The Dyslexic Advantage (26 page)

Children with especially poor finger coordination will sometimes benefit from working with an occupational therapist who has been trained to help children with handwriting problems. Many dyslexic children—especially those with procedural learning challenges—show poor fine-motor coordination problems and low muscle tone in the core muscles of their spine, hips, and shoulders, all of which makes prolonged seatwork difficult. These children often benefit from core muscle strengthening in addition to fine-motor (finger) training.

As we discussed in chapter 7, children who invert their written symbols so frequently or elaborately that it holds back their progress in writing or reading (particularly past age eight or nine) deserve special attention. Interventions should be based on the child's MIND strength profile. Since many of these students have tremendous M-strengths (or spatial reasoning and imagery abilities), these talents should be used to minimize symbol flipping. It's often helpful for these students to practice forming three-dimensional clay models of letters and short words (especially words containing the letters that are often flipped). They can also practice letter formation by making very large letters (two or more feet in height) with a marker on a whiteboard or by using their hand to trace out the letters in a box filled with sand or rice. These practices engage their large motor muscle (kinesthetic) memory and activate broader areas of the cortex, which seems to improve spatial orientation. Helpful techniques of this kind are also described in the books
Unicorns Are Real
¹
and
The Gift of Dyslexia
.
²

Many dyslexic students appear to have preset limits in how neatly and automatically they can learn to write by hand—even with extensive training—and they eventually reach a point of diminishing returns where further progress is hard to achieve. Students who reach this point should be treated with understanding and respect, since their limitations reflect brain biology rather than effort. Even those who do eventually learn to write well by hand often don't achieve full comfort or fluency with handwriting until mid to late adolescence—or even young adulthood. This again is a result of their late blooming in working memory and language, and it's important that parents and educators understand and make allowances for this time frame of development. Fortunately, because many excellent technologies now exist to provide alternatives to writing by hand, there is simply no need for students with especially persistent handwriting difficulties to suffer. We'll discuss these alternatives later in this chapter.

Many individuals with dyslexia also have difficulty learning to write at the sentence level. One common problem is learning to master the rules of grammar and syntax, which dictate how words relate to each other and function in sentences. These include the rules for:

As many as half of all college students with dyslexia have been shown to struggle with grammar and syntax—and that only includes students who've done well enough to make it to college! Typically, these students can write sentences with simple “active subject/passive object” formats but struggle as sentences grow more complex.

Experts on dyslexia often don't classify these language issues as part of “dyslexia” per se but as “dyslexia-related language learning differences.” However, since these challenges really do appear to result from the same neurological variations as the dyslexic reading challenges we've already discussed, and since mild challenges of this sort occur in many individuals with dyslexia, we believe it's important to discuss them.

These subtle language challenges are often missed on routine evaluations of language function in younger primary school students, so a “clean bill of health” on a brief language evaluation doesn't rule them out. Also, these challenges are often much more apparent with writing than speaking, since writing demands both greater precision and a greater use of working memory resources.

Challenges with working memory and procedural learning are often the chief contributors to dyslexic problems with sentence construction. One of the leading experts on dyslexia-related language and writing challenges is Dr. Charles Haynes, professor of communication sciences at the Massachusetts General Hospital Institute of Health Professions in Boston. When we asked Dr. Haynes where he believed dyslexic students face their greatest challenges with writing, he didn't hesitate. “The sentence is really an overlooked area. When teaching sentences, people think primarily of sentence diagramming, but that's really not what many of our children with dyslexia and related language learning disabilities need. These children often haven't grasped
the sense of a sentence
—or the logic that underlies sentences—so they need practice comprehending and formulating sentences, rather than just diagramming.”

Notice how this focus on the logic or meaning of the sentence
as a whole
is a top-down approach. The student begins at the “top,” by deciding what purpose the sentence as a whole should perform (e.g., to explain, to describe) rather than at the “bottom,” by focusing on details like nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Based on what we've discussed about the thinking styles of students with dyslexia, this top-down or big-picture approach is precisely the kind we would predict would be most effective to help them learn. Yet this approach is almost exactly the opposite of the bottom-up approach that's usually used to teach sentence construction (e.g., start with the noun you want the sentence to be about, now add a verb to show what it's doing, now add another noun to show what it's doing it to, and so on).

According to Dr. Haynes, one key type of practice that students with dyslexia need is to learn the specific sentence formats that are logically linked to particular types of paragraphs. As he told us, “Sentences, especially complex sentences, have a logic. For example, if you form a compound sentence using the word
and
, there's a logic to that: sentences with
and
mean you're talking about
similar events
or
events that follow in sequence
. With all the types of sentences, there are particular sets of words that you use for certain purposes.”

These word sets create different sentence patterns, such as sentences about
processes
, sentences that list
reasons
or
traits
, sentences that
urge
or
persuade
, sentences that
describe
, and sentences that
compare
and
contrast
. Understanding the logic of these sentence-level patterns is critical for students when they attempt to combine sentences into paragraphs. “If you want to construct a persuasive paragraph, you need to understand how to form a
because
sentence that expresses cause and effect; and if you're going to write a compare-andcontrast paragraph, you need to be able to create sentences with
although
and
while
because they express that comparative logic.”

Before students are asked to write paragraphs, they should master these logical relationships at the sentence level. “If they're still laboring at the sentence level, they're not going to have the cognitive resources available to work at the paragraph level. Paragraphs are really just words and sentences put together in a kind of logical order, and each paragraph type has a kind of sentence type at its core. If students are breaking down at the paragraph level, then we need to make sure they can produce the necessary core sentences. One of our big problems currently is that most people want to hop right to the paragraph level. They say, ‘Our state-mandated tests require children to write a personal sequence narrative or a three- or a five-paragraph expository text structure.' So they give kids a paragraph template, but they skip all the important sentence work that leads up to it.”

Students with dyslexia who struggle with the logic of sentence construction should begin their instruction in this top-down approach with
oral
rather than written practice. First, they should practice identifying the different logical patterns in sentences (e.g., persuading, listing, describing, comparing and contrasting) as they
listen
to them. Using sentences that relate to areas of student interest or strength can improve focus and endurance. Next, students should be asked to practice
speaking
sentences of these different types (e.g., “Describe this . . .” or “Tell me why I should . . .” or “Tell me three things you want for your birthday . . .”). Next, students should practice identifying these sentence patterns when they
read
them.

Only after students have mastered all these preliminary practice steps should they be asked to actually
write
the different sentence types. Again, the point of this practice is not to learn which words are nouns or verbs but which kinds of words perform various logical functions. We list specific resources for practicing these skills in Appendix A.

Getting Started at the Paragraph Level.
Once students have learned to identify and create different sentence types, they must then learn to construct each of the different types of paragraphs. Mastering the formation of the various paragraph types mostly involves learning to connect sentences of each core type with appropriate introductory and concluding sentences. When students have mastered these steps, they'll have acquired many of the key skills they need to write a full essay or report.

While teaching paragraph and essay construction, it's important to use clear templates. These templates should include both
explicit descriptions of individual steps
and
engaging examples of finished work
. The same
listen— speak—read—write
progression described above should also be used for paragraph construction.

Again, most students with dyslexia are top-down learners who work best when they know precisely what they're aiming at. In this sense, many students with dyslexia should be thought of as “apprentice” learners who learn best by imitating skilled work: that is, they master their craft more quickly and efficiently when the steps for skilled performance are explicitly stated and demonstrated than when they have to puzzle out the rules for performance themselves.

With paragraph construction, a good example of the paragraph type they're trying to construct should be kept available for reference while they're working. One useful source of templates and instructions is Diana Hanbury King's
Writing Skills
series,
³
which provides excellent descriptions of the various paragraph types as well as a program of graded instruction that will help dyslexic students develop all the important writing skills. Another useful program is
Step Up to Writing
(
www.stepuptowriting.com
), which teaches students explicit rules about the types of information they should include at different points in a paragraph or essay.
Step Up to Writing
also provides lists of common transition words that dyslexic students can draw upon to link their sentences into paragraphs and essays.

During the writing process, students with dyslexia will often struggle to initiate a new sentence or paragraph, expand their ideas, or find the right words to express their thoughts. When this happens, they should be assisted using a combination of brainstorming, preparation, and prompting techniques. In using these techniques, the student's interests and cognitive strengths should be employed, just as with reading.

Problems initiating writing assignments are often greatest with open-ended questions or assignments. A student's creativity can often be released by negative or contrary prompts—that is, by giving the student a statement or thesis with which he or she is likely to disagree. Humorous or silly prompts often also work well to get the student's ideas flowing. Knowing and focusing on a student's interests and strengths can be helpful in this process.

Students who are particularly strong nonverbal thinkers or visual imagers often benefit from brainstorming that uses sketches, doodles, diagrams, or graphic organization techniques. These can be done on paper, a whiteboard, or a computer. Instruction and practice in formal “mind-mapping” techniques can help individuals use strategies of this type in a more organized and productive fashion. One of the top mind-mapping software programs, Inspiration, was created by Mona Westhaver, who is herself dyslexic and designed this program to meet her own needs: “Visual learning strategies . . . allowed me to capture all my ideas in random order, meaning I was able to exercise my multivariate need to jump around and let lots of information simultaneously flow through my mind and on to the paper. Then, with all of my ideas visually in front of me, I could organize my thoughts.”
⁴
Many individuals with dyslexia experience similar benefits from programs like Inspiration or Kidspiration, which is a graphic organization program designed for younger students. Mind-mapping techniques are also taught in books like
Mapping Inner Space
by Nancy Margulies.
⁵