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Showing posts from July, 2018

5 Free Ways to Improve Visual Processing for Weak Readers

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Visual processing is an important cognitive skill for students to master. It assists with the encoding of information into the brain, and it helps students make sense of the learning content. This skill often needs to be developed and exercised, and there are many engaging activities that can help. What is Visual Processing? Visual processing is a cognitive skill that allows us to process, interpret and find meaning from visual images. In other words, it is how we make sense of what we see. Why is Visual Processing Important? Visual processing is vital because it plays a key role in learning visual information from our environment. It is a fundamental skill for reading, math, and spelling. What Are the Different Types of Visual Processing? Visual processing involves a number of cognitive processing skills: Visual Construction Skills: organizing and manually manipulating spatial information to make a design.  Visual Processing Speed: processing visual information at a certain pace or s

Important Dyslexia Accommodations in the Classroom

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Getting a school to recognize, test, and then accommodate your child with dyslexia can be an arduous and frustrating task. Although public school systems can accommodate the individual needs of our struggling students, many administrators don’t like to tap into the general education coffers for a single student. As a result, parents often have to rally and wrestle to obtain reasonable accommodations for their children with dyslexia and other disabilities that impact learning. The key to navigating this slippery slope is to understand the laws, the lingo as well as the menus of mandated accommodations and modifications. What are my Options? There are two options for acquiring accommodations: 504: A 504 is a formal plan that protects the rights of students with disabilities in school. Covered under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, this civil rights law gives students with disabilities access to services and supports in the general education classroom. There are no mandated rules on

Best Free Dyslexia Test, Help and Treatment Options

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Finding the best dyslexia test, dyslexia help, and dyslexia treatment can be challenging to locate and finance. I, too, had problems uncovering dyslexia resources when I first opened my practice 20 years ago.  So, over ten years ago, to help parents, teachers, and therapists with this process, I created my site,  Dyslexia Materials . This summer, I committed to redoing and upgrading the content, and the new site is up and running.  At Dyslexia Materials you can now find all of the following FREE content: a dyslexia test or screener advice homework help schools for dyslexia colleges for dyslexia organizations serving dyslexia dyslexia manuals v ideos about dyslexia I also offer an ever-growing selection of fun, multisensory teaching, and remedial products for students with dyslexia under the following categories: Assessments Cognitive Remedial Executive Functioning and Memory Language Arts Reading Math Writing Discounted Bundles  Other Programs that I Love I look forward to hearing yo

How Multisensory Teaching Works: Inspire Superior, Excited Students

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When experiences tap into all our senses as well as a variety of ways that we can process and organize information, not only does it grab our attention, but it becomes extremely memorable. The term multisensory teaching has been around for some time, but the concept has matured and grown over time. What does multisensory mean? The term multisensory means that one is using more than one sense to perceive the world around them.  When applied to learning, this means that learners use more than one sense such as sight, hearing, and touch to learn academic content. What is a multisensory approach to learning ? A multisensory approach to learning,  multisensory teaching, or multisensory instruction, is a way of teaching that engages students by implementing lessons that activate more than one sense at a time.  This has been a successful method used in popular Orton Gillingham reading programs for many years as well as many popular math methods such as Touch Math . Can we teach beyond the se