reminds me of the last assignment I did about shared sustained thinking- scaffolding and the zone of proximal development.Originally Posted by manwithnoname
I was surprised to see that in Italy if theres a single child with SEN then they limit class sizes to 20! and not 30 over here
I know...(wait for it)....IT'S MADNESS GONE POLITICALLY CORRECT, I TELL YOU!!!
typically the offered solution is "deal with it" - after all, the child in question is capable of doing all the standard tasks, so where's the problem? the issue, of course, is that it leads to gross boredom and subsequent under-achievement ("why should i do my ten times table when i can do long division in base 13 in my head" and so on)
there are exceptions, of course. back when i was picking a-levels, teachers were able to assess suitability for given pupils for given subjects. i was given the lowest rating (not suitable) for maths, and the highest for 2xmaths (i.e. maths and further maths in the same timescale). but teachers who bother with such things are rare
Unforunately that is the case in most places
My Son's School is fantastic! he's always been pushed to his potential at School, first he was put into higher classes, now he's yr 6 and gets given Yr 7 workbooks to work from on top of that he gets an hour a week of extra maths and english tuition....he recently went and met up with other Kids from around the County for a mathemetics brainstorm, he loved it!...he's shy too so being pushed and acheiving results has given him loads of confidence.
Without a workbook though he's as dim as dishwater
Way to ruin a good joke!
i think we should stop. helping the dyslexic is some peoples JOB, they would be knackered if it ceased to exist
Last edited by MadduckUK; 01-02-2007 at 11:40 AM.
Vodka
Love that JPG!
yes i am bored. i guess im probably a little dyslexic. or stupid
Vodka
I'm sure some people said the same when people responded to racially based jokes with statements to similar effect
Just being 'a joke' doesn't make it ok.
But at the same time, there is a point in this about the fear that dyslecia is used as a label for poor performance in school - and I think a joke based on that fear is fair game personally.
Well I don't believe in 99.9% of cases of dyslexia, I mean there's no uniform proof, or diagnosis. So it's completely different.
That's a nonsense, Bazz; while I appreciate the original joke (I read it as a joke not about dyslexia, but about middle-class mums not wanting to believe that just possibly little Tarquin or Jemima might actually be a slack-jawed halfwit), dyslexia is a very real condition with observable neurological indicators.
http://www.dyslexiaaction.org.uk/Page.aspx?PageId=26
http://www.dyslexiaaction.org.uk/Page.aspx?PageId=13
As stated I don't believe in 99.9% of Dyslexia. There are some very real cases, Richard Branson being one, but I know of at least 2 Dyslexics who are just thick.
I believe more often than not it's just a blanket diagnosis.At the moment, millions of pounds alone are spent on the process of merely identifying children with dyslexia. There's no uniform test, and different psychologists have different ideas about which things to look at: but Elliott's view is that they're all a waste of time and money. "Some tests look at memory, some at sounds and words, some at visual processing," says Elliott. "The traditional route was to identify a child whose IQ was high, but whose reading level was low: that test is still being used in some places, although you could ask why look at a child's IQ when deciding if they need special reading help? But the bottom line is that experts can't agree precisely what set of problems make up the condition they call dyslexia: and if you can't agree on what a condition is, how on earth can you test for it?" Or to put it another way, as they do in the Dispatches programme: either every child with poor reading ability is dyslexic, or none of them is.
That's my opinion, like it or not, it's not changing.
Silani and others - Brain, A Journal of Neurology, June 2005We provide evidence that altered activation observed within the reading system is associated with altered density of grey and white matter of specific brain regions, such as the left middle and inferior temporal gyri and the left arcuate fasciculus. This supports the view that dyslexia is associated with both local grey matter dysfunction and with altered connectivity among phonological/reading areas. The differences were replicable across samples confirming that the neurological disorder underlying dyslexia is the same across the cultures investigated in the study.
Michael Habib, Brain, December 2000Neuropsychological studies have provided considerable evidence that the main mechanism leading to these children's learning difficulties is phonological in nature, namely a basic defect in segmenting and manipulating the phoneme constituents of speech. A case has also been made for impairment in brain visual mechanisms of reading as a possible contributing factor. This approach has led to an important conceptual advance with the suggestion of a specific involvement of one subsystem of vision pathways (the so-called magnosystem hypothesis). Both phonological and visual hypotheses have received valuable contribution from modern functional imaging techniques. Results of recent PET and functional MRI studies are reported here in some detail. Finally, one attractive interpretation of available evidence points to dyslexia as a multi-system deficit possibly based on a fundamental incapacity of the brain in performing tasks requiring processing of brief stimuli in rapid temporal succession. It is proposed that this so-called `temporal processing impairment' theory of dyslexia could also account for at least some of the perceptual, motor and cognitive symptoms very often associated with the learning disorder, a coincidence that has remained unexplained so far.
Presumably the observable differences in brain function recorded via MRI and PET scan were also imaginary then...
I am certain that Professor Elliott is an absolutely wonderful educationalist; he is not a neurologist. He is almost certainly correct that early intervention is crucial in helping any child with learning difficulties; but stating that because there are a lot of children with a specific problem that the problem is imaginary is frankly a ludicrous piece of cart-before-horse faux logic.
What's also apparent from the article you cite is that Professor Elliott has an agenda himself:
Guardian, September 2005And what I'd argue is that the intervention they receive when their child is labelled dyslexic isn't effective - and furthermore, it's very expensive and time-consuming, and it diverts resources away from what could be being done better to help all children with reading problems.
He believes that children with reading difficulties, whatever their aetiology, should be being targeted with early intervention, and also believes that assistance for pupils diagnosed with dyslexia is diverting resources from that. Now, I'd agree with the first part of that; where I believe that he is wrong is in the assumption that the solution is to remove assistance from children with dyslexia. Essentially, he is arguing for the re-targeting of resources, and using the assertion that dyslexia doesn't exist, or that too many children have it to justify that. That's sophistry; deciding upon the conclusion that you wish to arrive at, and then selecting your evidence and argument in order to reach it. Moreover, he makes assertions that simply do not bear scrutiny, such as that there is a widespread belief that reading ability is linked to intelligence (something that he uses to support the hypothesis that the problem is middle-class mums stealing precious resources from other disadvantaged children); the BDA doesn't think so, and neither do neurologists as noted above, or the BMA.
Last edited by nichomach; 01-02-2007 at 02:40 PM. Reason: Expansion, and citing of source for Bazzlad's quote
Part of the problem is that dyslexia really is a term that's used to cover a lot of different things. Personally I view it as basically describing a condition where someone's brain activity/connectivity is abnormal and they've basically re-routed. This is detectable by NMR, is common in cases of brain injury particularly during pregnancy, and often occurs in areas that show themselves as poor reading/writing etc.
On the other hand we do get the benefit of the re-routing which often manefests itself in the guise of mathematics proficiency and spacial imaging.
If you want another example of a similar injury in a different part of the brain, look at Richard Hammond. Since the crash he can now instantly remember all the numbers he's ever had in his phone.
Sooooo...basically, all I need is to crash a rickety looking dragster at 300mph and I'll be right, then...?
are we saying that dyslexic people have brain damage?
Vodka
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