Well, today she’s also starting a one-week intensive “intervention” that is supposed to train the brain to “see” better – or, more specifically, to hold its perspective so as to make it easier to decipher what’s on the printed page. This is accompanied by specific procedures to help kids form mental images of “trigger words” that they have trouble picturing – the theory being that many dyslexic (and ADD) kids think pictorially rather than verbally. (A “right-brained” phenomenon.) Mustang has told me that she “thinks in pictures” and I have no reason to disbelieve her. (While most of my thinking happens verbally, like a little interior monologue, I do sometimes think in pictures too. I suspect Mustang does thinks verbally sometimes, but picture-thinking is probably dominant for her.)
Since it is known that dyslexic kids often say that words and letters “jump around” on the page for them, I have asked Mustang if this happens with her and she says yes. (When I asked her again recently, she said it doesn’t happen as much as it used to, but it still does happen.) This is yet another manifestation of picture thinking, according to the book that got me onto this particular idea: The Gift of Dyslexia, by Ron Davis.
Davis claims that children who think in pictures, when faced with a word – which is a symbol, rather than an actual “thing” – try to flip the physical object (the letters in the word) around in their minds in order to make sense of it. Of course that doesn’t work because the letters d – o – g aren’t an actual dog, they just stand for one. (To be precise, they stand for the sounds that, in English, represent the thing dog. So written language is doubly symbolic, making it even more difficult than spoken language for people who have difficulty interpreting symbols.) But what it means is that children with this problem often reverse letters, flip them around in words (felt for left and vice versa, was for saw…), and even read words in the wrong order. These are things that Mustang frequently does.
Davis also claims that children who think pictorially often stumble over words that do not easily translate into pictures – the more abstract words as well as grammatical markers (the, a, is, was, are, to, on, up, etc).
In light of these constraints, the Davis method starts off by training the brain to “stay oriented” so that the child maintains the correct perspective when looking at letters on a page, and no longer attempts to flip the letters around mentally. Then, once you have trained the “mind’s eye” to stand still, the method calls for helping children to form mental pictures of words that are difficult to represent pictorially – the “trigger words” that they stumble over when reading. This is done by working with a physical substance – clay – to build pictures that the student can then internalize.
When reading the book, much of what he said resonated with me in my observations of Mustang – from words “jumping around” on the page, to the types of reading mistakes made, and even her very physically active nature.
Once again, this is an “alternative method” of treating dyslexia that, it is claimed, works to overcome rather than simply deal with the underlying problems. (Or, rather, to use the dyslexic’s inherent strengths of visualization as an asset, rather than a hindrance, to reading.) Once again, the claims are a bit fantastic – an average one to two grade levels improvement in reading after just the one-week intensive training. And once again, I am enough of a skeptic not to expect such miraculous results, but enough of a believer to think she stands to benefit. And, once again, it certainly cannot hurt.
Davis also claims that children who think pictorially often stumble over words that do not easily translate into pictures – the more abstract words as well as grammatical markers (the, a, is, was, are, to, on, up, etc).
In light of these constraints, the Davis method starts off by training the brain to “stay oriented” so that the child maintains the correct perspective when looking at letters on a page, and no longer attempts to flip the letters around mentally. Then, once you have trained the “mind’s eye” to stand still, the method calls for helping children to form mental pictures of words that are difficult to represent pictorially – the “trigger words” that they stumble over when reading. This is done by working with a physical substance – clay – to build pictures that the student can then internalize.
When reading the book, much of what he said resonated with me in my observations of Mustang – from words “jumping around” on the page, to the types of reading mistakes made, and even her very physically active nature.
Once again, this is an “alternative method” of treating dyslexia that, it is claimed, works to overcome rather than simply deal with the underlying problems. (Or, rather, to use the dyslexic’s inherent strengths of visualization as an asset, rather than a hindrance, to reading.) Once again, the claims are a bit fantastic – an average one to two grade levels improvement in reading after just the one-week intensive training. And once again, I am enough of a skeptic not to expect such miraculous results, but enough of a believer to think she stands to benefit. And, once again, it certainly cannot hurt.
No comments:
Post a Comment