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RECENT NEWS ITEMSNews: World of Dyslexia Newsletter - free monthly email newsletter with the latest dyslexia news and research.  Springboard for Children
- A
ground-breaking project which has had extraordinary success in helping
hundreds of dyslexic children and others struggling to read and write
at primary school is poised for a major expansion across Britain.
Springboard for Children, an education charity which now has the
enthusiastic backing of the British Dyslexia Association, has achieved
a 90 per cent success rate in returning children with severe literacy
problems to mainstream classrooms. The revolutionary scheme is being
used in a dozen schools in Manchester and London, and the plan is now
to set the scheme up in ten other inner-city areas – bringing a
lifeline to around 10,000 children suffering from dyslexia and other
difficulties with reading and writing. The Springboard project relies
on intense one-on-one tuition for up to two years,
during which a host of innovative techniques are employed to improve
the child's skills. Groundbreaking
UK Dyslexia Scheme to Help 10.000 More Children - A
successful new way
to teach children with dyslexia is to be used in UK inner cities. The
scheme, named Springboard for Children, has had a 96 per cent success
rate in returning children with severe literacy problems to mainstream
classrooms. The majority of pupils are two years behind their peers
when they are referred to Springboard. By the time they return to
lessons they have a reading age comparable to their classmates. Backed
by the British Dyslexia Association, it has achieved a 90 per cent
success rate in helping children with severe literacy problems back
into mainstream schools.Full Story  Research
Reveals Drug Abuse Link to Dyslexia - Drug
abusers are ten times more likely than the overall population to suffer
from dyslexia, a study by Stirling University shows. Of the addicts
studied, 40% were dyslexic, compared with about 4% of the total
population of Scotland ... In recent survey of addiction workers, Mr
Yates found that 82% of respondents said between a quarter and a half
of their clients had reading difficulties, with 89% indicating they
thought these difficulties were a barrier to recovery ...
The Stirling University study involved assessing the dyslexia of 50
participants. Dyslexic Children
Use Nearly Five Times The Brain Area To Perform An Ordinary Language
Task As Normal Children - Dyslexic children use nearly five
times the brain area as normal children while performing a simple
language task, according to a new study by an interdisciplinary team of
University of Washington researchers. The study shows for the first
time that there are chemical differences in the brain function of
dyslexic and non-dyslexic children.  Dyslexic
Pupils 'Can Read With the Help of Intensive Teaching'
-
Dyslexic children who start secondary school
lagging behind classmates can be helped to catch up with "proper
teaching", campaigners say. Charity Xtraordinary People claims
thousands of primary pupils go undiagnosed each year, with many of them
branded disruptive low-achievers.  Staff
Expect Dyslexics to Fail - Children
with specific learning difficulties (SpLD), such as dyslexia, are three
times more likely to fail their national curriculum tests, a survey by
BBC One's Real Story has found. 60% of teachers say children who fail
their primary school Sats will also fail their Sats in secondary school. Family's
Fight for Dyslexic Son - A
Leicestershire, UK, couple who want the county council to pay for their
dyslexic son's private education say they may be forced to sell their
house. Annette and John Bridges, of Moira, have sent their son Sean to
a private dyslexia centre in Staffordshire which costs them £12,000
($24,000) a year.  New Phonics Research - Reading
specialists have often pitted phonics against holistic word recognition
and whole language approaches in the war over how to teach children to
read. However, a new study by researchers at New York University shows
that the three reading processes do not conflict, but, rather, work
together to determine speed. Education Shortfall Turning Dyslexics to
Crime - Britain's education system is failing people with
dyslexia, plunging many sufferers into a life of crime, the chairman of
a specialist Sedgemoor school warned this week. New
research published recently shows that while only 10% of people in the
UK have dyslexia, some 60% of prison inmates are affected by the
condition. That's not because dyslexics are pre-disposed to criminal
behaviour, but because of the lack of opportunities and education which
many dyslexics receive. At least, that is the opinion of David
Atkinson, chairman of Edington and Shapwick School, which specialises
in teaching children who have dyslexia. Learning
to Help the Vulnerable  UK
Government Launches Phonics Guide - The UK
government today renewed its commitment to phonics as it unveiled a new
teaching programme aimed at the under-sevens. The Letters and Sounds
programme, which is available free to schools, has been developed by
the Department for Education and Skills in conjunction with Jim Rose, a
former schools inspector whose review of reading among young children
last year recommended that schools adopt the phonics teaching method in
class. Sounds Incredible - Once upon a
time, in a deprived part of Scotland, a plan was put into place to wipe
out pupil illiteracy within a decade. Ten years on, it's worked! It is
mid-morning at St Mary's primary school in Alexandria, a bleak,
post-industrial town north-west of Glasgow that often features on
Scotland's list of areas of multiple deprivation. In Margaret Mooney's
class, 20 five-year-olds have gathered on the floor at the teacher's
feet, pretending to be trains. "Ch, ch, ch, ch, ch," they intone, small
arms circling wildly like the wheels of a locomotive...It's simple things which have made all the difference to children with dyslexia. Writing on the correct colour paper for example and having teachers use the right pen on the white board... 
 Dyslexia About Which Side of the Bain You
Use - Waldie
has been carrying out a brain-mapping study that shows dyslexics try to
read with the right side of their brains, not the left. Using a new
magnetic resonance imaging machine, or MRI, she has mapped the brains
of dyslexics and non-dyslexics as they perform verbal and non-verbal
tasks. In the non-verbal tasks, dyslexic brains work in exactly the
same way as others, however, the verbal tasks show increased blood flow
to the right hemisphere of the dyslexic brain, proving that dyslexics
try to read the wrong way with the right side.  Dyslexia And Stress
- All dyslexic children experience varying degrees of stress at school,
doing their homework, and even at out-of-school activities they attend.
School presents a special challenge, when so much
of their day is focused on dealing with text. For children whose
dyslexia is severe it can be as stressful as a one-legged child going
to a skiing or dance school.Phonetics
Teaching Helps Boys Beat Girls - Boys are
as good as girls at reading and spelling and even overtake them when
taught quickly and systematically by synthetic phonics, a conference
will be told next week. The more traditional teaching methods eradicate
not only the growing gender divide in primary schools but allow
children from disadvantaged backgrounds to do as well as those from
better off homes. The findings of studies in Scotland and South
Gloucestershire suggest that the methods of teaching reading imposed on
schools by the Government for the last decade are to blame for the
widening gap between boys and girls and between different social
classes. Dyslexia Begins When the Wires Don't Meet
- The work done by Dr. Just and his colleagues at
Carnegie Mellon, as well as brain imaging carried out at Georgetown
University, Yale University and other centers, has now proven that
seeing letters in reverse or out of order is not the cause of of
dyslexia. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, which can
measure blood flow to different parts of the brain in real time,
researchers now know that the reading disability involves a weakness in
the part of the brain that decodes the sounds of written language. Attention
Deficit Drugs to Include New Warning - Marcel
Just understands the importance of learning how to read. But in some
ways, especially for people with dyslexia, it's just not fair, the
Carnegie Mellon University brain researcher says. The ability of humans
to speak a language goes back 40,000 to 50,000 years in our
evolutionary history, so it is deeply embedded in our brains. Written
languages, on the other hand, are only about 5,000 years old, and so it
makes perfect sense that some people's brains are not wired to easily
execute that skill.  Undiagnosed Learning
Disabilities Costly Later - The
work done by Dr. Just and his colleagues at Carnegie Mellon, as well as
brain imaging carried out at Georgetown University, Yale University and
other centers, has now proven that seeing letters in reverse or out of
order is not the cause of of dyslexia. Using functional magnetic
resonance imaging, which can measure blood flow to different parts of
the brain in real time, researchers now know that the reading
disability involves a weakness in the part of the brain that decodes
the sounds of written language. 
 New
Dyslexia Cause Theory Blames 'Noise' - The dyslexic brain
struggles to read because even small distractions can throw it off,
according to a new model of dyslexia emerging from a group of recent
studies. The studies contradict an influential, 30-year-old theory that
blamed dyslexia on a neural deficit in processing the fast sounds of
language. Instead, the studies suggest that children with dyslexia have
bad filters for irrelevant data. As a result, they struggle to form
solid mental categories for identifying letters and word sounds. Such
children may benefit from intensive training under "noisy" conditions
to strengthen their mental templates, said University of Southern
California neuroscientist Zhong-Lin Lu.
Lu said there is a "lot of evidence" of learning problems from ambient noise. In one such study, Manis and a collaborator from UCLA found that children with dyslexia struggled to discriminate similar sounds, like "spy" and "sky," because they weighed irrelevant differences in sounds equally with key distinctions.  Dyslexic
Children Use Nearly Five Times the Brain Area to Perform an Ordinary
Language Task as Non-dyslexic Children - Dyslexic children
use nearly five times the brain area as normal children while
performing a simple language task, according to a new study by an
interdisciplinary team of University of Washington researchers. The
study shows for the first time that there are chemical differences in
the brain function of dyslexic and non-dyslexic children. Scientists
Quit in Dyslexia 'Cure' Row - New criticisms have been made
of the research methods used to justify the effectivenes of the Dore
treatment. Commentaries have pointed out that the subjects were not
randomised - the experimenters could choose whether to put each child
in the treatment group or the control group - and the two groups were
mismatched in a way that could have advantaged the Dore treatment. The
control group's treatment was "nothing", which was bound to produce an
unfavourable result, compared with the attention lavished on children
having the Dore treatment. More  Secrets of Dyslexia Unlocked - A
genetic breakthrough will allow dyslexia to be diagnosed in unborn
babies, it was revealed yesterday. Their findings - the result of a
20-year study - mean those likely to suffer from extreme forms of
dyslexia can be identified before they are born and given extra care to
help deal with the condition. Dr Timothy Bates, one of the co-authors
of the study, said the research had unlocked the biological secrets of
dyslexia."We believe this combination of 13 genes makes all the difference between someone who reads flawlessly and speedily and someone who stumbles on basic words," he said. Gene Sequence to Help Diagnose Dyslexia in Unborn Babies Identified EU Project Starts Work on World's Largest Dyslexia Database - A new EU-funded project is aiming to create the world's largest databank on dyslexia. 'The NEURODYS project will also study dyslexia from the cognitive and brain basis but the main emphasis will be on its genetic basis,' said Dr Ramus. 'Although there has been some preliminary work done on dyslexia in the field of genetics, it was only with the mapping of the human genome in 2001, that real molecular studies on dyslexia could start.' Specifically, the project will explore the links between the underlying active brain regions and risk-conferring genes. Full Story NeuroDys  Phonics Teaching - a Child's
Pasport to Literacy - Systematic
phonics should feature in every child's reading instruction and it
should be part of every literacy teacher's repertoire, according to a
UK Government-funded review of research by academics at the
Universities of York and Sheffield. Phonics is especially helpful to
dyslexia children. (Feb 2006) Interview with Nancy Hennessy,
President of the International Dyslexia Association
- I
began teaching ... via the regular education classroom. I spent some
years in that setting and kept thinking about students that I was
interacting with who weren't successful and what other route I might
take that would allow me to meet their needs. I made a decision to go
back to school to study the area of learning disabilities, special
education. At the same time I began to look for an opportunity to work
in the special education classroom. (March 2006) Bookworms Born Not Made - Genes,
rather than reading to young children at home, have a greater influence
on how they learn to read once they reach school, researchers say. The
study, published in the latest issue of the Journal of Research in
Reading, is the first to demonstrate the influence of genes on
potential reading ability in children younger than six ... There is
evidence that early and focused intervention for potential reading
disorders in children with family histories of dyslexia can lead to
grade-level performance in the early school years. (Feb
2006).Brain Images Show Individual Dyslexic Children Respond To Spelling Treatment - Brain images of children with dyslexia taken before they received spelling instruction show that they have different patterns of neural activity than do good spellers when doing language tasks related to spelling. But after specialized treatment emphasizing the letters in words, they showed similar patterns of brain activity. These findings are important because they show the human brain can change and normalize in response to spelling instruction. (Feb 2006).  Primary Movement Therapy -
The program is based on research carried out by Dr
Martin McPhillips at Queen's University, Belfast, which showed that a
significant number of people with reading difficulties still had
primary reflexes present which should normally have disappeared at the
age of 12 months, e.g. the grasp reflex - where the newborn grasps the
finger placed in its palm. By going through a simple movement program,
which replicates these primary reflexes, exceptional progress in
reading and spelling was gained. Dyslexia
discovery - Imagine
surfing on-line. Or picking up a book. Only to find letters and words
all jumbled up. That's exactly what people with dyslexia see. Now,
researchers may be closer to understanding why.Dr. Jeff Gruen from Yale University School of Medicine says, "These children are intelligent and talented and will learn to read."  Early
Speech Difficulties Link with Dyslexia- As is
the case with many toddlers, Michael Thieme's early spoken language was
quirky. He called his older brother William "Illiam," for example."He couldn't get his W's out," his mother, Annette Thieme, said. Unlike most, Michael had speech problems that persisted into kindergarten, putting him at risk for the reading difficulty known as dyslexia.  Researchers
May Have Discovered Dyslexia Gene -
Researchers have identified a variation in a gene that appears to
account for about 17 percent of cases of the reading disability
dyslexia. Experts hailed the finding as a potential milestone in the
understanding of the widespread disorder."This is
highly significant," said Jeffrey W. Gilger, associate dean for
discovery and faculty development at Purdue University.
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