The Addictionary Word of the Day for Friday, December 18th, 2009 is:

 O Tannenbum  Holiday carolling wearing nothing but a smile.

All practitioners in each sector, in each department and in all settings have a responsibility to develop, reinforce and extend the skills which are set out in the literacy experiences and outcomes (Curriculum for Excellence).

Teaching:My remit covers all schools in the region. Therefore I do not – cannot – use my time to teach basic literacy skills, although of course I work with colleagues to support them in meeting the learning needs of individual learners with literacy difficulties. I try to help students learn how to learn better, with the intention that they gradually build up skills which leads to independence. Regular Staged Assessment and Intervention meetings ensure that all learning and teaching is balanced and coherent. At each meeting we assess the effectiveness of our work and build on our knowledge of the child’s needs to plan for the future.

 Many learners find identifying key concepts very taxing. This is especially difficult for some learners with dyslexia who tend to think in global terms – the big picture – rather than noticing the detail (the wood not the trees). This can cause problems when analysing text, whether spoken or read. Mind Mapping is a most effective tool for those learners with visual strengths to plan and organise their thoughts.

I find that teaching a whole class how to make Mind Maps is an effective use of my time. In one school we recognised that two learners with dyslexia in one P3/4 class learnt best through visualisation and the use of images rather than words. We felt that those whose natural style of learning was more verbal, linear and ordered would benefit from the challenge of approaching planning in a different format.

So the class used Kidspiration to prepare a talk to the P1s on Road Safety. After exploring the software they taught others in the class about the various tools (aren’t interactive whiteboards wonderful?). The final assessment was for them to create a Wanted poster of a master criminal outlining the essential things the public should look out for.

Identifying key words is crucial if learners are to progress. The children were repeatedly told that there was no need to write beautifully presented sentences while Mind Mapping. Whether they have taken this radical notion on board is yet to be seen. It always astonishes me that children are so wedded to perfect presentation even when their teachers are very clear that the expectation is of good content not error free writing.

 Three other teaching blocks have also centred on developing note making.

A group of P7s with literacy and organisational difficulties learned how to access text with WordTalk. They listened to texts they found impossible to read but which was at their cognitive level. Highlighting key words was a challenge but when done collaboratively enabled them to make Mind Maps with Kidspiration. These they took back to class as plans for pieces of writing. This work culminated in the creation of an animation about the Solar System – to be processed over the holidays.

I supported another group of p7s in preparing pieces of writing on the theme, Homes of the Future. We viewed a video and designed an estate agent’s schedule describing the technological and environmental aids to support future living. Plans in the form of Mind Maps were put into the class Glow Group and the group used these to write independently in class. I shall continue to work with this group in the new year, not least to consolidate my own understanding of using Glow in a real setting.

A similar group at another school was learning about World War 2. They prepared and delivered a session to the rest of their class demonstrating how to use WordTalk. They now mentor their peers – and their teacher.

A group of P3’s used Clicker 5 to create text from grids about the Ancient Egyptians. I found this a difficult enterprise for various reasons  although the children seemed to enjoy the attention even if they are not empowered to use Clicker independently yet. They were thrilled with the pencils and badges I got from the British Museum. I hope they remember more than these though! I shall return to the school to monitor their progress later in the session.

An individual P5 pupil with significant auditory memory difficulties needed help to focus and follow directions.  He practised listening mindfully, repeating instructions to himself and rehearsing these aloud. He then completed tasks to demonstrate his understanding.

We also worked on creating a safe place (a cave) in his mind to which to retreat when he became stressed. Naturally I spent time with his parents and teachers so that his learning is reinforced at home and in class.

I used a similar approach to work with another 2 pupils in P6 with auditory and visual memory difficulties which caused severe sequencing and organisation problems. This time we identified sources of stress in the morning routine that meant frequent late arrival at school. We made laminated cards and prioritised the morning activities. It took some time to convince the children that watching TV was less crucial than getting dressed! Again, this is a long-term outcome that can only be effective if the child, family and school work together.

The imminence of Standard Grade prelims exams saw me supporting 3 learners with dyslexia who find planning and organising revision a real challenge. A traffic light system helped them identify subjects and topics on which they needed to focus. They made timetables incorporating study as well as leisure time in the weeks prior to the exams. It will be interesting to see whether they achieve greater success as a result of this intervention.

Assessment and Consultation: I continue to use the computerised assessment along with formative assessment to identify needs and design interventions. I have formally assessed and consulted about 25 pupils this term. In addition, I attended Staged Assessment and Intervention meetings with parents and staff for 13 other children.

Policy:

• Literacy Strategy sub-group: I am working with 2 colleagues to improve the Dyslexia Friendly Schools Pledge that 5 schools piloted last session. We aim to clarify the language and process of the checklist, make specific links with Curriculum for Excellence, HMIE guidance and current legislation.
• I liaise with the other literacy strategy sub-groups to ensure ‘joined up thinking’.
• There is ongoing work with a small working group writing guidance on effective use of the Books for All project.

CPD:

• Dorothy Crystal, the optometrist, spoke about her work identifying visual stress.
• 6 of the 8 modules of the ‘Hidden Dyslexia’ online course completed.
• Child Protection course.
• Planning and organisation skills – Occupational Therapy.
• CfE in practice course.
• Cluster meetings.

 Once more this has been a busy but fulfilling term.

My son likes to rummage in bins. He is a connoisseur of rubbish in all its variety. He can tell you what time central London convenience stores put their binbags out on to the streets and hazard a good guess as to what will be in them. He can tell you about how the waste policies of major supermarkets differ: how much of their rubbish is diverted to landfill and how much is recycled or incinerated; which ones lock up their bins, and which leave them open. S. is a “freegan” – someone who subsists largely on food discarded by others. Through this practice, he has become thoroughly acquainted him with the ins and outs of rubbish and he long ago got over any squeamishness about handling it. For him, a bin full of chucked-out food is not an object of physical revulsion. Rather, it’s an opportunity.

And today a group of people is drawing attention to the iniquities in the system that allows between 30 and 50% of its food to be thrown away. Food waste campaigners have rallied together to give free food to 5000 strangers in order to get their voices heard.

Free lunch will be offered to passers-by in Trafalgar Square this afternoon between 12 and 2 as part of the Feeding the 5000 campaign to prepare for the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. The campaign hopes to raise awareness about food waste in wealthy nations. According to ‘This is Rubbish’,  families in the UK alone waste 25% of the food they buy.

Volunteers will offer a range of food including hot soup, smoothies and sandwiches made from salvaged produce that would be otherwise wasted. Odd shaped carrots, wonky onions – all are grist to the mill.

S. is also a squatter.

And despite 1.8 million Britons being on the waiting list for social housing, one million homes are expected to be empty in the UK this year, (according to Inside Housing magazine’s Empty Promises campaign).

Property left unattended can develop serious structural problems, attract crime, detract business, demoralise the local community and devalue neighbouring property prices. Squatters like my son inhabit houses that would otherwise fall to rack and ruin.

So-called “posh squats” have hit the headlines on numerous occasions this year. It is estimated that there are 1million empty homes in the UK. The value of the empty properties is staggering: some Mayfair mansions are worth as much as £50m, even in their dilapidated state. Many of the biggest and most expensive houses are owned not by ‘dusty old dowagers down on their luck but by mystery investors hiding their identities behind offshore companies’.

The owners leave them empty sometimes because they lose track of their properties. Often they have a place in New York, a place in Monte Carlo, one in the south of France and so on. Many elusive owners don’t have the slightest intention of bringing them back to life: it is merely an asset to be traded as they see fit.

Two companies incorporated in the British Virgin Islands (BVI), a tax haven in the Caribbean, were threatened with a compulsory purchase order – until a gang of squatters, plus their dogs, moved in and were pictured on the front page of The Sun in January.

Builders appeared after the squatters were evicted, but they were on site for only a few days and have never returned. It’s just the same situation nine months on, only now they’ve left the lights on.

We have come to expect cynical profiteering from the big international companies. However, according to my son, the vast majority of the empty properties in London at least are council-owned. The grand 3-storey Victorian mansion he occupied in a leafy street in Peckham was one such. The garden was huge and provided much of their sustenance, including lovely home-made jam. When the former occupier had died a decade before it was left to rot. Eventually it had deteriorated to such an extent that the council decided it was no longer worth shoring up. After 18 months of neighbourliness, responsible behaviour and bills paid, my son and his friends were evicted and now the house is the haunt of drug users. The house is delapidated and eroding the good will of others – moslty families – in the street. The council still leaves it to rack and ruin.

This story is repeated a thousand-fold every day.

Let’s think of the homeless and hungry this holiday season.

Thanks to the good old Guardian  for much of this information.

Professor Sergio Della Sala  will be speaking about  Neuroscience in Education: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly at the Playfair Library Hall, Old College, Edinburgh EH8 9YL on Tuesday 23rd February 2010 at 6.00pm.

This is part of The Edinburgh Lectures 2009/10 Making Scotland.

Anyone who combines Venice, scepticism and learning gets my vote. I heard Sergio Della Scala a few years ago at SETT, as it was then. Here he is on the Learning and Teaching Scotland site talking on the theme of learning about learning. I think this talk in February will be as interesting. I’ve ordered my tickets. Tickets are only £3 each and you can buy them here. Perhaps I’ll see you there?

In a comment on a recent post about auditory processing Alan Coady remarks on the differences inherent in learning Chinese. I have just read a bit around the subjexct but cannot claim to grasp all the implications. Here goes:

There are very real differences in how dyslexia manifests itself in different languages, says Maryanne Wolf whose important book I have mentioned before.

Depending on what is emphasised in any given language (fluency in German, visual spatial memory in Chinese, phonological skills in English), there will be somewhat different faces of dyslexia, as well as different predictors of reading failure. Different writing systems make somewhat different uses of the major structures involved in the reading circuit.

There is a suggestion from researchers at the University of Hong Kong that dyslexia may be more even complex in children speaking Chinese than English. In Chinese dyslexia, disordered phonological processing may coexist with abnormal visual spatial processing. In the study, scans showed that activation in a portion of the brain known to mediate visual spatial processing was weaker in those with dyslexia than in those who do not find reading a challenge.

The fact that Chinese and Western dyslexics show structural abnormalities in different brain regions suggests that dyslexia may even be two different brain disorders in the two streams of culture.

While alphabetic languages like English were learnt using letter-to-sound conversion rules, pronunciations in a non-alphabetic, logographic language like written Chinese must be memorised by rote.

The part of the brain affected in western learners with dyslexia is responsible for letter – sound conversion, However, the region for Chinese is close to the region for motor skills. So, learning to read and write Chinese puts even greater demands on learners with dyslexia who have an auditory processing difficulty – generally accepted as the most significant characteristic in the majority of learners with dyslexia.

I think this means that for those in the west with visual and auditory processing difficulties the challenges are not dissimilar to the problems encountered by Chinese students with this specific difficulties.

Wolf concludes that learning to read Chinese requires a strong right hemisphere (present in many learners with dyslexia) because of the numerous, visually demanding logographic characters.  

The remarkable rapidity and efficiency achieved by (non-dyslexic) Chinese is on display in brain images of modern Chinese readers. These images show the brain’s vast capacity for visual specialisation when both hemispheres are recruited in reading all of the many characters. The Chinese readers’ fluency is one proof that efficiency is not reserved for alphabet readers alone.

Wolf refers to a fascinating early bilingual case study showing clear differential use of hemispheres.

A bilingual businessman, proficient in English and Chinese, suffered a severe stroke. He lost his ability to read Chinese, but could still read English. This is because the brain can be differentially organised for different writing systems.

Not only are different pathways utilised by readers of Chinese and English, but different routes can be used within the same brain for reading different types of script. And because of the brain’s prodigious ability to adapt its design, the reader can become efficient in 2 very different languages.

There are multiple pathways to fluent comprehension and reading in any language.

But do Chinese readers develop visual skills because of their alphabet? We know that practice means neurological pathways grow and extend exponentially. Do we, with our left hemisphere dominant education system disproportionately reward learners with strengths in responding to auditory stimuli (a teacher’s chalk and talk, stress on phonics in the early stages of acquiring literacy) and rapid information processing (the Hare rather than the Tortoise)? 

My brain hurts. I’d welcome comments to help me clarify this.

Once more I have been dipping into Maryanne Wolf’s magnificent book, Proust and the Squid, for enlightenment on the differences inherent in identifying dyslexia in speakers of different languages.

The specific phonological skills used in reading depend on the reader’s expertise, the word to be read, and the writing system, involved. A highly regular, highly frequent word like ‘carpet’ (or words in more regular languages) will take far less phonological processing than, for example, ‘phonological ’.

Wolf writes:

Readers of, say, German or Italian quickly learn the far more consistent letter-sound rules and bypass almost a year of laborious decoding that English requires. English and French readers appear to employ more of the regions of the brain devoted to identifying words in the area in which visualisation of words is thought to occur.

Presumably the greater emphasis on morphemes and irregular words (such as ‘yacht’) requires more visual and orthographic representational knowledge during processing.

The shorter time needed for decoding in regular languages allows more time for comprehension than in English.

When phonological skills play a more significant role in reading acquisition, as they do in less regular languages like English and French, phoneme awareness and decoding accuracy are often very deficient – and are good indicators of dyslexia. When these skills play a less dominant role (in transparent languages like German, and the more logographic writing systems), processing speed becomes the stronger diagnostic predictor of reading performance, and reading fluency and comprehension issues dominate the profile of dyslexia.

In these more transparent languages – Spanish, German, Finnish, Dutch, Greek and Italian – the child with dyslexia exhibits fewer problems with decoding words and more problems reading connected text fluently and with good comprehension.

So much for those international comparisons of reading levels: useful perhaps as a snapshot of where children are in the acquisition of literacy but certainly no help in determining whether the population as a whole is more or less literate or whether teachers are failing in their efforts.

In a previous post I wrote about the difficulties inherent in learning a foreign language for some people with dyslexia.

It seems that children who learning more regular alphabets, such as Greek and Spanish, gain fluency and efficiency faster than children who have to tackle less regular languages such as English. No surprises there.

This does not mean, of course, that dyslexia doesn’t exist in these countries whose tongue is more consistent than ours. Rather that the difficulties are less likely to appear so early and are not always about late development in acquiring literacy. Differences in organisational skills, working memory and information processing may all be evident and be compatible with an identification of dyslexia even if reading and writing is fluent.

A useful resource is Hilary McColl’s site devoted to modern foreign language learning and inclusion.

In an interesting review of a book by David Shields, Zadie Smith discusses definitions of the term ‘essay’ and why novelists write them. It set me thinking about the whole blogging process, and the resonances between blogging and essay writing.

Smith calls Shield’s book of essays ‘an engaging form of bricolage without obvious authorial structure … we remain unsure whether the entire manifesto is “built” rather than written,, the sum of many broken pieces of the real simply shored up and left to vibrate against each other in significant arrangement … Conventional structure be damned’.

Smith refers to Virginia Woolf’s contention that the essay is ‘a form of thinking, consciousness, wisdom-seeking’ which nevertheless takes as much art as fiction.  She describes the choice facing writers between ‘the comforts of limit’ (as in a conventional novel) or ‘the freedom of irregularity’ promised by the essay form. David Shields’ argument is for ‘the superiority of the messy real – of what we might call “truthfulness” – over the careful creation of novelists’. For Shields it is exactly what is ‘tentative, unmade and unpolished’ in the essay that is important. This sounds remarkably like many posts I read and write.

So, why do I blog? Samuel Jahnson’s quote above rather describes my style. I would not dream of ennobling any of my posts with the term ‘essay’. But my writing is an attempt to strive to make sense (if only to myself), to try to explore ideas in a little depth for greater understanding to emerge. Apparently in the 16^th century an essay was ‘the action or process of trying or testing; a sample, a rehearsal’. I think this describes my writing better than the 19^th century version: ‘a composition more or less elaborate in style, though limited in range’.

The intention when I started blogging was to compile short articles about my area of professional interest with a view to developing my thinking. The overarching theme is education, specifically dyslexia, but I frequently wander off. I interject information sharing with ruminations on the wider picture relating to learning and teaching. Occasionally I meander into the realms of holidays, my family, and personal experiences. There may come a time when I might actually organise these random thoughts into some sort of coherent form.

I plan to publish a series of posts about, say, dyslexia, with some sort of structure but then I get distracted by events. These can be everyday activities intruding on the writing process, reading a fascinating article or book that fills my mind so that I need to put it on paper to work through the ideas, or seeing a news item that I feel requires an immediate response. Thus I have evolved a scattergun approach rather than the beautifully ordered sequence of erudite discussions I had in mind when I started. As Stephen Downes writes in ‘How to be Heard’:

… all writing – even fiction writing – is to a large degree reactive. It has its origins in the prompts and stimuli that inform a person’s everyday life.

He goes on to say that:

Readers that want to be writers recognize this, and organize and cultivate these supports.

It is only recently that I have begun to participate in the wider community by commenting on a range of other blogs. I even join in discussions now with people to whom I have never been introduced. As in many areas, I have a reasonable grasp of the abstract notions surrounding the use of digital technologies but I take much longer to acquaint myself with the real world.

I have become somewhat addicted to the process of blogging and find that my mindfulness is sharpened, as Seth Godin and Tom Peters remark in this clip:

I have long promoted the use of Clicker 5 to support independence in reading and especially writing. But I have reluctantly decided to abandon advising its use. Crick Software claims that,

Clicker is the proven reading and writing tool that helps pupils of all abilities to achieve success in reading and writing. Clicker is used on over half a million school computers and in over 90% of UK primary schools.

It is a fantastic resource, although the talking word processor aspect has now been superseded by WordTalk. However, in my experience Clicker is rarely utilised very much at all in classrooms.

Why is this? Well, either teachers are uninterested in supporting their reluctant readers and writers or the software is not user friendly. I don’t think it’s hard to choose which of these options is the most likely.

I have taught many children to access Clicker 5. Sometimes this has been relatively successful. Children can produce pieces of work that are largely coherent, well presented and illustrated without having to spell. It is unusual, though, for the use of Clicker 5 to become a central component of classroom activity independently.

I have been working this term with a group of 6 P3s (7 year olds) on The Ancient Egyptians. (Don’t ask my why this topic was chosen; seems daft to me but there we are.)

I located a ‘Find Out and Write About’ disc that I thought would solve all my planning problems. And, indeed, it is a lovely resource with 3 levels of difficulty, interesting information and clear illustrations.

Unfortunately, there is only one copy. So I did what all of us do, improvised. I borrowed the information – why re-invent the wheel? – to create grids for the children to work on in pairs. I have made many grids over the years but each time I have to re-learn the process. As I, like all teachers, have little time to prepare resources the grids turned out to be less user-friendly than I’d hoped.

I spent most of the first session sorting out the blips. That is, once we had managed to open the software. Just the admin involved took most of the initial lesson: turning the laptops on once they had been located; searching for someone who knew the logins after refreshment; helping little ones type passwords.

Following sessions were a whirlwind of activity with both myself and the support for learning teacher (who gave up her precious preparation time to help me) running between 3 pairs of children helping them to produce at most 8 lines of text. Yes, you read that correctly: 2 very experienced teachers working with 6 7 year olds became frazzled and frantic in five 45 minute sessions!

This is just not practicable in a busy classroom. Differentiating work is essential of course, but when the energy required in providing support far outstrips the end result we have to question whether it’s worthwhile.

I shall still use Clicker 5. The ‘Find Out and Write About’ and Talking Books software are terrific and can be used with small groups to enable them to access stories and produce a considerable amount of writing without having the drawback of poor secretarial skills hindering the process. I will also continue to recommend accessing extant grids available on learninggrids.com. Many teachers contribute their work to this site and they can be incredibly useful.

But I shall be much charier about recommending its use as a resource for class teachers to implement alone. It’s just not possible.

I’d welcome comments on this, colleagues.

Following the success of last year’s initiative customers at Blackwell’s book shop on South Bridge can once again support Edinburgh’s most vulnerable children through an exciting initiative, The Children’s Book Tree.
Blackwell’s are working with City of Edinburgh Council, Edinburgh Women’s Aid and Edinburgh Young Carers to help make Christmas a little better for disadvantaged local children. The scheme means that children who will be living in difficult circumstances at Christmas, who have caring responsibilities beyond their years or those who won’t be at home for Christmas and will have few personal possessions, will each receive a book to treasure.

The scheme is coordinated by volunteer Lizzie Poulton who explains: “The Children’s Book Tree is different from other charity donation schemes as each child has had the opportunity to say what their interests are and what kind of books appeal to them. Customers can then choose a book for that child, knowing that it will not only be a present they’ll really appreciate, but that books and stories can inspire, reassure and provide escape for children in difficult personal circumstances.”

The children have each put their Christmas wishes for a book on a gift tag which is then hung on a Christmas tree in store. All customers need to do is choose a book they think that child will really appreciate, from dinosaurs to fairies, Jacqueline Wilson to James and the Giant Peach. Staff in the children’s department will be more than happy to help people with their selections if they are unsure. The customer than pays for that book and leaves it with staff in store who will ensure that it gets wrapped, before being distributed to the right child for Christmas day.

The Children’s Book Tree is now in store and will be until Sunday the 20th of December. Please pop by, select a tag and buy a book for a child. If you are in a rush ready-selected books with labels are placed beneath the tree or if you are unable to drop in the shop you can call Blackwell where a member of staff will be happy to select and take payment for a book over the telephone.

The tree has only been in store since 25th November and is already a success as customers shopping for Christmas presents are taking a moment to buy an extra present for a child who will be spending Christmas away from their family, in a refuge or caring for others. One child who requested a book by popular teen author Louise Rennison, will be in for an extra treat as the author herself purchased the book for that child and added a personal note, when visiting Blackwell’s this week.