http://dyslexia-blog.ghotit.com

Ofer Chermesh is an adult Dyslexic who now works in the area of developing assistive technology for dyslexics. His company is called Ghotit. Ofer’s blog offers information and insights from the perspective of someone living with dyslexia. He shares insights on himself with the hope of helping others and educating those without dyslexia.
 
 
Ofer Chermesh and his company, Ghotit

My name is Ofer Chermesh and I am one of Ghotit founders. I have always struggled with writing and reading. When I was 10 years old I was diagnosed as a dyslexic. I have struggled with my dyslexia throughout my life, in school and in different workplaces.

I hope you will find Ghotit useful to you as it is for me.
 
 
Sample Blog Post

http://dyslexia-blog.ghotit.com/2009/08/03/dyslexia-student-exams/
 
 
No Ifs or Buts – Dyslexics Deserve Extra Exam Time
Posted by: ghotit on: August 3, 2009
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Evaluations. Academic Tests. The Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence-III. Cognitive Testing (WPPSI-III). The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. The Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency. And the list goes on …
 
Have you ever read an evaluation report sharing the results of such tests? What is desperately needed is evaluation results that are written in PLAIN ENGLISH. “Plain English” is a generic term for communication styles that emphasize clarity, brevity and the avoidance of technical language.
 
Academic evaluators should be required to report their results in Plain English. I have been through two rounds of full evaluations of my son. While I basically grasped the learning issues that my son has – I have never fully understood the results of these tests. Why? For some reason, the evaluators keep the language in the report in their academic context and do not report the results in plain English. I understand that verbal memory is the retention of the spoken word and a relative percentage score associated with that. I do not understand a scaled score of “4” on digit span!!
 
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Notes from the Cookie Jar
http://cookienotes.blogspot.com/
 
“Scattered Mom”

“Scattered Mom” is a 30 something, west coast living, cookie baking, road tripping, key misplacing, perpetually lost blogger who can sniff out a Starbucks in a 50 mile radius.

Stick around..you’ll either pick up some great recipes or laugh at her forgetting where she parked the car. Again

Scattered Mom is a beautiful writer and shares insightful stories and information on Dyspraxia and Sensory Integration Issues as well as other aspects of her life.

Sample Post:

http://cookienotes.blogspot.com/2005/10/jakes-story.html

Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Jake’s Story
I couldn’t wait to become a mother. At 24, I was ready to have that little bundle to love and when Jake arrived, I cried for joy. He was mine. I finally, was a Mom.

Jake was a happy little person, and as easy to raise as most kids are. It wasn’t until he entered school that our perfect little world began to fall apart and was fraught with joy, despair, elation, and frustration. In the past 11 years as we have journeyed through three moves, the loss of Hub’s job and his trek back to university, and almost losing Hubs himself to a rare illness, we were also introduced to the world of advocating for Jake with the school system. It all began in grade one. Jake couldn’t print like the other kids, nor did he understand the math. However he did completely understand what was going on and instead would tour through the room, helping the other children with their work but never writing anything down himself. (which, looking back is SO Jake-he does everything orally) The teacher didn’t like this, and saw it immediately as ‘behavior’. Jake began to feel that he didn’t belong. So as a 5 year old will do, he decided that rather then be humiliated, he would prefer to be kicked out of the classroom.
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Living with Learning Disabilities

http://blog.seattlepi.com/learningdisabilities/
 
This blog will highlight the painful and detailed evolution of Zion’s disability – how we discovered it, how we navigate it, how we laugh, cry, and get mad over it. This is just one family’s struggle with learning disabilities.
 
Mizz Givens tells her family’s story from an interesting perspective as both an advocate for her son as well as a professional who works in the field of education. If you are interested in hearing some one’s else’s struggles and achievements, visit Andrea’s blog.
 
Mizz Givens (Andrea Givens)
mizz.givens@gmail.com

I am a 34-year-old wife and mother of two (editorial note — now three, Mizz Givens just had another son). My days are filled with commuting, working in the field of education, the YMCA, and the multitude of tasks that being a working wife and mother require. My downtime, if there is any, is usually spent reading, or cooking, or watching great shows on cable, because I love a good story.

My daughter Maya is gorgeous and talented and typically developing. My son Zion is charming and funny and severely learning disabled. And I can’t fix it. But I can advocate for him, I can provide supplemental services to support him, I can love him.
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Brad Elder’s website can be found at http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/E/Bradley.D.Elder-1/dys.html

Brad’s website does not seem to be actively maintained but his story on the front page is compelling. He has answers to several Frequently Asked Questions and other resources referenced on his site.

Here is Brad’s Story:

So here is my tail.
Sorry but its a little cluttered.

I have left this un spell checked so that you can see my world a little better.
Like I said this is really hard to put into words. Hard on the emotional level. But I think it will help me to do it. And I hope it will help you.

Ok, where to start. well I was diagnosed in the 6th graid. That really helped!!! It was the single biggest event in my life. Suddenly there was a name for my problem. I wasn’t lazy, or didn’t cair, or was……… what ever they called me that week. It was like the unevers was lifted off my sholders. I think I know what it must be like to slowly sufficate. I don’t know really how to describe it to you but i’ll try:

Imagen that nobody could see their hands. Everybody in the world. Nobody can see anything from the elbo down. Also assume that everybodys hands work just like thay do right now today. Now what if your hands didn’t work like “the normal hand”? What If you didn’t have any fingers? Everyone else can type, turn keys, scrach an ich, dress them sleves, tie there shoes, and feed them sleves. Every one but you. No one can see why you can’t “Do what everyone else can”. You don’t know why you can’t do what “normal” kids can. You just know you can’t. you walk and talk just like every one else. there is no way to see an obvous reason why you can’t do it. Adults don’t know. How could they. All they can see is a kid that isn’t doing what they were told to do. And they lable you lazy, slacker, rebbel, and what ever they can come up with…….They my even point you out to your class mates and tell them not to be like you.
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On this video are practical powerful tips for reading with your child that can dramatically improve your child’s reading capabilities especially for elementary school children. Our son has language based learning issues and this approach has helped him tremendously.

 
As a parent you know that reading is extremely important. Studies show that the more children read, the better readers and writers they become.

Now as you know, our son has language based learning issues. Getting him to sit still to read a book when he was young was torture. No matter how much I put inflection in my voice and used sound effects, I could only get a couple of minutes out of him. What I have found, however, is that over time I am able to add more and more time to our reading time together.

What I want to do today is to give you some really practical tips for reading with your child that can powerfully improve your child’s reading capabilities especially for elementary school kids.

First find out from your school, the comfort reading level of your child. Each “grade” has multiple reading levels and your child is testing probably at least twice during the school year to determine his or her reading level.

Then what you need to do is to get a list of books at your child’s comfort reading level as well as a list of books at the next two reading levels above. You can get these lists either from your school, your school library, the public library and or online resources. For instance, Scholastic has an online book wizard that helps to list books by reading level.

Of course, there are many systematic approaches to reading levels and you need to understand which system your school uses. For instance some of the approaches for reading levels are Guided Reading, Basal Level, DRP (Degrees of Reading Power), Reading Recovery, DRA Level and Lexile Level. Our school uses the Basal rating system and our son’s comfort reading level is at PP2.

Then get a bunch of books at your child’s comfort reading level and then some books above your child’s comfort reading level. The books which are above your child’s comfort reading level (just one or two levels above) are the books that you read out loud to your child. Try to read out loud to your child each day for 15 to 20 minutes.
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The recent diagnosis of ADD (ADHD inattentive) for our son has resulted in a major framework shift or me. Learning that he has a lifelong disability that will make life more difficult than it already is causes waves of sadness to come over me. I realize that in order to move on from these feelings, I need to face them and embrace them and then let them go.

 

 
Learning Issues, ADD and Grief

So I call my little peanut, my little onion as well because we just keep peeling back the layers to understand more. As you know, we recently got a diagnosis of ADHD (inattentive) for our son. This, I recently realized, has been a dramatic framework shift for me. Let me explain.

Because he is young, we have been working on and with his learning issues and trying to figure out which issues are based on learning differences and which are based on immaturity. The learning needs school that he has been attending is a transition school. This means that they work with the child to discover their strengths and to establish methodologies and frameworks that work to help the child address their learning weaknesses. They also teach the child to advocate for themselves and their learning needs. When the child has a strong learning toolset and the understanding and mindset to be their own learning advocate, the goal is to transition them back to a mainstream school.
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http://eideneurolearningblog.blogspot.com

Drs. Fernette and Brock Eide

We’re physicians with a national referral practice seeing children with learning difficulties. We all have different ways in which we’re “wired to learn”, and understanding these differences will help us have intellectually and personally satisfying lives.

For students with specific learning challenges, understanding the differences in how their brains work can be breakthrough in overcoming their hurdles and help them find what they really enjoy doing in life.

The blog has weekly articles related to brain-based learning and learning styles, problem-solving and creativity, kids, families, and parenting, gifted and visual learners, dyslexia, attention deficit disorders, autism, and more.

Books by the Eides:

The Mislabeled Child: Looking Beyond Behavior to Find the True Sources and Solutions for Children’s Learning Challenges

Understanding Gifted Children – “Brains on Fire”

Dyslexia and Writing Challenges in Gifted Children

Attention, Sensory Processing, & the Social Challenges of Gifted Children

Visual Spelling

http://ldparents.blogspot.com

Anne

I’m a single mom with two great kids, each with their own unique learning style.

Anne writes in a clean straightforward fashion sharing a ton of great information that she has learned from ten years of working with, exploring and understanding her sons’ learning differences.

Here is Anne’s first blog post. It can be found at http://ldparents.blogspot.com/2009/04/in-beginning.html

In the beginning

I don’t really know where to begin. The earliest years of my son’s life were normal, blissful, happy. He didn’t talk much but communicated in his way and we seemed to share some innate ability to understand each other.

Around his second birthday, his pediatrician finally convinced me to have him start speech therapy so she “could hear his beautiful voice.”

Speech therapy was successful but came with what seemed at the time like an ominous prediction from his speech therapist. “Watch out for language-based learning disabilities as your son gets older.”

Ten years later I’m thankful for the recommendation. That speech therapist was right on the money, the language deficits my son experienced as a baby and toddler were indicative of problems he would experience with reading and writing and language in general.

My hope for this blog is to share some experiences and to encourage other parents to share theirs. My son has had many successes in his educational career and I’ve done my best to stay on top of all the latest research, therapies and educational issues.

Most importantly, I love to tell stories. My kids’ stories are the best. When I lost my job last week and my son and I were discussing what was next, he suggested I write a book. (Actually, his first suggestion was that I get a costume and stand out on the street corner waving a sign for a local business, but I digress.)

I asked him what the book would be about and he said, “It’d be about us. We’ve lived lots of places and done lots of things. First you could talk, then I could tell my side, then J (little sister) could tell her side.”

Great idea. But, since his mother shares his short attention span, a blog will have to suffice for now.

This article can be found at
http://www.mnsu.edu/comdis/kuster4/part88.html

Thank you to CC of
http://ifonlyihadsuperpowers.blogspot.com
for pointing this one out. (CC’s original post can be found here http://ifonlyihadsuperpowers.blogspot.com/2009/06/therapy-thursday-listening-activities.html)

Do You Hear What I Hear? – Listening Activities

By Judith Maginnis Kuster

“There is only one rule to become a good talker– learn how to listen,” said an unknown author. Although speech-language pathologists and audiologists may suggest additional “rules,” both professions agree that listening is an important skill. Speech-language and hearing specialists often incorporate listening activities with individuals who have speech sound differences or disorders and those who have hearing impairment, including those with cochlear implants.

Listening activities are also used to help individuals recovering from aphasia to improve auditory memory, teach individuals with autism spectrum disorders, help clients with attention or central processing disorders, and serving many other clients. The following resources offer freely available activities featuring this important component of treatment.

Listening for Environmental Sounds

The FindSounds search engine (www.findsounds.com/types.html) locates online sounds made by birds, animals, natural events, household items, musical instruments, holiday events, people, tools, vehicles, and more.

Bananas in Pyjamas (www.abc.net.au/children/bananas/games/animal_sounds/default.htm) offers a timed animal-sound matching/concentration activity with easy, hard, or very hard examples.

Animal Sounds (www.perunakellari.fi/animalsounds/animal-e.html) invites the user to type the name of the animal heard from a word bank of 21 animals.
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