My emails to Dr. Reid Lyon (part one)

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Why do Kids shut-down (Part 3)

Schools here and in most parts of the world teach the alphabets as follows: a is for apple; b is for bed; c is for cat; d is for dog …….. z is for zebra. All kids whether prone to shutting down or not will easily learn these letter sounds. After this has been taught the teachers begin to teach simple words and then simple sentences and slowly start building up the vocabulary of the kids.

Why do kids shut-down (Part 2)

As stated earlier a child shuts down when what he is taught is not consistent with what he has been taught previously. I have explained this about one of my first students who refused to sound out the word fox. As far as she was concerned she had learned the sound of the letter f as fur/fer/fuh.

If the letter ‘o’ followed by the letter ‘x’ is ox, then fox must be fer-ox and not just fox as was sounded by me. I repeat; to this child and most shut down kids if the word ‘ox’ is the way it is sounded then adding an ‘f’ in front of the word ‘ox’ must be sounded ‘fer-ox’ or ‘fur-ox’ because she has been taught that the sound/phoneme for the letter ‘f’ is ‘Fer/fur/fuh’.

Why do kids shut down - Part 1

My last student whom I weaned in less than 3 months is another example of a kid who had shut down. Surely if 10 to 20 percent of kids shut-down they must be wired differently from the other 80% of kids.

However, this is not the same thing as an older kid not understanding some physics or mathematics concept as suggested by my friend Mr.Kandiah.  We will explore as to why these kids shut-down.

Dyslexia OR Shut-Down Learner (Part 3)

I don’t like the word dyslexic as it does not have a definite meaning. I prefer to use the word shut-down learners or Disengaged Students. These are the type of students who have come to me. I have yet to see a student who has the following difficulties:

·         Problems processing and understanding what he or she hears

·         Inability to sound out the pronunciation of an unfamiliar words

·         Difficulty learning the names of letters or the sounds of the alphabet, numbers

·         Difficulty learning to say the alphabet in the correct order or counting to 10 correctly.

·         Difficulty with "phonemic awareness"

·         Complain of feeling or seeing non-existent movement while reading

·         Visual disturbances when reading – for example, a child may describe letters and words as seeming to move around or appear blurred

Dyslexia or Shut Down Learner (Part 2)

·         Trouble learning a foreign language (2)

This term Learning Disability or Dyslexia is used as a loose collection of problems from underachievement to mental retardation.
On what basis do researchers state that students with Learning Disabilities or so called dyslexics have difficulty learning a foreign language?
Where is the evidence to support the statement that so called dyslexics have difficulties learning a foreign language?

Dyslexia or Shut- Down Learners

Many web-sites say that one of the problems of dyslexics is that of learning a foreign language.

·         

I have extracted the following from the internet.

“In the late 1960's, Dr. Kenneth Dinklage of Harvard University was compelled to find out why some of Harvard's brightest and best were not passing their language classes.

Dinklage found that a number of the failing language students had in fact been diagnosed as learning disabled and had overcome their disability through good tutoring and very hard work

Often these students are classified as having dyslexia or language learning disabilities; sometimes they are not classified but nevertheless struggle considerably to meet the foreign language requirement.

Students who appear to have the most difficulty are those who have experienced moderate to severe reading and spelling difficulties in their native language in their early schooling and now are required to study another language in school.”

What Screen Time Can Really Do to Kids' Brains

I saw the following and thought you may want to read:

Too much at the worst possible age can have lifetime consequences.

Posted Apr 17, 2016 

 

 https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/behind-online-behavior/201604/what-screen-time-can-really-do-kids-brains

 

A disengaged students plight

Here is a Whats app clip I would like you to examine carefully.

Unfortunately I have been unable to copy the video here. Highlight the whole url and click on open link on new tab.
 
https://www.facebook.com/luqmanmichel/videos/10154405285275502/

The kid in the video would probably be classified as a dyslexic and accused of being stupid. To me it is obvious that he is smart and a confident kid. His problem is that he has not been taught properly. He has not been informed of the difference between reading in Bahasa Malaysia (Malay) and the English Language.

Disengaged students – The Problem

Go to any school you choose and speak with the English language teacher or with the superintendent. Ask him/her if there are students who do well in mathematics but are unable to read in English. 

All schools have at least 10% of kids who leave school without being able to read. The question is to ask as to why this is the case.

Also ask as to how I dare say that I can teach Jill to study after one minute of interacting with her. All I did was talk to Jim and Jane for about 20 minutes and then for less than a minute asked Jill to read a few alphabets written on a sheet of paper. After the one minute with Jill I knew she was a shut down learner.

After my first lesson with Jill I have confidently confirmed that I can get Jill to read at grade level within 4 months. I leave you with these questions to ponder and ask yourself as to why kids are not taught in a way that they ought to be taught. Why kids are not taught in a way whereby the illiteracy level will be reduced drastically? 

My first lesson with Jill

Give every day the chance to become the greatest day in your life (Mark Twain)

I start by teaching 3 to 5 Dolch words a day which I ask my students to memorise. Some of the Dolch words can be sounded out but I still get them to memorise them.

There are 220 Dolch words which can be found at: http://www.mrsperkins.com/dolch.htm

The reason for memorizing these words is that they (not all of them) are difficult to be sounded out. A few of these words will make it easy for you to understand why they are best to be memorized especially for the 10 to 20 % of kids: with, here, which etc.

Disengaged students - Consonant Blends

I read the last comment in the article mentioned in my post on FB yesterday (13.3.2017). 

Here is the comment from the reader in the link in my post yesterday: superkate'smum said...

Hi,
My daughter is certainly one of the children you describe. I noticed her 'shut down' for the 1st time when she went into year 1. On the first day of school she met her new teacher who was in a rush. The teacher fired several questions at Kate very rapidly and Kate's eyes began to fixate and glaze over.
I have seen her shut down in class many times since. Kate was taught the alphabet correctly, with the appropriate voiced and voiceless sounds. The problem for her was blending the sounds together due to issues with auditory closure. She could not identify words if they were broken down, partially spoken, spoken with an accent, or spoken with the emphasis on the wrong syllable.
What a varied and complex condition dyslexia is!

Disengaged student – A case study

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.

Help kids figure out new words

                                                                    

Years ago, I shared a detailed lesson on how children can figure out unfamiliar words. That resource is no longer available, so let me briefly explain the approach I use with my students.

 

Not every word can be learned this way, but the method is powerful for teaching children how to logically decode many new words they encounter. It’s not about guessing — it’s about reasoning.

Family word 'an'

 Here is another example (final example) on how to prepare a book that can be easily learned by a disengaged kid. It has worked will all my students who learn to read within a few months.