A student in my school has problems remembering the alphabets. She can read the alphabets serially but if they were random then she cannot recognise a single one. its like she gets a mental block. The only way she can read them is serially and she has not read a single sentence at all. Ihave tried to show her the alphabets serially and then showed her an alphabet at random and she couldn't recognise it at all. I would be very grateful if anyone could suggest a way to improve her memory or to teach her the alphabets. the girl i am refering to is 12 years old and is still fighting to learn the alphabets. So if anyone has any ideas i am all ears.
Hi shourya86
There is a programme on tonight, on channel four at 9.00 Called,
Cant read, cant write. It is about a teacher helping four adults that cant read or write. I think it started last week. It was very interesting. It explained that people usually learn to read either through sight or hearing sounds. Or there was a third way. Which I cant remember how he explained the third one.
But there was a woman on there, who could not learn the alphabet at all. While the others did. They found she needed to learn by this third way. Actually I think it was by touch if that makes any sense. The programme helped you understand that people learn in different ways.
It might be well worth you watching this programme. I think tonight it is about learning to write. Something is on the channel 4 website about this programme.
I found it very interesting. I know this is a programme about adults that cant read. But at the end of the day some of them had a reading age of 6.
I am sure other people will be able to give you some ideas. But I think it is well worth your while looking at this programme. The 12 year old girl must feel so frustrated.
Please keep us up to date with her progress.
Best wishes
Sunrise
Hi Shourya
The 'learning difficulties' you describe sound like dyslexia to me. Have you tried looking this up? I'm sure there are many and varied ways of helping chiildren with this problem. In fact, I seem to recall that there are members of HP who have experience with dyslexia. I'm just a little concerned that you, as a teacher, haven't named it as such.
xxx
Hi Shourya
I have dyslexia myself and have found this an absolute god send. I see things and I can do things theraputically that most normally wired up people miss and are just not capable of processing.
Has the child you are descriving been seen by anyone in learning difficulties? has she had a diagnosis of any kind if the answer to these questions is no then that is absolutely the first step to take.
Teaching dyslexics to read is a very individual process many of the people I have seen had very individual symtoms there are some generics like being able to see big picture ideas etc...
For kids I have a process that worked I found out what their favorite TV programme was and I had them visualise the letters and words appearing in the credits at the end of the show. I started with individual letters then progressed onto more and more complicated words.
There is a lot mroe to it I then taught them the difference between when a word was right and wrong buth visually and kinesthetically. Gave them a strategy for spelling and kept them practicing for a couple of days all of them improved drastically.
So in summary get a proper diagnosis then maybe try the visualisation thing.
OH and I still moss spill worms sometimes I just get students to point them out in presentations and reward them for findang my spollimg mitooks...lol
Jason
Re sunrise's post, the woman on that tv programme is a kinstheatic (sp) learner where making the alphabet shapes out of pipe cleaners etc was the method that made any sense to her and it helped her enormously.
Warmest wishes- calla lily x
Get the book "The Gift of Dyslexia" by Ron Davis. My sister is a teacher and she used the exercises in the book with a boy in her school who's in year 5 but who could only just read "3 words to a page" books, suitable for year 1. After 20 minutes of exercises, he was able to read a book suitable for 12 year olds, relatively easily. The exercises need to be done every day, but it's really worth a look.
hth
Has the child been seen by the Special Educational Needs co-ordinator at her school? She sounds as though she is dyslexic. She will need extra help. If she doesn't already have a "Statement" then I think the school/parents should work together to get the statementing process started.
I don't know why but I'm getting the impression that shourya doesn't live in UK, in which case statements may not figure in the education system.
Hi,
If the 12 year old girl in question has learning difficulties for which she has been statemented and is educated in the UK, then she will have, via the school/educational pyschologist/SENCO, an Individual Education Plan (IEP). This reflects her achieved work, and sets targets which are appropriate to her needs. She will work towards these targets at her own pace - not at her class' pace - with extra support from staff - or specialist teaching which should be available to her if in her statement by law. IEPs are often termly, or as necessary depending on the child's progress and difficulties. She could have a number of problems that cause these type of issues and I won't second guess what. 🙂
As a relevent but slight sidetrack...If parents aren't satisfied with the education she is getting in any way, complain - keep logs of all phone calls, letters, who was spoken to etc etc and keep going to the top if necessary. The education department can be difficult at best and a complete nightmare!:mad:
I speak from many years experience as a parent of a child with major congenital non-physical problems who has finally left college this June aged 21 with Level II qualifications (we were told entry LI would be the best outcome!) So...:D.
We even moved over 160m to secure a college place due to incompetent Ed Dept. It was one fight after another, but worth it in the end. I can't fault the school, but the Ed Dept [:mad:] did make life extremely awkward for us from the start.
Go to it, give the girl support, patience and don't be fobbed off...I'm sure she'll progress at her own rate and do well. Good luck, I hope all goes well.:D
Happy to join you on your soapbox devonmassage, although I'm fairly sure there are plenty of parents like us out there who've despaired of their LEA. It's taken us 5 years and moving 100 miles to get the right assessments for our son. After everything we (and he) have been through he finally starts at a special needs boarding school for boys with emotional and behavioural difficultes next week. What everyone failed to notice (until he was permanently excluded from mainstream school after he trashed the classroom when they tried to get him to do 50 spellings) was that although he had a reading age of 17 (at age 8), he had dyslexia which only affected his spelling and handwriting (and by extension, his behaviour). We're now waiting for an assessment for PDA (and our paediatrician just went on long term sick leave).
Now if I can just keep calm during this period of meltdown after meltdown as he adjusts to the idea of yet another change of school (this will be 4 in 18 months and he "doesn't do" change) we'll be a happy bunch indeed.
Ismorgan - :soapbox: room for two on my soapbox, jump on up! 🙂
My child's disabilities are; congenital profound: bi-lateral sensori-neural hearing loss, speech and communication impairment; severe: emotional and behavioural problems, learning delay, learning difficulties, social development delay; moderate: learning disability and some 'autistic-type tendencies' which are mainly funny little quirks and the liking of routine/not coping with change. The deafness and the other issues are separate; the other problems would remain even if there was no deafness - people often think they are caused by the deafness (exacerbated yes; caused, no).
My child was expelled from school when she was five and spent two years at a pupil referal unit and was an unteachable feral monster until aged about 8/9! Up to 9, which was when we moved the first time (35miles), classes were at a day mainstrream school with a hearing impaired unit. This move was outside the catchment area, hence progression to residential school (it was always on the cards, but the move made it happen sooner). Weekly boarding at the top school for the Deaf turned my child around; while I did have a few issues with the staff now and then - I still feel it was the hardest yet best decision we made. We moved the 163 miles to allow our child to continue at the college for the Deaf. And here we are now....:D
If my child with all these problems can get to LII, there's hope for many other kids out there is what I'm trying to say!:045: