Good evening, everyone, or maybe it's afternoon or morning, wherever you may be. We're very happy to see you all. Come on in, take a seat, get comfortable, and we'll start in just a second. We do have a poll, so I'm going to share that poll so we can find out where you are, who you are, role you serve.
Are you a parent? Are you a teacher? Are you an administrator or some specialist? You could be a reading specialist, a special education teacher, a reading interventionist, and this is great.
Wonderful. Thank you. Also wanted to let you know that we will be sharing this recording with you. We also will be sharing a list of resources that we think you'll find valuable. So we'll send that to you at some point in the next few days.
And the other thing I wanted to just remind you, certainly you could chat with us right now for, you know, for general questions, logistical questions. But if you have a specific question that you would like us to answer, We're going to leave time at the end so that we can address questions that you might have. So instead of doing that with the chat, please do that in the Q&A box. So I already see some questions there.
Hello, Alicia, you always are here. You actually could do this webinar, Alicia. So this is Dyslexia 101, but I'm happy to have you here.
I's always nice to have you in the audience. So please use the Q&A. rather than a chat for a specific question that you would like us to address at the end of the webinar.
And again, thank you for those of just joining. We have our poll up. We'd love to have you answer the poll. I think I'm going to, Chris, tell me, can you see the poll and my slide? Yes.
Well, yes, I can see both. Okay. I'm going to try to minimize this, or actually, I think I can minimize this.
I want people to keep, or no, I can't. Actually, I can't do that. I want people to keep answering this question.
So I'm going to, I guess I'll give it a couple more minutes. This is Dyslexia 101, Myths and Facts. And we're very happy to have you here today. And I, you know, I'm going to go ahead and just introduce the title slide and also just...
introduce myself. I'm Margie Gillingham, founder and president of Literacy How, and I am joined today by a newly named vice president, Chris Cohen. Very, very excited.
Chris Cohen is a mentor, has been with me and our team since 2011, but we've worked together since I think 2005 maybe or before that. So we've known each other and worked together for a very long time. She's a rock star and she will share lots of wisdom with you all tonight as I will try to do as well. So again, thanks for chiming in.
So it looks like we have a lot of teachers here today, which is awesome. And we have quite a few parents. We have some administrators.
I'm grateful for the administrators who are joining us. We. believe that you all make a huge difference. So thank you for taking the time to come.
And our specialists are in neck and neck with the teacher group that's here. So we're very happy to have you joining as well. I'm going to go ahead and end the poll because I think we have a good idea of our participants this evening.
And thank you for participating. Share the results. And now I'm going to stop sharing that and we'll take it away. Today, we want to answer questions having to do with dyslexia, obviously. So we're going to answer these questions and discuss them as time will allow.
What is dyslexia? What are some myths about dyslexia? And in talking about the myths, we will present some facts based on the research that we have to date.
What are in... important instructional considerations when we're teaching students with dyslexia, how we identify those students? That's a big question. And last but not least, what are some challenges that may occur, co-occur with dyslexia? So we're going to start with this nice infographic, and you're going to see a lot of these graphics from the National Center on Improving Literacy, and you'll have a link to these in the resource handout that we'll send to you.
And I think we just want to use this as a jumping off point for two very important aspects of dyslexia, and Kristen is going to talk us through some of this. Thank you, Margie. So very important that we understand what dyslexia is. And it is a brain-based learning disability that impairs one's ability to be able to read and to be able to spell and to be able to read fluently and accurately.
You go to the next slide, Margie. Thank you. And so we're looking here at the International Dyslexia Association's definition of what dyslexia is. This is widely used across many states when they're thinking about legislation for dyslexia and when we're also use, we use this this definition of dyslexia when we're thinking about children that have, you know, problems with being able to learn to read and to be able to learn how to spell and read accurately or fluently, which relates to the first bullet that you see that is bolded on the slide that dyslexia really is characterized by those difficulties with accurate and fluent word recognition.
I impedes one's ability to be able to decode and to be able to spell accurately. I is, you know, we're thinking about our dyslexic kids. They, it is what's happening with them in terms of learning to read has nothing to do with their intelligence.
I's really focused on how they're processing language in the left hemisphere of the brain. And so in thinking about that, it's really important to empower our children to understand that they are incredibly smart and talented in so many ways. And it's just in this one area and learning to read that they struggle.
Unfortunately, some of the secondary consequences that can develop because they're not necessarily getting as many opportunities to read and do a lot of wide reading for a variety of reasons. Secondary consequences can develop around reading comprehension because of those reduced reading experiences, which can impede things like their vocabulary growth, their ability to build background knowledge, which we gain from those experiences with reading. So, Chris, as I segue into the next slide, you know, I think you pointed out some important things. And I know one misconception about dyslexia and actually even learning to read is that kids come by it fairly naturally and easily. So could you speak to that a little bit and, you know, dispel that myth when it comes to learning to read?
Yeah, I mean, my son, Alan, is dyslexic. And one of the primary arguments that I heard from his teachers growing up, especially when he was in first grade and second grade was, well, you know, if you just gave him more opportunities to read or if he just read more, you know, he will eventually learn to read. And that didn't happen for my son.
And the reason why that is, is because our brains are not naturally wired. to read. I's a more, it's a, it's a newer occurrence for our brain to grapple with written language. And so we have to create that circuitry. And for a lot of kids, a high percentage of kids, they need some level of explicit instruction in order to be able to read, but it is most important for our children who are dyslexic.
So how do we know that? How do, how do we know that this is a brain? as it says, learning disability here. What are some of the ways that we've learned about that?
One of the main ways that we have been able to understand what is happening in the brain in regards to reading is through neuroimaging research. They've been able to, you know, take images of the brain while people are reading and looking at what areas of the brain are being activated during the reading processes. And what we have come to find is the brain, the left hemisphere of the brain looks very different for a child who is dyslexic versus a child who is not struggling with learning to read. So the brain obviously is really important to sort of understand what's going on.
And I know when I got into the field of dyslexia way back, we thought it was a visual problem because we saw children reversing letters and numbers and so forth. And we're going to talk about that in a moment. But we didn't have access to this brain research that you're talking about.
And now it's amazing that we can actually see inside this, what we used to call the black box. We had no idea, right? So I just find it so fascinating. And I know that you're going to talk the audience through this slide that shows the reading brain.
And, you know, Chris is such a good sport when we were talking about like, what do we want to share this evening? I said, you like to talk about the brain, right? That's okay.
You know, well, the brain is really cool. And what we are learning about how we learn to read through looking at what's happening in the brain is incredibly fascinating. I find this research amazing. And so, you know, you look at what's happening here. This is, you know, the left hemisphere of the brain is what we're highlighting here in this slide.
And if you look over at the sections here that are highlighted in green and in orange, Those are the areas of the brain that are already naturally wired for language. So when we're speaking or when we're processing language, those areas of the brain are being activated. When you're looking at those, the areas of the brain that are in red and in blue, those are the areas of the brain that are wired for reading and for writing.
And so we have visual input, what we're taking in, and then we're processing into the area, what we call the visual word form area, or our brain's letterbox is then connecting to those language processors. We're making that connection between what we would be considered in spoken language and communication is now being connected to that written form. And what we know is that for our dyslexic kids, those areas of the brain that are highlighted in blue and in red.
aren't, you know, aren't, those connections aren't there. We have to build that circuitry for our child, for our children who are dyslexic. That's a beautiful explanation, Chris. And I, I think, you know, this, the arrows going from one place to another also speaks to the networks, as it says up here, the cortical networks for reading that have to also develop over time. So How does that happen?
How does that, how do those, how do those networks form? And what is this picture tell us? Yeah. So it's what type of intervention our child, our children receive, what type of reading instruction our children receive that makes the big difference in terms of how that circuitry is created.
So if you look on the left-hand side of your brain, you'll notice that the only parts of the brain that are really being highlighted are those language parts of the brain. And you'll notice that the parts of the brain that aren't are the pieces that are connected to written language. So we have to build that circuitry.
So explicit, systematic, direct instruction around areas that will support development of decoding and encoding skills will... help to build that circuitry. And you'll see in this example on the left or on the right-hand side, rather, that after they've received really, you know, great and, you know, structured literacy instruction, that that circuitry over there, based around kind of where we know those processes are for reading and for spelling.
are beginning to be activated. So we know that those children are beginning to read and beginning to spell and beginning to read accurately and automatically so that they can be, you know, successful readers. So you are telling a very important story, especially for the teachers that are who are joining us today, teachers and reading specialists and administrators who were teachers prior to becoming administrators.
that they actually can wire and rewire the child's brain to be, to develop this, this sophisticated system, this network to be able to read accurately and fluently, and then be able to, you know, open doors for them, right? So can you tell a personal story since you've worked with many children, many students over the years, can you tell a story about that? wiring a child's brain, rewiring or wiring, whatever you want to say, changing their brain. Yeah, it is changing their brain is one of the most impactful things you can do as, as a teacher. One of, you know, there's probably my first OG student is the one that stands out the most to me because this is, you know, when I was first learning this material and, and understanding just the impactfulness of it.
And she was an interesting case. She was twice exceptional. So she was gifted and talented as well as dyslexic.
So had tremendous language skills, incredibly bright, but just couldn't read. She was in second grade and still grappling with short vowel, being able to read words with short vowels. I was working on the TH diagraph with her in the beginning of my time with her.
And over the course of. our time together, you know, after a couple of years, I think it was over a two-year period, if I can remember correctly, she was reading multi-syllabic words accurately and fluently. We were reading chapter books together.
We were focusing on writing and really getting her to be an accurate speller. And it was just that experience of knowing that the instruction that I was giving her was making that much of an impact on her ability to be able to read, you know, and to be able to then use that for spelling and to be able to write, you know, prolifically was incredibly empowering and empowering for her. So, you know, there's, I can't speak enough to those experiences of when you really make a difference in the life of a child.
Thank you for sharing that story. And I, and I know you did a lot of this work at Literacy House. So I watched these, this student who was in Brooklyn, by the way.
Right. So, and those two children did not, were not dyslexic, right? Um, so they were, it's, so it's fascinating, the genetic nature of dyslexia, which we won't get into this evening, um, really, but the neurobiological.
nature of dyslexia, the fact that you're born with this. And it's hereditary. And we'll talk a little bit more about that as well.
But we wanted to dispel a couple myths, because, you know, that's what we're going to do today. Throughout the presentation, we're going to talk about a myth like people with dyslexia cannot learn to read. And you just heard Chris talk, and I call her Chris, Chris, talk about her experience with a student.
who absolutely was able to learn to read. But as it says here, reading may require a lot of effort and support. And that's what Chris was talking about with this student. The dyslexia does exist on a continuum.
So you can have mild dyslexia, you can be moderately dyslexic, or you can be severely dyslexic. And a lot of that is driven by... you know, the different aspects of learning to read that you struggle with. I could also be determined by the nature of the phonological processing, which we'll talk a little bit more about, but that ability to process sounds and process them on a different levels, like being able to take a word apart sound by sound, but also processing speed, how quickly you can retrieve. The name of something is also part of phonological processing.
And then something called working memory. So for students who have difficulty with all three of those aspects, that dyslexia might be considered more significant and harder to remediate. But it's certainly not the case that these students will not be able to learn to read. The other myth that... Chris also talked about a little while ago is this myth that people who are intelligent cannot be dyslexic.
And again, there's a continuum. There's the bell curve that we think about when we think about intelligence. So you can have solid average, or you can be slightly above or very, very high average and intelligence, or you can be on the other side of the bell curve.
And Chris mentioned twice exceptional students who are very intelligent, have come out with very high IQ scores, and they can also be identified with dyslexia. So there's a real range, and I guess that's important for us to note, because we're going to talk a little bit more about what does instruction look like for these students. Is there anything else you want to add about any of these myths, Chris? No, I think it's really important to really highlight the idea that you talked about, about the level of thinking about intelligence with dyslexia. And I think that's very important to think about through the lens of a child, because not being able to read and recognizing that many people around you can and can learn it very easily.
can make, you know, a child really feel like they're not intelligent. And so really having those conversations with children and empowering them with the knowledge to know that this is, you know, a very, very small piece of who they are. And that, you know, with practice and time, they will come to read if given the right instruction, I think is really an important piece to highlight for kids.
I know that even with my son. There's times when he will, you know, make comments and he's 18, he's graduating high school this year. He's going off to college. He's incredibly smart and intelligent, but you know, when he makes a spelling error, he'll go and, you know, his default thing is like, well, you know, they know that I can't spell because I'm not that smart with that. And I hate to hear him say that.
And that you kind of, that's like how they internalize aspects of their personality related to this. this one very finite part of who they are as a person. Yeah, I think that's such an important thing to note too. And to think about the profiles of dyslexic, like it says here, some individuals will have well above abilities in problem solving.
Sometimes they're great with math, right? But in other cases, they might have. co-occurring dyscalculia, which is difficulty with math.
Some of these kids are incredibly creative and, you know, go on to become amazing artists or engineers because they can see, they have amazing visual spatial skills. So there's not one profile that is true across the board. And I think that's really important for our audience to understand. Um, another myth that we wanted to talk about today is this idea that, um, this dyslexia is a visual problem. So you want to share some thoughts about that, Chris?
There's a lot of savvy people out there that will try to sell, um, the, the myth that dyslexia is a visually based disorder. And so they'll, they'll sell services like vision therapy, um, you know, um, things like tinted filters or lenses that kids can use. And if you, you know, they'll sell that saying that that is a cure for dyslexia.
And what we know is there is no, you know, research out there that supports the idea. We obviously know that dyslexia is not a visual problem, nor can any of these different, you know, therapies as they like to call them are going to solve. or, or cure one's dyslexia. There is no research that says, I mean, you can have a vision, you know, processing deficit and still have dyslexia and they might be able to rectify visual processing deficit and you would still have dyslexia. So there is, you know, no evidence to support that.
And so using filters or lenses or, you know, taking part in some really expensive vision therapy. is not going to be the cure-all for one's dyslexia. I really is the type of explicit and systematic instruction that one receives that is going to make the difference in terms of helping a child to learn to read. Yeah, exactly.
And I think it's important, especially for parents who are joining us today, because as a parent, you want your child to get whatever help they need. Even if... and we'll get them to a better place. So you turn yourself inside out as a parent looking for something that will work.
And this joint statement that came from the American Association of Pediatricians and the American Association of Ophthalmologists really speaks to the importance of understanding that there is this lack of scientific evidence when it comes to dyslexia. Now that is not to say that there aren't individuals that have visual. problems.
We're not saying that, but that's, but what we are saying is that these visual problems do not cause dyslexia and difficulties with learning to read. based on, on the research. And, you know, I love this quote, as Chris said, there is no silver bullet, right, Chris?
No silver bullet. No, there's no pill. There's no silver bullet.
I's, it's the hard work of that instruction and learning to read that makes the difference. Yeah. And some of you may have heard of Margie Bird Ross, and I had the pleasure of meeting her way back when.
Um, again, when I got into the field and at a conference, I think it was my first, um, dyslexia conference when IDA was called the Orton dyslexia society. And Chris mentioned, um, OG for those of you who don't know, OG, OG is Orton Gillingham. Samuel, Samuel Orton was the neurologist who studied, um, dyslexia back in the thirties and called dyslexia strephosymbolia because, uh, meaning twisted symbols, because he noticed that some of these students reversed their letters and their numbers, and in some cases had mirror, perfect mirror writing.
But we've certainly learned a lot since then. But one of the things that Margie Bird Rawson talked about, and she was an amazing practitioner, Orton Gillingham, you know, guru. define dyslexia or explain dyslexia as the fact that the differences were personal.
And as we've talked a lot about this, every dyslexic child or individual is different and that the diagnosis is clinical, meaning, you know, you need to really think about the clinical setting where you're going to identify a child with dyslexia and we'll elaborate on that. But that the treatment is really educational. That's really the treatment isn't the colored lenses.
The treatment isn't, you know, walking a balance beam or doing, you know, these brain based activities that will address the dyslexia. The treatment is actually an educational treatment. And we understand this from many, many years of scientific research. So coming up on this, Chris.
Another myth that I'd love for you to dispel for our audience. Yeah. So here we're talking about the fact that students will perform poorly on tests of phonological processing.
And I, you know, I'm Alan, you know, was given the CTO on several different occasions. And the first time that he was given the CTO was when he was in fourth grade. And can you just, sorry to interrupt, but just can you let the audience know in case they don't know what the CTOP is? The CTOP is a standardized measure that looks at three different things.
I looks at phonological processing, phonological memory, and something called rapid automatized naming. So it's looking at the speed in which you can retrieve information for reading. And when he was administered this assessment, he came. you know, his standard scores were, were poor for phonological processing and also for phonological memory. And so part of his intervention plan was to receive really great phonemic awareness instruction.
He, and he was receiving Wilson and he was, you know, getting some really great instruction for a period of time. And when he went, you know, when he went back and we looked at, you know, But he wasn't diagnosed. I should also preface and say that he wasn't diagnosed with dyslexia.
He was given the just, you know, a specific learning disability and reading. So they wouldn't, they wouldn't go so far as to say that he was dyslexic. And so I kept pushing for the dyslexia identification because, you know, he has all the hallmarks of a child who is dyslexic. And so when they gave him the CTOP again, three years later, when he was in.
seventh grade, the CTOP came out normal. His phonological processing came out in the normal range and his phonological memory surprisingly also came out in the normal range. And so they still would not give him the dyslexia diagnosis because his CTOP came out in the average range.
But what we know is, I mean, that a lot of you know, why that is, is because he had received really great instruction in phonemic awareness. And so he was able to, you know, effectively, you know, work through those different phonological awareness tasks that they ask children or, you know, participants to do who are taking an assessment like the CTAH. where his phonemic awareness manifests itself isn't necessarily going to be on a measure like a CTOP.
I manifests itself in things like his spelling and his spelling is really poor. And I was in, and I kept pushing that like, well, have you looked at his spelling is in the poor range? Like, have you looked in and really analyze what his spelling errors are?
And, um, you know, they didn't do that and they weren't going to, um, you know, um, budge on that for me, but, um, yeah. That happens for 25 to 30% of students will do fine in those measures, but that doesn't mean that they're still not dyslexic. You have to look at the bigger picture. You have to look at how they're, you know, look at elements of like their spelling or their word reading.
You have to look at their fluency and really get a broader sense of what that looks like, what that learning profile is for that dyslexic student. Exactly. And And thanks for explaining that, Chris, because that is an important thing to note here.
And the fact that you have, as Chris said, multiple sources of data. And at the end of the day, what the point of all of that is to provide evidence-based reading instruction. If the student is failing, yes, we need to identify what's driving that, those difficulties, but we also need to figure out what do they need in terms of instruction, which leads us to...
what is good instruction for a student with dyslexia. And many of you have probably heard of structured literacy. I's the term that the International Dyslexia Association decided could unite a group of people who are working with students with dyslexia, including Orton Gillingham, Wilson, Preventing Academic Failure, Project Read, the myriad programs. that have a lot in common, including the emphasis on, you know, some of the things that you see here in the reading wheel, the phonemic awareness, phonics and spelling, vocabulary, and part of vocabulary instruction is teaching morphology, comprehension and writing and syntax.
But what is really at the core of all of that is language, right? What are those pieces around the wheel have to do with, with language. And that explicit instruction and those elements of language are really at the heart of structured literacy.
And, you know, the knowledge and practice standards are really specifying what teachers need to know and be able to do to teach students with dyslexia, as well as students with other language-based reading disabilities. So as far as The elements are concerned. Those are, as I said, spelled out here.
And then there are principles of instruction that we we think about as pedagogical principles. What are good principles of instruction when you're whether you're teaching reading, spelling, writing, math. Right.
Most of these are really applicable to anything that when it comes to explicit learning. And a lot of. attention has been paid of late to the science of learning.
So we've been talking about the science of reading, really, and everyone refers to it now as SOAR, the science of reading. There's also the science of learning, and I think some of that is inherent in these principles, teaching things explicitly and directly. What does that mean? I means that you have to explain something before.
a student can figure it out. Some kids will intuit, some kids will, you know, figure it out on their own, but our kids with dyslexia in many cases, especially when it comes to learning foundational skills and how the English code works, it has to be explained. Maybe talk a little bit about number two, the sequence, Chris. Yeah. So, you know, it's very important that whatever program is chosen.
you know, whatever program is you're going to use to support a child who is dyslexic has a really good scope and sequence that focuses on what we know about the structure of language. And so we're working from what is most basic to what is most complex in a way that makes sense in terms of a progression in terms of learning to read. Yep. And, and number three, hands-on and engaging, because I think in general, that's a good principle. If we learn something by doing it and by interacting with it, we're going to learn it more deeply, understand it better.
So that's just a good, again, pedagogical principle. Sure is. And then we're thinking about deliberate practice.
So ensuring that you're giving kids lots of practice with the skill that you're working on, but also making sure you're going back and reviewing previous content that you were, you know, that this child has been exposed to and previous lessons. And that you're thinking about and really being very deliberate with that. So we talk about something called spaced practice, and that's that art of retrieval.
And what we're hoping to do is as they're. forced to retrieve that information from long-term memory, it's going to help to build that memory system more explicitly so that they can use that knowledge in any reading situation that they have. Excellent.
And then the corrective feedback is another principle that I always found extremely important and why I think kids with dyslexia need to be in smaller group sizes because in order for a teacher to really give the kind of feedback when the student gives an incorrect response, instead of telling them, you know, the right response, we want them to figure it out by themselves. And that's a very important skill that takes a while for teachers to acquire how and what kind of explicit corrective feedback to give the students so that they again, independently find their errors down the road. Yeah, very important.
And also, you know, in thinking about that and thinking about that corrective feedback is the idea of being diagnostic and prescriptive and ensuring that you're you're taking data on on what's happening with that student as you're, you know, giving instruction and using that information to drive your your future lessons and and being really responsive to that, knowing when you have to go back and review and knowing if you think a child has it and you can move on to something new. really is based in the data that you're collecting during the lesson. And as you're thinking about things like progress monitoring and other assessment measures. Yeah. Thank you for saying that and explaining it so clearly, Chris.
And then the last one that's mentioned here is just the application. And that is so important because most structured literacy lessons start with a warm up perhaps of, you know, phonemic awareness, segmenting sounds. playing with the sounds and the words that the kids are going to be reading during that lesson, and then reading some words, spelling some words, building to the phrase and sentence level.
But we really want to make sure we give adequate time for kids to practice reading connected text. And that's where decodable text comes into play, something that we believe is very important for some length of time to get to that reading fluency, automaticity, accuracy, and prosody. So all of those are important.
The other thing that we want to mention before we move on is just what is multisensory versus multimodal? And we prefer the term multimodal versus multisensory, even though we're thinking about presenting information using the senses, using more than one modality, but we're thinking more about the sensory input that Virginia Berninger refers to as language by ear and by eye. as well as the motor output. So it's language by the mouth, how we produce those sounds, and by the hand, how we might form letters. And they're all related to literacy learning.
Another myth. Can you talk about this a little bit, Chris? So an important piece to instruction is monitoring the progress that a child is making. So we need to be collecting a lot of data to track how...
a child is progressing in their development of reading. And if they're not making the progress you would expect, then we need to make changes to that intervention, whether it's, you know, making it more intensive or, you know, giving a child more time with an intervention, or if it's, you know, making the group size even smaller than what you might be using with the child at this time, whatever. we need to do to get that child to the place where they can be a proficient reader.
So we really need to be taking really, we need to be collecting really good data to really track how that is, how that's, how they're progressing. Absolutely. And we don't want to waste a minute of their time, especially if we get these kids late. And sometimes we do. And, and really, you know, speaking of that, this idea of the dyslexia paradox, which is that Oftentimes, dyslexia isn't identified until a child is in third, fourth, fifth grade, and I can speak firsthand.
My third grade granddaughter was recently identified with dyslexia, and we were flagging her. He mom and myself were flagging her, and they really didn't pick up on it. We know why is that important?
Because early intervention is going to mitigate a lot of the side effects. the emotional side effects that happen a lot. And, you know, we just have to do a better job and we can, we actually know how to find these kids early. We don't necessarily identify them with dyslexia. Obviously you can't identify dyslexia until a child is actually reading.
So that would be kindergarten, but we actually can find these kids early and we really need to do that. I's a disservice not to. But how can we do that? Actually, I was going to talk a little bit about this and chime in, Chris. But one of the things that we wanted to share with you, for those of you who aren't familiar with screening, lots of lots of buzz about screening.
And screening is simply figuring out kids who are at risk. And we could talk about screening for risk. generally speaking for any risk learning to read, or we could specifically talk about screening for dyslexia.
And we've learned a lot about both. Think about going to the doctor, the eye doc, or the, your pediatrician or general practitioner, and looking at an eye chart to see if you might have some visual problems. I's a screener.
I's not going to tell you if you can't read the chart, it's not going to tell you why you can't read the chart, but something that you want to know more about. And so in that case, we have to administer some diagnostic assessments. But the point of this is that we want to find those students at risk as early as possible. And screening gives us an opportunity to do that.
There's a lot of information out there on screening. So many of you are living in states where there's screening. policies, meaning the state Department of Education is mandating that children, and our state happens to be one of them, have to be screened from kindergarten through third grade. And we're looking at, it's called the universal screener because all children are screened.
And many of those screeners say three times a year. And the Sub-tests that are used in these screeners vary from kindergarten through first and second grade, as you can see at the bottom of this infographic. There's computer adaptive screeners. There's early screeners.
Nadine Gobb has developed a screener, Early Bird. Femiko He and her colleagues are working on a screener. Hugh Katz is huge in the field of screening. And so in the resource list that you're going to receive in a couple of days.
You'll see some information related to screening. Very important that you become familiar with what that looks like, what it means, and what you as a teacher need to know, what you as a parent need to know, so that we can, again, find these kids as early as possible. I will say one other thing is that one important point to make as a parent.
if you're a parent in the audience and you yourself are dyslexic or your spouse or partner is, or your grandfather or aunt or uncle, if you know there's a history of dyslexia in your family, please share that with the school because that's a very important piece of information that they need to be aware of. So one, one. More myth. I think this is our last myth. And Chris, I think you're going to speak to this one.
Well, you, you actually talked to this myth earlier in the presentation, Margie, when you talked about dyslexia exists on a continuum. And, and so, you know, and it has a lot to do with what we think about in terms of those comorbidities that you, you highlighted earlier. I can be, you know, other comorbidities like you.
dysgraphia, you know, where there's, it's a writing disability that the struggles with being able to, you know, things around handwriting and spelling and writing fluency. And there's also dyscalculia, which is a math disability. So there could be those types of comorbidities. I could be something to do with cognitive processing, like attention deficit disorder, things around executive functioning, like the ability to be able to.
um, you know, organize and plan, or it can be things like, um, phonological memory or, um, being able to, um, you know, how they're processing at the speed of processing information, all of those different factors that can be in any combination of those are going to, um, um, inform the profile of a, of a dyslexic reader. And so, um, the more comorbidities there are, the more, you know, complex that. profile becomes.
The other important consideration, and I think is one that we don't necessarily always think about, are, you know, the behavioral ramifications of having a reading disability. You know, there's a lot of, a lot of children become extremely anxious about going to school and about reading. They can develop depression because of that, because there's so much connected to self-concept and, and thinking about who they are as a person. And, and, you know, and in school is a big part of their life.
And so there's a, you know, thinking about those elements can also, you know, what are their coping mechanisms? Are there a lot of avoidance behaviors that they start to develop because they're, they're trying to avoid the whole concept of, of reading because it's so difficult and so hard. So it's a really, there's a lot of complexity and a lot of, you know, things that we have to think about when we think about this. profile of a dyslexic reader.
Yeah, for sure. And, you know, I know it sounds kind of like, it's complicated. So therefore, I'm not going to explain it kind of thing. That's not the purpose of us talking about this.
I think the real purpose is to explain to whether you're a teacher or a parent, whatever it may be, just know that dyslexia is something you're born with, something you live with, you learn to live with it, you learn to make the best of the circumstances, find what you enjoy doing, what you're good at doing, and celebrate that. But know that you're going to have to work hard to become proficient with reading and writing, but it's worth it. I will tell one other quick story.
I wish I had a slide to share on this, but we were doing a workshop. Actually, one of our mentors, Elke, was doing a workshop a couple of days ago in our offices and a structured literacy workshop. And one of the participants shared a beautiful graphic that her son had had written and illustrated. Turns out this young man is 26 years old.
now getting his master's degree from RISD, Rhode Island School of Design. So obviously a very gifted artist. And he just recently, well, his mother actually just realized that he was dyslexic.
He was diagnosed with behavior difficulties as a young boy. They missed the dyslexia. They thought he was just, you know, a kid who was acting out, being defiant, what have you. And they never flagged the problems with reading and writing as the source of, and it could have been just a comorbid condition, as it says here, co-occurring behavior. And that's not one of the ones that we've listed here, but that certainly is one that we see as well.
But the point of the story is that this young man didn't know he was dyslexic. So he wrote this graphic novel about... his dyslexia and just figuring out what that meant, what the implications were.
So what would his life have been like? Obviously he's determined, he's got a lot of grit and resilience. That's another piece of the dyslexia puzzle that we didn't get to talk about today. We may have a follow-up workshop sometime talking about even more, but there's so much to this field.
We wanted to end on this one slide, and then we'll, we've got a good amount of time for Q&A. But I think it kind of wraps up what we've talked about tonight. And I think we've covered a lot of this.
But just to, you know, have this infographic speak to two things. One is the fact that learning to read is not natural, as Chris talked about earlier, that for students who have a neurobiological brain-based reading disability, aka dyslexia, it's going to need some explicit instruction in some of these elements of structured language or structured literacy that we talked about. And why don't you talk about this, the bottom of this infographic, Chris, because you've done this beautifully on Alan's behalf. you know, knowledge is power. And as a parent, the more you, um, you know, learn about dyslexia and deepen your knowledge of dyslexia, you're going to be your, your child's most important advocate.
So, um, you know, if this is your first step on your journey, um, and, and learning to understand what dyslexia is and, um, and, and, and your quest to, um, get your child what they need in terms of services and instruction. You know, it is read everything, attend every seminar that you can. There's so much more to learn. I'm still continuing to learn and understand what dyslexia is, but in the end, knowledge is power and you are your child's most important advocates.
So I know I just applaud you for being here tonight and starting this journey. Yes. Thank you. Well put Chris.
Our last slide, just thanking you. These are our email addresses, our website. We encourage you to visit it.
There's lots of information on that, including information about dyslexia. I'm going to stop sharing my slide now. And I know, I think Kim, or I think Kim, you're going to field some questions for us. Is that right? Yes.
Thank you, Margie. Great, great information, ladies. Thank you so much. We had a bunch of different kinds of questions, but first I want to bring up the questions about screening assessments. And the first question came from Bernadette about, is there a specific screening assessment you would recommend if a teacher or parent is suspecting a learner has characteristics of dyslexia?
And also another person was questioning if the DIBLS-8 was a good effective screener for K3. Yeah. So I'll... I'll jump in and then Chris, you add, but as I mentioned, there's so many screeners out there. I don't think there is one that's better.
You know, I mean, everybody has opinions about the screeners. If, if you're a parent, you ask that question, you really want to talk to your school and see if they have a screener. Sometimes parents aren't aware that they do have a policy in place in the school is administering a screener.
If they tell you they use benchmark, or Fountas and Pinnell. Those are not screeners. So that I will make sure you know what a screener is and isn't.
And that IDA fact sheet that we'll point you to in the resources will explain that to you. DIBELS 8 is a good K3 screener. There's also DIBELS, what's now called Acadians. That's also very well-respected.
They're used pervasively around the country. They're paper pencil screeners. as opposed to computer adaptive screeners. There's pros and cons for each.
Like I said, there's a lot of information that I think you would want to read and learn about, but you want to ask your school to do a screening and they should be able to figure that out, let's hope. Do you want to add anything, Chris? I completely agree that DIBLS-A as well as Acadians are really impactful.
impactful screening measures that we can use for K-3 to determine children who are at risk for reading difficulties. And they have great progress monitoring tools that they can also use as a measure to continue to see how children are making progress towards making those benchmark goals. So wonderful measures to use in schools. Yeah. And just quickly to clarify, because they're used as reading, predicting reading, difficulty learning to read.
But they can also look specifically because of the subtests that they include at risk for dyslexia. So, you know, again, you can find information about that on the information that we'll share with you in the resource page. Quick, quick question about the screening again.
Margie, we're going to tap your Connecticut knowledge. I's just specific to Connecticut. But Diana was or Diana was interested when screening became mandated in Connecticut.
Do you happen to remember that? I was it was. 2011 or 12. So it's been at least 10 years.
And by the way, if you are tuning in from Connecticut, we, the state has a new list of screeners that is going to go into effect on July 1. So be sure to just go on the State Department website and look for that. You should be able to find it. If you can't, you know, you can email me. Thank you.
A lot of questions are popping in right now. So I'm just trying to scan them quickly. So thank you for your patience. But here, let's see. um stacy was asking what other factors should be considered when assessing a student with dyslexia who might be dyslexic sorry well like i said heredity you know family history so that's one factor um one is going back and looking at past records like um what was the child what how did the child do learning to read in the early grades if the child happened to be a in a higher grade but you do and And you want some diagnostic data, current diagnostic data, like specifically, do they have phonics knowledge?
What is their spelling? So Chris mentioned some of those diagnostic assessments. They're not standardized assessments. So ultimately, to get a student identified with dyslexia, you will need to administer some standardized assessments.
There's lots of those. They include achievement tests. They might include...
an assessment called the WIST that looks at reading and spelling. There's a lot of those. There's actually a good resource, even if you're not in Connecticut, that's going to be on your list, on that resource list that you'll see.
I's a wonderful document that the State Department of Ed, Connecticut State Department of Ed, put together with a list of numerous assessment measures. You wouldn't necessarily give all of them, but it's a nice resource to see the choices that you have. So it's, there's a lot that goes into identifying a student with dyslexia. Thank you, Margie. Another quick thing, I know you talked a bit about comorbidity.
Someone is asking if you could recommend specific literature exploring the relationship between dyslexia and ADHD. The the if you go to the International Dyslexia Association website, they have a lot of fact sheets. And I believe there's a fact sheet that looks at the the correlation between dyslexia and ADHD.
That's one resource out there that you can explore. Smart Kids with LD is another organization that talks about both dyslexia and attention deficit. Sometimes they exist. separate from one another. Sometimes they exist together.
Again, when you have a co-occurring difficulty, it makes it hard to tease it apart. But, you know, it's important to understand what the impact is for each and then putting them together what the impact is. So there's a lot there. Just again, there's lots of really good resources, which is why we put together a resource page for you.
just to point you in the right direction. We shared a lot of myths and facts today, and that's at the bottom of the slides. And again, you'll have a link to this Center for Improving Literacy, NCIL, which is an amazing place to look for information.
So University of Florida, UFLY, University of Florida Literacy Initiative is another But again, all of these resources will link you to those. Thank you. We had a few questions in regards to spelling. One is trying to recommend what to do with a child to help them remember and keep straight the spelling rules. And also, if there's any kind of encoding apps out there that kids could use for practice.
I don't know. What do you know, Chris? I don't know. I mean, I'm sure there's lots of apps out there.
You just have to be really careful. So really vetting any of the technology that's out there is an important thing. I don't know of any specifically.
But in terms of thinking about instruction around spelling, it's a lot of review. You have to go back and constantly review the rules with the students who At least that's my, that's been my experience working with my, my dyslexic students that that is the hardest area of, of, of intervention for our dyslexic kids is spelling that, that, you know, there requires a lot of depth of knowledge about the orthography of our language for them to really internalize those spelling structures and, and to use that information for, you know, when they're, when they're writing. So it's constantly going back and reviewing and ensuring that they're.
really building what we call that orthographic memory. Yeah. And just to add, that's excellent, Chris, to add a little bit more to that, I would say. Make sure that spelling is taught with decoding. So decoding and encoding are reciprocal skills, and they really support one another.
So, you know, you go from speech to print. We talk about that a lot where you're hearing a word pronounced and you have to spell the word, but then you want to go back and read the words you just spelled, and they really do support one another. Encoding is incredibly important to help improve decoding.
And, um, so there's a lot of research on that and, and then just know that your child with dyslexia is probably not going to be a super duper speller. They're not going to want to be in a spelling bee. They probably won't want to play Scrabble.
That's okay. Right. I's, it's, it's okay. I doesn't mean you shouldn't teach it, but it's definitely not something they're going to excel at.
And, um, and. And assistive technology will be helpful. And coming from experience from, you know, a child who has dyslexia and spelling is Alan's, you know, biggest struggle. Like he's, he's, he's doing okay. You know, he's, he's found ways to adapt.
And so, you know, they, they, they do find their way. So it's always going to be okay, you know, with the, you know, so. And, and thank, yes. Thank you for saying that, Chris.
So I know we're a little bit after time. I do want to mention that Michelle, thank you, Michelle, put our resource page in the chat. And this includes live links to a lot of the things that we mentioned today. So you'll be able to access those materials.
As Michelle said, they're also going to be sent out in a couple days with the recording. So you'll have the recording. and the link to the resource document.
And I believe that is probably going to be our wrap up. I know there are other questions and I'm sorry we couldn't answer all of them, but it was wonderful spending time with you today. So happy Chris joined me. You did an awesome job, Kim.
Thank you as always for your help. And Michelle and Kristen, appreciate. All that you do for Literacy How and for our kids. So have a good one and hope to see you again soon.
Take care.