Saturday, 27 October 2018

The complexity of writing



Writing is a complex process which does not develop naturally in the same way that spoken language does.  Writing is a craft that needs time and explicit practice to develop and hone.

We don't expect everyone to be a great painter or sculptor but we expect all children to be great writers.  Often in schools, we expect children to write well, long before they have sufficient knowledge or skills to write proficiently.

Through history people have communicated in a wide range in ways through storytelling, songs, paintings, arts and crafts, plays and dance. For a long time only few people were able to write, as it was considered to be difficult skill to master.  Now in our modern world we want everyone to write and from a very early age.  We forget how challenging writing can be and that many people are better suited to other forms of communication. Of course writing is an important skill for most jobs and to function in our daily lives we need to be able to write.  But for many the writing proficiency needed for eveyday life is very different from the complex creative writing required at school. 


Too often we wrongly equate the ability to write with intelligence.  If a child is verbally capable we expect them to be able to translate this easily to writing.  We forget that writing is not a natural process but is something we need to train our brain to do. It also involves learning many different processes from letter formation to spelling,  which in English involves both mastering phonics and spelling rules and learning many irregular high frequency by sight. In addition, we have to develop our vocabulary and we need to be a able to remember an idea while we compose a sentence. Finally we have to consider the purpose of the writing and know the features of that genre.

We also think that reading and writing go hand in hand and that if someone can read something they can write the same thing.  However they do not develop at the same rate, learning to write is significantly harder. It requires us to master many different skills and use them together.  Reading is decoding where we decipher what is actually there but writing in encoding we have to draw on what is in our own head to make marks on the page. Being faced with a blank page can be very daunting,  even for adults.


Giving time for each skill to develop and become automatic is important if children are going to become good writers.  Many schools rush to get children to write independently before some of the basic skills are secure. This is one of the reasons that writing can be so daunting for dyslexic students. They typically need more time to develop their letter formation. They can have difficulty controlling the pencil and remembering starting point and the sequence for each letter.  They also need explicit teaching over several years to learn common letter patterns or to remember high frequency words. They do not just pick the spellings by seeing them in texts or writing them out 3 times. When so much energy goes into these basic skills, there is little energy left for composing the sentence or thinking about interesting vocabulary.

Another challenge for dyslexic children is having a weak working memory, this can make it hard to keep a sentence in their head while they write it down.  Typically they will forget the sentence half way through or they will miss out words.  Correct punctuation can also be a challenge if you can not keep a whole sentence in your head.

The key to helping dyslexic children is trying to reduce the number of skills being used at once and fully appreciating how hard they are working to perform basic tasks. In addition it is vital that they receive regular explicit practice of weaker skills outside of the regular writing lessons.  There are many ways to help depending on their stage of development.

If they are still struggling with letter formation then an adult could scribe their ideas or they could label picture rather than write sentences.  Regular practice of letter formation can be done separately using tactile materials like waxy doodles and playdough, finger writing in a salt tray or on sandpaper help to develop the muscle memory, rhymes can also be use to help remember the sequence for each letter.


To support spelling they should be encouraged to make phonetic approximations in line with the phonetic they have been taught. They should be given the spelling of words that are beyond their spelling level. They should also be given word lists of task specific words and high frequency words. Spelling should not be corrected during a writing task but common errors can be noted by the adult and be worked another time with multi sensory methods.

Another way to support writing is for an adult to act as their working memory.  The child verbally rehearses the sentence and then the adult reminds them of their idea a  word at time. Talk tins which record a sentence at a time and can be replayed by the child can help older students remember their ideas.

The use of assistive technology is also very helpful in allowing a child to write at their intellectual level while their other skills develop.  There are many voice to text apps and programs that allow children to turn their verbal ideas into text. Word processing can also be easier for some children where a lot of energy is taken up by the physical process of writing.  Programs like Kidspiration can help with the organisation and sequencing of ideas which can be another area of challenge for dyslexic children.

Finally we need time, understanding and patience so that writing skills can develop at the child's pace rather than the school's pace.

Saturday, 6 October 2018

Visual difficulties explained Part 2 Visual efficiency





If your child is reluctant to read or tires easily when doing school work or complains of headaches. There could be a genuine reason for their difficulties.

Visual efficiency is an area of vision which many people overlook or do not realise the impact that it could make on a child (or an adult) who is trying to read or do close work. 

There three main areas tracking, teaming and focus. If there are difficulties in any of these areas, then the experience of trying to read will be both difficult and exhausting. These difficulties are not readily visible to an adult observing the child and equally it is very hard for a child to be able to explain that something is wrong. They often go undetected as very often the child assumes that all people see the way they do.

1. Tracking
Many people are unaware that reading is not a natural process for us. Although many children do learn to read rapidly and with little effort, many do not. The pathways in the brain are not naturally there to decipher the written code and develop over time through practise. It also only convention that leads us to read from left to right rather than right to left or top to bottom. We have to train our brain to track from left to right and because we have to read the beginning and end of the word to make sense of it our eyes develop a jumping movement. If this movement does not develop effectively then our eyes may skip over small words or miss suffixes like -ed, - ing, -es. We may also lose our place in a text or skip lines.



      2. Teaming
Our eyes are meant to move and work together and focus on the same spot. Each eye sees a slightly different perspective which the brain then combines to make a single image. This helps to create a 3-D image and gives depth perception. If these images are not combined correctly then the person may see double. It can also lead to blurred vision, eye strain and headaches. This makes it very difficult to accurately decode and read comfortably. Common eye teaming problems are insufficient convergence, where the eyes have a tendency to turn out or convergence excess is where the eyes turn in.


3. Focus
Our eyes have to switch focus constantly to take in the world around us and perform every day tasks. Some children have difficulty switching focus from near to far which can make functioning in a typical classroom difficult.  Very often important information is displayed on the board and children are expected to refer to this as they work closely through their classwork at their desks. Copying from the board will also be laborious. This can lead the images to be blurry and cause eye strain and fatigue.



 What are the signs should we look out for?

- holding a book or paper too close
- frequent eye rubbing or blinking during reading or homework
- avoids reading
- slow reading speed
- tilts or turns head
- slow to complete homework
- closes or covers one eye
If you are concerned about these visual difficulties you should consult a Behavioural optometrist

www.eyecanlearn.com is a useful website which shows how these visual difficulties might appear to someone trying to read.