The Reading Clinic Community

If We Can Brag a Little Bit...

2008-05-03T12:54:00.000-07:00

Here's a truly unsolicited testimonial to The Reading Clinic in Palo Alto:

http://www.neighbor.com/review/Tutoring/The+Reading+Clinic/97

Thanks to Kristin Powell for finding it!

Autism: The Musical

2008-04-29T14:16:00.000-07:00

Following five Los Angeles children over the course of six months, director Tricia Regan captures the struggles and triumphs of their family lives and observes how this musical production gives these performers a comfort zone in which they can explore their creative sides.

http://www.autismthemusical.com

Capturing Autistic Experience on Film

2008-04-28T14:07:00.000-07:00

Interesting article about an upcoming film that will be shot in Spain and will follow autistic children and their parents through a 500-mile pilgrimage. (Including a young boy from Palo Alto.)

http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_9081380

More about the movie:

http://www.pilgrimsmovie.com/pilgrims/pilgrims.html

Literacy and Personal Experience

2008-04-24T14:11:00.000-07:00

I recently came across these words in an article written in 1986, which I think have relevance to our practice of VV today:

"Literacy is the capacity to relate words on the page to personal experience. It is a mysterious filling in. When we read about a mountain, we go beyond dictionary definitions to flesh out the word with our own experience, whether from our senses, our imaginations, or what we have already heard and read. And we read between the lines in the same way, filling in the unstated motive, linking cause with effect. We use our imaginations."
--"Coming to Words: Writing as Process and the Reading of Literature," Gary Lindberg

I think our practice of stimulating our students' ability to visualize can only be strengthened by an awareness of where a person's pictures come from in the first place. By stimulating a student's capacity to visualize text, we are also helping that student access and use what they know already to build new knowledge. We have often noted to one another that VV is limiting when we think that picturing is the only way we process text. We have to help our students see that picturing is the way we connect our personal experience to the words we read.

I wanted to bring up this idea of activating schema and background knowledge because I have seen how it engages our students, how it allows them to have a successful reading. We need more systematized ways to activate schema before we start the process of VV with felts. Pre-visualizing keywords and making predictions have been extremely successful with our VV students in Palo Alto. In short, I advocate making pre-reading (in the sense of making a student aware of their background knowledge) the first step we take with all of our students when doing VV exercises.

Further rationale for systematizing pre-reading is in the needs of our students. Many of our students fall into one of two categories: top-down or bottom-up readers. Top-down readers over-rely on their background knowledge. They take a word or concept from the reading and make associations based on their own experiences. Often these students are described as "off topic" or as lacking focus. Pre-reading allows these students to be self-conscious of the experiences they are tapping into while asking them to respect the text, to acknowledge that it may have a different point of view or new information.

Bottom-up readers conversely over-rely on the text. These are the students who repeat back or memorize the text without processing it. Pre-reading forces these students to tap into their background knowledge, making it more available to them when they read.

In both cases, pre-reading encourages dialogue with the text and the higher order thinking skills we so highly regard. Let's make a conscious effort to learn more about schema theory and share that with our tutors, students and parents.

I have several articles (some more accessible than others) on schema theory. If anyone is interested, I'd be happy to make copies.

Kristin Agius

Teacher Scholarships for Slingerland Training

2008-04-18T09:10:00.000-07:00

Dear NCBIDA members and friends,

We are pleased to announce a special opportunity for teachers this summer. The Northern California Branch of The International Dyslexia Association (NCBIDA) will provide partial scholarships for teachers to attend trainings in Slingerland multisensory structured language approaches for reading instruction. These trainings include all the components recommended by the National Reading Panel for regular education teachers, as well as for those working primarily with children with learning disabilities.

Classroom teachers have found these trainings to be instrumental in expanding their knowledge of language structure, including phonics, and they report feeling much more confident about teaching the struggling readers in their classrooms and help them improve their decoding, fluency and spelling. For testimonials from past scholarship recipients, please visit www.dyslexia-ncbida.org/articles/winter06/thoughts_on_slingerland.html.

For more information on the scholarship timeline and upcoming Slingerland classes – and to download an application form – go to www.dyslexia-ncbida.org/scholarships.html.

We would appreciate your help in sharing this news and in encouraging your friends and colleagues to take advantage of this opportunity to improve the effectiveness of their teaching.

Sincerely,

Jennifer Rabalais
NCBIDA Scholarship Committee Chair

Chris Stephen: Featured Tech Innovator

2008-04-17T11:31:00.000-07:00

The National Center for Technology Innovation is featuring Read How You Want founder Chris Stephen.

Click here to view the article.

Amazing 17-month-old

2008-03-25T13:25:00.000-07:00

Thank to Kristin Powell for telling me about this story. They definitely touch on the importance of multisensory instruction for language acquisition.

2008-03-19T09:52:00.000-07:00

The Northern California Branch of The International Dyslexia Association (NCBIDA)

and Parents Education Network (PEN) present

A Day with the Experts

Saturday, April 12, 2008
San Francisco Day School

Overcoming Dyslexia:

The Science of Reading and Dyslexia

with Drs. Sally and Bennett Shaywitz

ADHD: Beyond the Basics

with Dr. Eric Tridas

Assistive Technologies for LD Students

2008-03-13T15:45:00.000-07:00

A reminder from Parents Education Network about an upcoming event:

Assistive Technologies for LD Students
Date: 3 April 2008, Thursday
Time: 07:00 PM
End time: 09:00 PM
Location: Fort Mason Conference Center, San Francisco

Are you wondering what technology will help your child in school?

Bob Luke, Technology Coordinator at Charles Armstrong School will discuss and demonstrate the latest assistive technologies for LD students.

Topics will include:

- Internet resources for finding out about Assistive Technology and available products

- Paperless writing environment -- keyboarding, using Inspiration, MS Word and Kurzweil in the Writing Process

- Voice Recognition Software -- Dragon NaturallySpeaking

- Talking word processors -- Kurzweil, WYNN and Write:OutLoud/SOLO

More information at www.parentseducationnetwork.org

Growth Mindsets

2008-03-06T15:24:00.000-08:00

MINDSETS: FIXED vs. GROWTH

Some people believe that their intelligence is a fixed trait. They have a certain amount of it and that's that.

Other people have a very different definition of intelligence. For them intelligence is not a fixed trait that they simply possess, but something that they can cultivate through learning.

In one world, effort is a bad thing. It, like failure, means you're not smart or talented. If you were, you wouldn't need effort. In the other world, effort is what makes you smart or talented.

Carol Dweck, Self-Theories and Mindset

What kind of mindset do our students have--fixed or growth?

What kind of mindset do you have?

How can we encourage growth mindsets in our students?

Setback for Home Schooling

2008-03-06T15:00:00.000-08:00

Big Blow to Home Schooling: Court rules that CA students must be taught by credentialed tutors at home or else sent to full-time schools.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/06/BAJDVF0F1.DTL&tsp=1

TRC's color scheme

2008-03-05T13:35:00.000-08:00

An interior design student happened to stop by TRC Saratoga this morning and commented on the cheerful color scheme inside the clinic. She followed up on our meeting with the following e-mail, which I thought was worth sharing with all of you (especially those of us in Saratoga and Palo Alto who are surrounded daily by green, blue, and orange):

Blue is said to encourage thought, contemplation, and meditation, and
so is the color of intellectual activity.  It can be a lively color,
can lower body temperature, pulse rate, and blood pressure.

Green is thought of as the most natural color, calming and restful to
the eyes.  A cheerful and stable color that has associations with
health and well being.

Orange is considered happy and cheerful.

So, it seems that the colors are quite appropriate!

Read to the Pig was a hit!

2008-03-03T11:26:00.000-08:00

Sebastian Duong reads to Sally, held by Ann Fitts.

Read to the Pig for Read Across America Day

2008-02-27T12:42:00.000-08:00

Answer: In honor of Dr. Seuss's birthday and Read Across America Day, the Burlingame Reading Clinic will have a Read to the Pig event on Saturday, March 1. There will be a number of animals, and kids will have a chance to read to a pig and get a certificate for participating in Read Across America Day. All children and adults are welcome to read to the pig.

Activating Schema for Recall and Understanding

2008-02-23T16:39:00.000-08:00

One of the speakers I saw a few weeks ago at the Learning and the Brain Conference was Larry Cahill, a professor of neurobiology and behavior at UC Irvine. He made some important points about memory and emotion that relate directly to what we do. We are not, he noted, "passive video recorders." Memory is an "active, constructive" process.

One of Cahill's students conducted a study in which participants were introduced to new information and concepts. Following this introduction, one group was asked to plunge their hands into ice water, while another was not. Then, after an interval of several weeks, both groups were questioned about the information and concepts. The "ice water" group did better.

Now, I am not proposing that we dunk our students' hands into ice water following the discovery of new concepts, but I do believe this is a demonstration of something of which we are all probably aware. Making an emotional connection to content etches that content more firmly in memory. Not a bad thing to think about with VV students.

One fourth grader at our clinic had been reading the first in the excellent Shredderman series by Wendelin Van Draanen. He's a bouncy guy who still has some difficulty with sentence by sentence work below his grade level. I had thought this relatively straightforward book with its realistic and comic portrayals of the trials and tribulations of elementary school would appeal to him, but I despaired as I read the clinical notes in his binder.

Observations such as "missing key elements in story" and "poor recall" indicated that this student was not having success with this book. I think it's really important for VV students to work contextually, but it was disappointing that it didn't seem to be working here.

I found an opportunity to work with him myself. Instead of asking him what the book was about, or to tell me the story so far, I began talking about Bubba, a character in the book.

"You know, when I was in school, there always seemed to be one or two kids like Bubba. I could never understand what the deal is with guys like that. Why do they act that way?"

My student leapt in. "Yeah, guys like that are mean for no reason."

I had not told him that Bubba was a bully, but he knew. We went on to have a conversation about bullies in general, bullies at his school, and most significantly, considering the clinical notes I'd been reading, the things Bubba did in Shredderman that were clear manifestations of bulliness. It turned out this boy had a fairly clear understanding of the novel, but could not be reached when asked to demonstrate that understanding by listing plot elements or characters.

It was an emotional connection that unlocked his memory and opened up expression of his understanding.

Kristin Powell has asked us to watch the Reading Rockets video on comprehension, "Making Reading Count," in which panel members including Nanci Bell talk about strategies for better understanding. One way to remember such strategies mentioned by Sharon Walpole, a professor of education at the University of Delaware, was using the acronym PICTURE. The "I," or course, stands for "imagine—visualize, create a mental image." That we are all familiar with.

The "U" is for "use" as in "use what you know—background knowledge." Looking at the video and reading recognized works on teaching comprehension, like Strategies That Work and Mosaic of Understanding, have pushed me to think about what we can do before, during and after visualizing and verbalizing to enhance that process.

Certainly one possibility is using what the student knows. Since emotion forms memory, we should tap into the student's personal emotional memories. This is what is called "making text to self connections" in Strategies That Work and "activating schema" in Mosaic of Understanding.

With this concept—"activating schema"—I'll bring us back to Larry Cahill's lecture. As I read Mosaic of Thought, I wondered where that terminology came from. Cahill went into the beginnings of the idea that memory is connected to emotion, referring to a short story called "The War of the Ghosts," which psychologists use to explore how emotional response powers memory.

This Native American tale was first used by British psychologist Frederic Bartlett early in the twentieth century. He asked people to read the unfamiliar story, then to retell it at a later time. He found that readers changed the story so that it fit it into what they already knew. The revised version was what they remembered. Bartlett put forth the hypothesis (still influential after nearly a century) that we use "schema"—cultural and historical contextualization—to remember and understand.

When we work with students on understanding through visualization, let's strengthen that imaging process by activating schema.

This area—strategies that surround what we do in VV, enhancing memory and comprehension—is one I intend to explore further.

Afterword: The entire acronym PICTURE is: P for predict, I for image, C for clarify, T for try (asking questions), U for use what you know, R for review, and E for evaluate.

Our new couch in the Saratoga clinic!

2008-02-20T15:58:00.000-08:00

That's some good sittin' and ponderin'. (photo credit: Azania Baker)

Reading Daze

2008-02-13T11:24:00.000-08:00

Read Across America, sponsored by National Education Association, takes place on Dr. Seuss's (Theodore Geisel) birthday. Sometimes schools look for people to read aloud, so perhaps this might be a good outreach for us. We could also give kids a certificate for participating.

Drop Everything and Read Day is also sponsored by the National Education Association along with the Parent Teacher Association, the Association for Library Service to Children (a division of the American Library Association), Reading Rockets, The General Federation of Women’s Clubs, the Newspaper Association of America Foundation, First Book, HarperCollins Children’s Books, and Ramona Quimby. As you might guess from the last sponsor, it takes place on Beverly Cleary's birthday. Let's start thinking about active participation in this one, too.

Read Across America Day: March 3, 2008

2008-02-13T11:09:00.000-08:00

D.E.A.R. 4/12/08

2008-02-12T15:43:00.000-08:00

"Drop Everything and Read" Day! 4/12/08

http://www.dropeverythingandread.com/

http://www.readingrockets.org/calendar/dear

ADHD and ME

2008-02-04T14:10:00.000-08:00

I was really privileged to attend a book launch last Saturday for a new book called ADHD and Me: What I Learned From Lighting Fires at the Dinner Table by Blake E.S. Taylor. Blake is a freshman at UC Berkeley and wrote this book during his last two years of high school. It's a memoir that really shows what it's like to have ADHD from the student's perspective. He deals with bullies, confronts unfair teachers, struggles with distractions during tests, etc. He has useful tips of how to deal with each part of the condition and has a great and positive attitude. I will be getting a copy for all of the centers. It's great read for middle school (Serena read it) through professionals.

Handwriting and Maryanne Wolf

2008-01-24T14:00:00.000-08:00

I'm excited about rolling out the implementation of Handwriting Without Tears at TRC.

I have not read the New Yorker article yet, but am looking forward to it. Also, I was lucky enough to meet with Maryanne Wolf when she was on sabbatical at Stanford. She coined the phrase "double deficit" in describing individuals with both auditory (phoneme processing disorder) and visual memory weakness in relationship to dyslexia. I'm planning on reading her book in the next 6 months. Has anyone read it? What did you think?

Handwriting in PA

2008-01-21T14:38:00.000-08:00

Melissa and I tried to follow the sequence of the program the best we could given that we don't have mats for all the letters. We used the wood blocks, the dry erase board and the work sheets with Nicholas in that order. We chose one letter a day to work on. The task took about 7 minutes. We found that the language of the steps is really effective for reminding students where to start and stop their strokes. I am not an expert, but I'd be glad to share what I gleaned from the training with Jeanette and/or Lars.

Handwriting and Twilight of Books

2008-01-18T07:23:00.000-08:00

Regarding Handwriting Without Tears: Jeanette Wyckoff, Kristin Agius and I attended a Printing and Cursive Workshop in June 2007, which we agreed was informative and worthwhile for TRC. Palo Alto and Saratoga seem to have gotten farther along in implementation than I have here in Burlingame. We should be thinking about company-wide use of this program. My difficulty has been figuring out how to fit it in our sessions, and because it's something that should be done daily, getting parents and students to buy in and do it at home. At some point, that would mean families buying some of the materials, because we're violating copyright if we copy a bunch of stuff--but the materials are relatively inexpensive. Melissa or Kristin, what were you using with that 3 year old, the wet/dry board? The Letter forms?

Something that I keep pushing, but which I'm not sure anyone is taking, is reading the New Yorker article about the decline in reading in our country and the way we learn to read: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2007/12/24/071224crat_atlarge_crain. It contains nice synopses of the recent survey on reading done by the National Endowment for the Arts and the fabulous "Proust and the Squid" by Maryanne Wolf. Has anyone else looked at this? Whaddya think?

Lars.

Handwriting

2008-01-17T10:32:00.000-08:00

I am very excited to be learning a little more about Handwriting Without Tears. I watched Melissa in Palo Alto work with a 3 year old student the other day and I just love the program. I would really love to be trained in it by someone on our staff and to see what supplies we have company wide. It is language based and so, so necessary for so many kids.

In Palo Alto we are working with many writing students who have grapho-motor issues that I think could have really been helped when they were in pre-school. Please let me know if you have any information on this and if we can do a small training.

Kristin

Contribute

2008-01-16T08:04:00.000-08:00

2008 is the year I will EXPECT members of The Reading Clinic Community to CONTRIBUTE...either here, on the team bulletin board, in our one-on-one meetings, as part of the Goodreads things Kristin and Diana got going (my page: http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/757602), or whenever and whatever. It's not just a job (or it shouldn't be).

So members, can you answer the call, can you respond to the challenge?

Lars.