I have written many articles on the Americans and British as well as Australians and
New Zealanders grouping any and all children who have difficulty reading as
‘dyslexics’. The Americans and British say that most of the dyslexics have a
‘phonological awareness deficit’ which I believe is erroneous. I have written
many posts on this in my blog as well.
I had stopped teaching for about a year and the one student
that we have is taught by my wife. On 5.2.2017 someone (let’s call him Jim)
telephoned me and asked me to evaluate his daughter to find out as to why she
cannot read. I agreed stating that I only deal with disengaged/ shut down
students and will be able to find out in a one hour session.
On 9.2.2017 Jim and his wife (let us call her Jane) brought
their daughter Jill (not her real name) to my house. Jim explained that Jill is
smart and when she talks will talk incessantly just like her mother. On this
day Jill hardly opened her mouth. Jim said that Jill will not sit with him to
read any material he reads to her. Within a minute or so she would walk away
from reading. Jill was not interested in reading at all said Jim.
Jane told me that Jill was made the monitor of the class
when she went into primary one after 2 years in a kindergarten. However, her
badge was removed when the teacher found out that she could not read.
I asked Jill if she would like to learn to read and be as
good as her classmates. She nodded her head giving me the first indication that
she could be a disengaged student. Disengaged students do not want to be left
out and would do whatever they can to be as good as their classmates if not
better.
I then asked Jill to read a list of alphabets I had written
on a piece of paper. The first line was written in large fonts and I had five
lines of alphabets gradually becoming smaller and smaller until the last line
was of the size of those in children’s books. She read all of the alphabets
correctly.
I did that exercise just as a crude way of finding out is
she had eyesight problem. This confirmed that she had no such problem.
I had expected her to read the names of the alphabets but
(fortunately) she read she sound of the alphabets instead. This was just a one
minute exercise. It, however, confirmed that her problem is that of a
disengaged student.
She, like many kids in kindergarten and tuition centres had
been taught the alphabet sounds (phonics) in the wrong way. She sounded out the
following consonants in the following way:
M as Mur/Mer
S as Sur/Sir
T as Ter/Tur etc
As explained, elsewhere in my blog, this is one of the reasons a
majority of the ‘so called dyslexic children’ shut down or disengage from
studying. If not corrected they will lose their self esteem and end up being
disruptive in class and then will be called stupid/ lazy by other students and
sometimes by the teachers.
I told Jim and Jane that I will try and get her to read
within 4 months of one hour lesson 3 times per week.
I will commence teaching on 14.3.2017 and write a summary of
what happens so that parents of similar kids may be able to benefit.
There are about 10 to 20 percent of kids in the world who
are unable to read and a majority of such students are actually smart kids who
have shut down because of wrong methods of teaching.
Please inform parents of kids who may have such reading
problems.
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