Challenges

Reading & Spelling with Accuracy

Individuals with dyslexia tend to struggle with the mechanics of reading and writing, including accurately sounding out and spelling words. They might look at the initial letter in a word and “guess” at the rest of it, or may simply make up words as they go. They might also replace certain words with others that “make sense” within that spot in the sentence. For example, they might read “Leo efficiently completed his work” as “Leo effortlessly completed his work.” Furthermore, those with dyslexia often have wonderful, creative ideas but struggle to express those ideas on paper when writing. Read more about this at How to Improve Your Dyslexic Child’s Reading Skills – EBL Coaching.

Trouble Articulating

Some individuals with dyslexia have trouble with word retrieval, or finding the right word to use when speaking. This might affect their relationships with peers, since it can be challenging for them to keep up a conversation and have a back and forth dialogue. They also might forget specific words or details within a conversation they had with a friend, leading to miscommunication and misunderstanding, and ultimately negatively affecting friendships.

Low Self-esteem

Many people with dyslexia are exceptionally bright and gifted in a multitude of skills. However, they often find themselves struggling with reading and writing and see themselves as “stupid” or not as smart as their peers. This can lead to low self-esteem and overall negative feelings about themselves, which can sometimes lead to mental health challenges, like anxiety and depression.

Strengths

While dyslexia comes with many academic challenges, those with dyslexia also have numerous gifts. Let’s take a look at some of these strengths:

Great Creativity & Spatial Skills

Individuals with dyslexia are often very creative and have strong spatial skills. They tend to be fantastic artists, painters, and sculptors. They can also visit a place and have an exceptionally strong visual memory of what they saw as compared to their peers. This skill can help them excel in many careers, including architecture, graphic design, engineering, and even surgery.

Strong People Skills

Those with dyslexia often have great people skills. Since they face constant challenges academically, then tend to empathize with their peers in a way that far surpasses those without dyslexia. They know what it is like to struggle and can thus relate to others going through different types of struggles and form a strong bond with them accordingly.

Outside of the Box Thinkers

Many people with dyslexia are forced to think out of the box on a regular basis as they face daily challenges. Since they struggle with reading and writing and may have trouble with daily tasks like writing an email or reading the newspaper, they typically need to find innovative ways to help them overcome these challenges and excel. Their ideas are often unique, creative, and far more advanced than solutions their peers might come up with. These qualities can help them become excellent business leaders and entrepreneurs in life.

Excellent Reasoning Skills

Those with dyslexia tend to have strong reasoning skills. They are often able to understand concepts from different perspectives, analyze and see patterns, and process complex concepts in ways their non-dyslexic peers can’t. While the mechanics of reading and writing are a struggle for them, comprehending the “big picture,” making inferences, and synthesizing the main idea are often strengths for individuals with dyslexia. Many are great problem solvers.

While dyslexia certainly comes with many academic and emotional challenges, it also bears numerous strengths. Those with dyslexia are often creative, bright, have strong critical thinking skills, and show empathy towards others. They hold many gifts that can help them excel in relationships and in life. Learn more about dyslexia at Could My Child Have Dyslexia? – EBL Coaching.

Other Blogs about Dyslexia:

Dyslexia Tutoring NJ

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Some students naturally thrive in school.  They enjoy the thrill of solving complex math word problems, ace timed writing exams, and find pleasure in creating mnemonics for new science terms. Yet for others, school is a stress-inducing struggle. They dread completing homework, have difficulty studying for exams, and develop poor self-esteem from their academic challenges. For these students, a tutor may be immensely valuable. How do you know when your child needs a tutor?

Slipping Grades

For many students, the beginning of elementary school is a cinch. They master basic reading and math skills and enjoy completing homework assignments and worksheets independently. Their grades typically remain consistently strong. Yet some students reach a pinnacle – often around 3rd or 4th grade – when the academic demads accelerate and their grades start to drop. If you notice that your child’s grades dip consistently for a period of three to four months, he may benefit from some additional support. Certain concepts may confuse him, such as fractions and decimals in math, or metamorphosis in science. He may have trouble understanding what he reads or making inferences from the more complex material. While writing may have previously been a stregth for him when it was limited to basic sentences,  composing full paragrpahs or essays may completely stymie him. In such cases, working with a one-on-one tutor can be very beneficial.

Her Confidence Dips

Parents always find pleasure in raising a confident child who has a strong self-esteem and belief in her own abilities. Yet when this confidence dips – or doesn’t exist from the ghetgo – a parent may develop concerns. Often times, when children feel they are not “good” at an academic skill – they see their peers reading chapter books, for instance, when they can only read 3-letter words in basic BOB books – their self-esteem may tumble. They might feel they can “never” be good at math or are terrible at writing when, in reality, with some one-on-one coaching, they have the ability to excel at each of these skills. By building a child’s academic skills through tutoring, her self-esteem often improves along with it.

Homework Meltdowns

Some children come home from school and complete their homework independently with no or little prompting. If they encounter a challenge,  they calmly ask a peer or parent to help them through it. Yet for other kids, the task of completing homework – or at least certain types of homework – can seem insurmountable. They may lose their patience, become easily frustrated, and often have complete meltdowns. When parents try to help, the turmoil sometimes rises – ultimately negatively affecting the parent-child relationship. Often times, a third party tutor – someone who is not mom or dad – can be just the solution for building skills, easing frustration, and preventing these dreaded meltdowns.

Poor Time Management Skills

As children move through school, the studying and time management demands increase rapidly. The number of exams and homework assignments quickly rise – often along with additional extra curricular activities and other time-intensive demands – and children must learn to effectively manage their time ‎in order to fit it all in. Many students, however, have poor executive functioning and time management skills. Those who once thrived in school often start to plummet academically as these demands rise. They may push off studying and assignments to the last minute, turn in projects late, or stay up until the early hours of morning to complete all of their work. A tutor can teach these students concrete strategies for more effectively planning and managing their time so their seemingly insurmountable work and activity load feels much more manageable.

Your Child Asks for a Tutor

When most of us were children, the idea of working with a tutor seemed almost like a punishment. Children felt subpar, or not “good enough” to succeed on their own if they needed a tutor. Yet in our current high-demand environment, with Common Core standards and new advances in our curricula, having a tutor – someone to help students navigate this challenging path – can seem like a gift. The negative connotation connected to tutoring has turned positive and many kids and parents now see the real positive value tutoring offers. In fact, while parents used to be the sole tutor-seekers, many students now self-advocate and ask their parents for a tutor, seeing how this support has helped their peers and friends and can help them too.

As children move from elementary to high school, the academic and studying demands increase exponentially. Some students can keep up with these increasing demands on their own but many benefit from additional instruction. If you notice your child struggling, you may want to consider a tutor. Having this added support can help your child feel calm, confident, and successful in school.

The post How Do I Know When My Child Needs a Tutor? appeared first on EBL Coaching.

Most elementary, middle, and high school students face increasing academic challenges as they progress in school from year to year. With each year come greater school demands and newfound social pressures. Students are expected to develop sound skills in reading, writing, reading comprehension, and math. They also must make and sustain new friendships, learning to respond well to humor and social cues. Learning to “fit in” takes on an increasingly important role. For almost any student, these demands can be challenging. Yet for students with non verbal learning disorders, the demands are often frightening and overwhelming.

Students with nonverbal learning disorders are generally highly intelligent and have strong auditory processing and oral expression skills. Yet they often have difficulties in breaking down multi-step instructions, solving complex conceptual problems, understanding visual-spatial relationships, and developing strong social and communication skills. Because of their strengths, these learning challenges are often overlooked. As a result, students frequently suffer in school as the classroom workload becomes increasingly complex.

It is important that students with nonverbal learning disorders learn the right types of strategies and learning tools to help build their areas of academic difficulty. The earlier students learn these tools, the easier the demands will be for them as they move through school. The strategies detailed below will help them develop complex reading comprehension, multi-step problem solving, and visual-spatial skills.

Complex Reading Comprehension

While most students with nonverbal learning disorders have strong decoding skills, they tend to have difficulties with reading comprehension, often missing the “big picture” of what they are reading. They may also have trouble visualizing information that they read and making inferences from text. As a result, learning specific strategies for building strong reading comprehension and inferencing skills (two of the most important skill areas in school) are important for their academic success.

The following multi-step reading comprehension strategy helps students identify the topic, main idea, and important details of what they are reading and differentiate the “big picture” from the minute details. It also helps them learn to summarize information and distinguish between explicit and implicit reading comprehension questions. The strategy works as follows:
After a student reads a passage, he or she should first identify the topic of what was read. The topic is one, two, or three words describing what the passage is about. For example, some topics might include trees, cells, or World War I. It is short and to-the-point, and should not be confused with the main idea! Students should highlight the topic in blue. Next, the student should identify the main idea. The main idea describes what the author is saying about the topic. For example, if the topic of a passage is trees, the main idea might be: Growing trees is an easy process. Or, if the topic is World War I, the main idea might be: There were many causes for World War I. Students should highlight the main idea in green. Finally, the student should look for the important details, which is important information describing the main idea. Note that students should only highlight what is important, not every bit of text on the page! They should also try to highlight only words and phrases when possible, not full sentences. The important details should be highlighted in yellow.

Once the student has finished reading and highlighting the passage, the next step is to create a one-to two line summary on the bottom of the page of what he or she read. This summary should be in the student’s own words and should summarize the main ideas and most important information from the passage. For many students, creating such a concise summary is difficult at first, but the more they practice this technique, the easier it will become.

After students read a passage, they are often asked to answer reading comprehension questions in a multiple-choice format. The “Explicit/Implicit” Strategy is helpful for answering these types of questions. After the student reads a question, he or she should determine whether that question is explicit (mark with an E) or implicit (mark with an I). An explicit question is a question whose answer comes directly from the text, such as facts or statistics. An implicit question is a question whose answer does not come straight from the text. Instead, the student must infer the answer based on information that he or she read from the text. Some inferential questions might include, “Based on information read from the text, you can conclude that _____” or “The main idea of this passage is likely ____.” Students with nonverbal learning disorders often have trouble with these inferential questions and it is therefore helpful for them to learn to distinguish between Explicit and Implicit questions

Step-by-Step Problem Solving

Many students with nonverbal learning disorders have trouble with step-by-step problem solving. This skill often parlays itself into the realm of math word problems, amongst other areas of school. Learning an effective step-by-step strategy is helpful for solving these types of problems.

The SIAS (Sign, Important Information, Arithmetic Problem, and Solution Sentence) strategy is a great technique for learning to break down and solve math word problems. It works as follows: first and foremost, students should learn key words which tell them what kind of problem they are about to solve. For example, for addition word problems, some key words include in all, in sum, or altogether. Students should create note cards or keep a log of all types of word problems (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, etc.) and their corresponding key words. Next, the student should read the problem. He or she should underline any relevant information, cross out any irrelevant information, and circle any key word or words which define what type of problem it is.

The next step is to fill in the multi-step parts of SIAS. Underneath the problem, in vertical formation, the student should write the sign (plus, minus, etc.), then the important information (numbers that are important for solving the problem), followed by the arithmetic problem (for example, 6+12 =), and ending with the solution sentence as a full sentence in his or her own words (for example, Six apples plus twelve apples equals eighteen apples). This multi-step problem solving strategy helps students break down the information in the problem and move from language to arithmetic and back to language.

Visual Spatial Organization

Visual Spatial Organization is another area that is often difficult for students with nonverbal learning disorders. The webbing strategy can help them break down information and create a visual-spatial web of information that they read. The webbing strategy works as follows:
The student should first read a paragraph of multi-paragraph passage. Next, he or she should identify the topic of the passage and highlight it in blue, find the main idea and highlight it in green, and identify the important details in yellow (see above) The student should then extrapolate this information into the form of a webbing diagram. This visual-spatial diagram will look as follows:

The student should draw a diamond in the middle of the page and write the topic inside it (for example, World War I). Next, he or she should draw a rectangular box on the top of the page and write the main idea in his or her own words inside the box. Finally, he or she should branch out of the diamond in the center of the page with large bubbles containing the important details, again in his or her own words. The student can then color code the topic in blue, main idea in green, and important details in yellow. The more the student practices this strategy, the easier it will become to create visual-spatial images of information that he or she reads.

While the academic challenges of school consistently increase with each grade level, learning specific learning strategies can make these transitions much easier. It is important for students with nonverbal learning disorders in particular to learn these tools and how to apply them to their academic work. The more they practice using these tools, the greater their skills and confidence will become.

The post Strategies for Success: for the Student with a Nonverbal Learning Disorder appeared first on EBL Coaching.