unable to comprehend written material and usually necessitates re-reading the same text numerous times often at the cost of severe stress, and often  headaches. These exercises allow dyslexics a way to quickly, comfortably, and easily learn to visually track, decode, and comprehend written material using their natural abilities.

All triggers in alphabet letters which may cause disorientations are eliminated by creating the letters of the alphabet in clay.

We use clay because it is a three-dimensional medium and also involves a creative, participatory act and a sense of ownership of the alphabet.  This young lady constantly confused the E and the F with each other, making it very confusing for her to read words containing these letters.  It took less than 10 minutes to permanently eliminate the reasons for the confusion.

The concept of disorientation must be clearly understood. In reality, DYSLEXIA equals DISORIENTATION.

Most people with dyslexia are blessed with a very powerful, active, and unlimited talent: imagination.

Disorientation happens with everybody at times. Orientation is where a person is accurately perceiving the environment, his place in that environment and accurately repositioning himself within that environment.  Disorientation is just the opposite: NOT accurately perceiving the environment, with or without intention.   Disorientation distorts perception.  Distorted perception distorts our sense of reality.  Therefore, disorientation produces a false or alternate reality of a life experience.

Dyslexic readers are confused by words with unpictured meanings. As he meets more blank words, perplexity and disorientation increase. The dyslexic now uses his imagination to restrict distortions until confusion and disorientation are addressed.
Some disorientations last a long time. This produces “being in” a long-term other reality. This state prevents the person from learning about cause and effect, consequence, time, and change. Daydreaming, ruminating, and being in a limitless realm can easily  become self-entertainment. Disorientation makes dreams real. Enter the misnomer label of the different ADD/ADHD-type symptoms!

In this imaginary world, nothing permanently exists.  He has no sense of cause and effect, before or after, sequence and order.   He might not even have an accurate concept of self and how he fits in the real world.  He may not even recognise that other people have feelings, needs, desires and rights.

The bewildered dyslexic has a wide range of attention abilities! Note that so-called ADD does not entail a lack of attention; his extremely active attention is usually focused elsewhere. Despite being warned by teachers that your child can’t sit still and never give attention, you may have to use harsh words to pull him off a video game.

 

It is also not only words without visual meaning that cause confusions and disorientations – Teaching a subject that do not interest the dyslexic person, or presenting the lecture in a single gadget format boring way, easily causes the “no-interest” behavior.  In most cases it should be described not as a learning disability, but as a teaching disability. The language teacher who taught my daughter thought all her students were ADD and needed Ritalin. The science teacher next door says  of the same group he has never had an ADD student. What’s different? One is  energetic, uses multimedia visuals, demonstrations, and an enthusiastic tone of voice. The other teacher reads grammar lessons aloud from behind her desk in a monotone voice, not caring who listens.

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Dyslexia is observed the moment a child come into contact with letters and words It is a destructive myth to believe dyslexia can only be tested after age of nine. By that age al lot of intellectional, and self-esteem damage has been done by the educational system..    This 5 yr old angel is mastering the alphabet letters by NAME and NOT by sounding out.  By making the clay alphabet himself, it gave him ownership of the alphabet and the letters. He becomes proud of his alphabet, continue to improve on the clay letters and treat the letters with respect by calling the letters by name. The next step will be to eliminate any disorientation “triggers” caused by the phonics alphabet, like confusions with v and f, y and u, j and g.   The dyslexic learner thinks with mental visualisation  of letters and words and sentences.  The letter sounds do not give him an understandable image of what the letter looks like or what one can do with the letters.in words and sentences.

To keep up with the phonics based language instruction  progress of the non-dyslexics in the class. the dyslexic reader has to relay heavily on repetition, drilling and over-concentration to “remember”.  He will forget, and will carry the label of a sort of memory, cognitive, auditory dysfunction.  We can prevent the dyslexic learner even as young as 5-6 years old to master reading with meaning.

Mastery vs Teaching.  The teaching method is that of mastery: Mastery is not reached by rote learning. When someone master something, it becomes a part of the experience of that person. It becomes part of the individual’s thought and creative process. Mastery is that level of learning where conscious thought is no longer required, (riding bicycle, changing car gears) there is no need to worry about being able to remember it- what has been mastered, is probably impossible to forget.