spring 2022 newsletter LT

The post Spring 2022 Newsletter appeared first on Learning Tools.

by Jenny Wise

According to Understood.org, one in five children has a learning disability, and if they don’t get the right support, they are three times as likely to drop out of high school and twice as likely to be jobless as adults than kids who don’t. These sobering statistics show that involving these children in engaging activities outside of schoolwork is essential for their intellectual and emotional development, and the answer may be the arts.

“Involving children with learning differences (at Learning Tools, we prefer difference to disability) in the arts can have several benefits, including improved motor skills, concentration and focus, creative expression, and self-esteem. Learning Tools outlines some arts to consider introducing to your child.

Music

For a child with learning disabilities, music works the areas of the brain that are tied to speech, reading, comprehension, problem-solving, focus, and more. Singing and playing an instrument have especially remarkable benefits for children with learning disabilities, but even the act of listening to music can have a wonderful impact.

Health benefits of singing
How to get child interested in playing a musical instrument
How to set up music room at home
If you have a music background and you’ve considered making some money on the side, consider using ZenBusiness to start your own business and teach other kids, perhaps specializing in instructing children with learning disabilities.

Photograph

It takes a steady hand, concentration, and focus to take a good photograph, not to mention the ability to compose a scene before you snap the shutter. Children with learning disabilities can learn photography to develop these same skills and so many more.

Benefits of photography for kids
It’s not all about camera phones; teach kids to use a DSLR camera
Photography-focused activities kids can do

Painting and Drawing

It doesn’t matter if the child uses colored pencils, markers, crayons, or watercolors; the act of moving something colorful across a blank canvas is a creative way to express emotions. At the same time, it can help a child develop patience, concentration, and problem-solving skills.

Different drawing styles kids can try
12 free online painting and drawing lessons for kids
Benefits of painting for children
Teach children about famous paintings

Regardless of the art form your child pursues, make sure there’s always some fun injected into it. Also be sure to help the child realize every day that the fun he or she is having will boost their focus, improve their schoolwork, and greatly enhance their self-confidence.

About the Author: Jenny Wise created Special Home Educator as a forum for sharing her adventures in homeschooling and connecting with other homeschooling families. She has been homeschooling her four children for many years now, including her youngest daughter Anna who is on the autism spectrum.

Learning Tools assists adults and children attain skills, confidence, and motivation needed to achieve their goals. Our programs are offered for learning and correcting multiple struggles of neurodivergent learners. Reach out to us today! 206-451-7102

Photo Credit: Pixabay.com

The post Involving Your Child with Learning Challenges in the Arts appeared first on Learning Tools.

Below is a summary of some of the tips we spoke of for Coaches, Parents, and the Dyslexic Athlete.

Tips

Coaches:

• • Dyslexics are non-verbal conceptualization thinkers, they think in pictures and feelings.
  • When working with your athletes, ensure they understand the meaning of your sports specific vocabulary.
  • Think about how you are giving directions, remember that orientation can be confusing when you are on the sidelines and they are out on the field.
  • Just because someone isn’t looking at you when you speak, doesn’t mean they are not engaged and listening.
  • When new to the game or you as a coach some of your athletes will need a bit more processing time what you’re are asking them to do, so breathe a moment before verbal correction (either pulling out of the game or redirecting) BUT do know, that with time this will go away.
  • Most dyslexics need meaning and understanding of the “why” when integrating and bring new information to the long-term memory.
  • Clipboard plays can be disorienting, so make sure you athletes are familiar with how you use it before a big game.
  • Use visuals on the field/court when giving directions, words like left, right, east, up court can all be very confusing.
  • Dyslexics are usually very motivated and want to learn but can often have low self-esteem due to difficulties they have had in school.  Having your team “try” is more powerful than motivating them thru praise and or criticism i.e. telling them they are already good at that or are bad at something else, is not a powerful motivator.  Telling your team to “try” something and then praise with “wow, you really must have tried hard at that, I see your effort” will be more effective.

Parents:

• • Get buy-in from your child before you ever speak with a coach.
  • Remember coaches most often don’t have educational backgrounds or understand dyslexia.
  • Let the coach know that your child thinks in pictures and works well with knowing the why and big picture before looking into the details.

Athlete:

• • Advocate for yourself.
    • If you are someone who can’t look at someone in the eyes when they are explaining something, make sure you explain to your coach that looking away allows you to visualize and create what they are saying in your mind.
    • If you need more time to process, let your coach know it.
    • If you are confused by the plays being assigned, ask for clarification – or tell your coach back what you do understand — explain those pictures in your mind.
  • Do your research.  Get to know your sport, look up YouTube videos, know the vocabulary.
  • Do some mental training.
    • Find your focused or grounded place and learn how to get back there.  How do you get into your zone?
    • Do some self-reflection.  What do I do when I get angry, confused, nervous?  What can I do to help myself during those situations?

The post Coaching Dyslexic Athletes Part II appeared first on Learning Tools.

Spring News Letter 2020.

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Fall 2019 NewsLetter

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Below is Jamie’s account of the day:

• Start off the morning with a check-in, how we are feeling about being there, did we sleep well, do we need a snack or to do some stretching – make sure we are set up to be successful for the day.
• Then we take time to check and make sure our focusing tools is where it needs to be and do any fine tuning if need be. This is as easy as 1,2,3, balance.
• Then we play around with koosh balls (a type of rubbery stringy ball).   From there we are really focused and ready to do some reading.
• We only read for 5-10 minutes depending on how one is feeling. When we work on reading comprehension it might be longer and a good discussion of “the movie” that we have visualized while reading.
• Next, we would do clay work to master words. We talk about the “trigger words”, look it up in a dictionary (it is amazing to see how many different meaning one of these words can have), make all kinds of sentences until that word is really clear to us, then we get to create a model of the word in clay. Creativity is welcome here, but simple models work great. So for the word “on”, while Sophia modeled a child who rode “on” the camel, I modeled a boy flew “on” the plane. This was a bit more challenging then I had thought it would be – but I was happy with the model in the end. {“on” definition used “used as a function word to indicate means of transport“}
• Then we take a break, maybe a 10 minutes break, maybe 15 – just depends on what we together think is needed. “I love how I get to help make the decisions, ‘it is your program, after all, Sophia says’.
• We end our break with koosh balls or start our work session, however, you prefer to think of it. Koosh balls help to ensure we are focused and ready for the next task at hand.
• When we get back to work, we often do another reading exercise. If not reading, we work on spelling words; we tackle another spelling word that has given me trouble in the past. Using the tools, making the word in clay, and then mastering has me spelling the word in no time! The best part is, I remember the word.
• We continue the day in this pattern. The day goes by fast actually, and while it is work, it doesn’t feel like work. The best part was each day I felt proud of the models I did and surprised by how much working with the word helped me, I don’t have problems with these words anymore when I am reading or trying to write and spell them – weird but true.

Spelling word “apologize” learned during the Dyslexia Reading Program.

Clay model showing the meaning of “always” (at all times) done during the Dyslexia Correction Program.

The post A Typical Day with My Dyslexia Tutor appeared first on Learning Tools.

English class has always been a nightmare for me, I was hopeless at writing text, or at least coherent paragraphs.  In grade school, it was spelling and grammar that I hated. Then middle school we were writing about books we read, and while that wasn’t quite as bad (because I could use sentences from books) it was the sequence and organization of what I wrote that challenged me. In high school, I soon had to formulate words to express my own feelings about what we were reading. Writing spilled over into other subjects and whenever I had to write an essay I felt sick. In college, we are supposed to be experts and remember all those things from English class to write intelligent thought-provoking papers for all classes.

For me writing was excruciating, it was also a barrier to my goal, graduating from college. I was at a small liberal arts college and I don’t’ know if we didn’t have tutors, or if I was just too humiliated to find out. But, because I was determined, I faced the humiliation of asking friends to help me correct my papers. Wow, what a blow to one’s self-esteem after you have rewritten a paper two, something three, times before you show it to someone and then have it come back to you a red marked up mess. I remember fearing what my classmates me thought of me, I had only a trusted few I would ask for help. Now that I am well into my 40’s, I am not quite so vulnerable, my skin has been thickened over the years.   Now it is easier to tell my stories and explain what a nightmare writing can before some, just like reading late can be for others.

Dyslexia: not just a Reading Problem

For me, my dyslexia didn’t show up as much with my reading, I was able to get by, I was really good at asking others what they thought, for listening to others and discuss topics. Understanding what I read could be hidden. What I couldn’t hide was my struggle with writing coherent sentences. I still struggle at times when I feel rushed or do not have a clear picture of what I want to say. When I was young I would procrastinate on the writing portion of homework, but it was because I would not know how to begin. I don’t know how many times I was told by teachers and friends to just start writing and then go back and correct it and make it readable. So much easier said than done. I tried out this method, and since I didn’t have a better solution, I used it, but it was not an efficient method for me.

Writing down anything that came to me actually gave me too many words to deal with. The problem with just putting whatever down on paper is I can ramble and ramble. The sequence of thought and/or the organization of ideas can be all over the place, but beyond that was getting the right words. I have really struggled with getting the right words for what I want to say, I say it so many times and in so many different ways that I confuse myself and my thoughts become muddied OR I don’t’ say enough of the right things because it is too obvious to me and I assume the reader would see it as being obvious as well.

I remember in college struggling and telling a friend that the words are just in a jumbled up in the sky and I can’t seem to pull the ones I want to use down to explain something. I understand this better now, I wasn’t seeing the words jumbled up, I was seeing what I wanted to express as a picture. Ever heard the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words?” There can be so much to see in a picture, especially one that is evolving and complex. Without a good understanding of the meaning of prepositions, adjectives, and adverbs describing those pictures I felt stumped. I just told my teachers I was stymied, their suggestion was to just write everything I thought and then clean it up – stream of consciousness writing.

Now I understand what the issue was with this method — I am not a verbal conceptualizer, I am not thinking with the sound of words, and this method was trying to help me get the words out. The actual issue I was having was not knowing which word to use because I didn’t have the meaning of high-frequency sight words that make up 75% of the words we use.

Meaning Based Program

The Davis methods are meaning based programs, they use symbol mastery to give meaning to words that cause dyslexics trouble – exactly what I needed.   I remember a moment during the program seeing what made up the trigger words list. I had an “ah ha” moment, I remembered being in German class in high school, getting a test back that was of German prepositions. I was looking at the test where you match a word with a picture. I had done poorly on it and I was confused as to why I got so many of them wrong because I knew the English equivalent. Back then I couldn’t figure it out, now it is clear as day to me, I didn’t have the right meanings of the English preposition to match with the picture on the test.

The Davis Dyslexia Correction Program has helped me move beyond my fears of words. I now understand the meaning of words at a much deeper level. I also have the ability to be focused enough to see my errors. I can clean up my writing to a place where I can be pretty sure it is understandable to others. Before I really thought I was broken when it came to expressing myself, now I see it for what it is.

Writing Text: My Method

My method to write text is a combination of methods.  I use outlining, mind mapping, as well as stream of consciousness depending on what I am writing.  Email start with bullet points.   This writing I started with bullets as well, he is what I had down:

• English class nightmare- Writing hard
• Experience
• Method not helpful
• Why – picture thinker
• Trigger words
• What Davis did

I put this on my page and then wrote a bit under each bullet.   I tried a bit of stream of consciousness, but I am constantly coming back to my bullets to be sure that this is what I wanted to express.  For this writing, I ended up deleting quite a bit because it wasn’t relevant. I then reread it very slowly making sure that each sentence is the picture I want to present. I then put it away until the next day, look at it with fresh eyes.  I still like to have someone else look at it to find things I might have missed.

This method isn’t too different then what some teachers tell you to do, but what is different is me, the wisdom, knowledge, and understanding I have gained through mastering trigger words allows me to see it, reread it, and be present to words in a way that wasn’t possible for me before.

The post My Dyslexic Challenge: Writing Text appeared first on Learning Tools.

My son is now in 8^th grade: he is doing very well in language arts, he writes beautifully, he reads well with excellent comprehension and in math, he has been getting high marks.  His math teacher even said to me that my son has a great mind for math; he just needs to believe in himself a little more.

Math Story Words Can Create Trouble

I thought he was on a great academic path and then last weeks’ homework happened. As he was doing homework, he asked his older brother some questions and his brother answered the questions with other questions to try and get him to think through the problem. I was having a proud mama moment; my older son was truly trying to help.

Then all of a sudden, I hear a loud, forceful voice say, “I already told you”.  I gently asked if he was using his tools, which was returned with a glare of an irate teenager full of disgust. Okay, I see that mom needs to stay out of it! I tried, I truly did, but as he was reading the story problem question back to his brother and telling him what equation he made out of it, it was obvious to me that the confusion was due to trigger words, so naturally I had to butt in.

He ended up working through the problems with me making sure he had a clear picture of what the meaning of each of the words were and to be sure he knew what was being asked for in each question. Then I told him we could fix his frustrations by modeling in clay the words that were causing confusion, just like we used to. He was up to it and we spent the weekend playing with clay and cutting up circles of clay into fractions.

Learn the Meaning of Words Through Pictures

Do you know “by” in math can mean to multiply, but it can also mean divide?   During the homework fiasco, it was clear that my son didn’t know the second meaning of “by” meaning divide, which was needed to get the equation correct. The other word that was causing confusion was “of” when working with fractions.

I hadn’t seen him break down into this “self-hate” in a long time; he kept saying how stupid he was under his breath. He could do the math, but translating words into a math problem requires one to have a clear meaning/picture of each word. That is what the symbol mastery does, it gives meaning to words.   So learning the meaning of words that don’t produce a mental picture is extremely important to picture thinkers.

Math has a language of its own, but it is more than just numerals and function symbols, the words we use for math to describe functions are just as important.  By using clay to mold and create the meaning of the word, we get to understand, know and master a word at a very deep level. After doing this work, that word no longer causes a problem.

“by” in math can mean divide

“of” in math can mean a portion or fraction taken from

The post The Importance of Symbol Mastery and Learning the Meaning of Words appeared first on Learning Tools.

In school, I had “coping methods” that would at times get me to pass a spelling test. For me, the trick was, don’t study until 5-10 minutes before you walk into class, then cram like crazy.  I couldn’t think of anything before the test, couldn’t talk to anyone, just keep those letter in my head. One problem would be getting interrupted by friends or the teacher before the test; ignoring or pretending to daydream worked pretty well for that.

Another problem was when the teacher wanted you to write a sentence with the word, those teachers were so frustrating, and picky. The sentence piece always got me, I would end up losing the other words that I was trying to keep straight by concentrating on the sentence. I mean really, why can’t I write, “He was tantalized” for the word tantalize? Nope, that was never enough, teachers wanted something more.  For my sentences I would be lucky to get even partial credit.

If I tried to study the words well before the test like at home the night before, that made me more confused then ever. I remember my mom trying to get me to learn how to spell the word February. I would get the “ru” order messed up or forget the “r” altogether.   She would say remember the “r” is for your sister and she was born first, and then “u” came along. When that still didn’t work she added in “a ‘r’ is for right BUT it isn’t on the right side, it is in the same order as the alphabet, ‘r’ comes first before ‘u’”. Well… in theory that seems great, and now that I know how to spell February it seems like something I would remember. Yet, I remember, on numerous occasions being at school at my desk trying to remember what my mom told me. I wasn’t remembering the ‘r’ and ‘u’ in the order of the alphabet because I then thought of ‘r’ on the right. If I tried thinking of my sister, I would end up messing it up with thinking surely she said to think of me first and that is ‘u’. Why would I think of my sister first? I would second guess each thing, and then with my stress of taking to long on that word it would require me to sing the alphabet in order to figure out which was first. I had to sing it out loud, but that would get me in trouble so I would try to whisper it. As you can see from my retelling of the story, my inner dialog had me in much confusion and I would end up missing much of what was happening in the classroom.

Fast forward to being an adult. I stopped thinking of spelling, one of the joys of being out of school. But one day, I remember overhearing an employee talking about how annoying it was when she would get emails from her boss (me) that had words misspelled all the time, she couldn’t figure out how I became the head of the department she worked in. I suddenly felt shame and embarrassment.

I knew I was not a good speller. I thought about a few incidents when I had someone ask me what I meant in my email because they couldn’t understand it. I think I explained to them what I meant and then said, “I was typing so fast I made the errors” but really, I just hadn’t seen them. It was really at that moment, feeling shamed by my inability to spell that I started paying more attention to my emails. I would make sure my spell checker was on, and that helped, but it still didn’t fix the problem.

My training to become a Davis® dyslexia facilitator is what helped me overcome my greatest problems with spelling. When I was “the student” for a dyslexia correction program for a facilitator in training, I started to really see symbols and words for the first time. Wow, it was AMAZING, the focusing tools helped me to see my errors in spelling and then the method of writing the word in clay and taking a mental picture of it was profound. Before I honestly just didn’t know if something was spelled wrong at least half the time. I didn’t see it, sometimes I would have an inkling that it wasn’t right, but most of the time proofreading was a joke to me. I wasn’t focused enough to even find all the errors.

I know I now have the ability to learn how to spell any word I want to.   I have worked on the words that used to cause me so many issues, like character, definitely, and business. At times, I still have to think a moment about them, but if I look inside my mind’s eye and trust my gut, I get it right every time.

The post Confessions of a Bad Speller appeared first on Learning Tools.

The definition of focus when used as a verb means to direct one’s attention or efforts.  

How do you feel when you are unable to focus?

Have you ever felt that you were:

• all “in your head” or so fuzzy and dizzy you just were not able to say what you wanted to say?
• or maybe you just want to concentrate and read the book that you had in front of you because you were exhausted from a busy day? But there’s so much going on that you couldn’t read, instead you heard the birds outside and then the train passed and then kids are playing and screaming and your dog got upset and started barking so there was just no way you could read?
• or how about you have an important paper to write and you know the information but you just couldn’t write what you wanted to write?

Each additional noise, or distraction increases the inability to focus and concentrate. Being able to focus is a skill; a skill that most of us take for granted.

Dyslexics have a low threshold for confusion, so they have a more difficult time focusing. To add to this low threshold of confusion thy have a unique ability of perception that allows them to see and experience things that aren’t common for those who use verbal conceptualization or “words” as their main means of thinking. A dyslexic’s perceptual ability actually creates what we call disorientation as in the senses are not aligned. When in disorientation, the ability to focus can feel unobtainable and usually takes removing oneself from the situation to refocus again.

For me, before I was given specific tools to get myself into a focused state, I needed to feel grounded and then I could focus, but without the feeling of being grounded, my ability to focus was severely handicapped. I would try to focus and remember my mind racing in class to find the words or answers I needed. I would make errors or be confused or was unsure of what I read and the harder I would try, the more frustrated and stupid I felt.

Without specific tools to get focused, one might have to get up and walk away from what they are doing, take a walk, try meditating, or listening to music.   It just depends on the person, but when they are a kid in school, they have to try to concentrate harder, which is exhausting and often doesn’t work. If they look out the window or start doodling on their page, they are given all sorts of labels, like lazy, unmotivated, or ADD/ADHD.

Not being able to focus means not being able to learn. So I believe good focusing tools are the key to success. The Davis® methods do a fabulous job of giving students a quick and easy way to focus. The intensive program is the perfect way to be in a safe place with a facilitator who is an expert on detecting disorientation. The facilitator can point out and help guide the student to times they need to use their focusing tool so they master their ability to focus quickly, easily, and at will.

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