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Dyslexia Cognitive Remedial Therapy Defined and Tools for Success

Have you heard that the brain is plastic? Brain plasticity or neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to reorganize, change, and grow new neural pathways throughout the lifespan. But did you know that cognitive exercises can play a significant role in plasticity? This can be a game changer for individuals with dyslexia and other learning disabilities, because these learners can actually strengthen weak areas of cognition. What is Cognitive Remedial Therapy? Cognitive Remedial Therapy is an approach that uses focused cognitive activities to improve core neurocognitive abilities such as attention, working memory, mental flexibility, planning, processing speed as well as visual, auditory, sequential and simultaneous processing. Can Cognitive Remedial Therapy Erase Deficits? Much like a personal trainer can strengthen a weak tendon or muscle through targeted, repetitive workouts, a learning specialist or educational therapist can enhance and improve cognition, through focused men...

Reading Comprehension Problems: 4 Causes and 12 Solutions

I'm sure most you have experienced the act of reading a book, while your mind was wandering elsewhere. So, you can probably appreciate how easy it is for youngsters to miss meaning while reading. Although teachers, reading specialists and even parents spend an enormous amount of time instructing young learners how to decode the written word, they often neglect to fully teach the metacognitive skills required to comprehend text. What are the Common Causes of Reading Comprehension Problems? There are a number of indicators that can be used to flag students who will likely require explicit instruction in reading comprehension. Learners that have or had weak oral language skills when they were in preschool. Students that have underdeveloped word decoding skills. Learners with weak executive functioning skills, especially in working memory which involves the use of one’s “inner eye” and “inner voice.” Learners with poor language processing abilities. They may...

Learning Specialist Secrets: A Free 3-Part Video Course

Are you a tutor, learning specialist or educational therapist? If not, would you like to establish a business helping learners to reach their true potential? Whether you would like to create a private practice from scratch, or you already have an established business, I would love to help you. For the past 18 years, I have directed my own business, Learning to Learn , and it's been the most rewarding experience of my life. I am so excited to share my course: Learning Specialist Secrets: 3-Part Video Series ! The first part is even FREE! In this course, I reveal the benefits, mistakes, and strategies for building your own practice as a learning specialist! I will cover: The 5 Key Benefits of a Learning Specialist Practice (FREE MODULE) The 10 Most Common Rookie Mistakes. The 7 Most Common Questions and Answers About Establishing a Practice. As an added bonus, I created a demonstration that shows you how I quickly turn a blog into a video! This can help you to grow yo...

Developing Fine Motor Skills with Osmo's Monster and Creative Set

I have been a fan of the Osmo from the day it was released, and I'm always excited to see what new interactive app they will create next. Well, I couldn't be more excited about their newest release, Monster . I just got it today! It comes with a dry erase board and a magnetic eraser that also serves as a storage pouch for a set of six colorful markers. If you don't already have the starter set, you will need that too. Once you get your package from Osmo, all you have to do is download their free app, set it up the ipad as in the image above, open the app and let the magic begin. What is this New Game? Mo is a cartoon character that requests players to make drawings that he then uses in animated activities. Kids can have hours of fun sketching objects that Mo brings to life on the screen. Are There Any Cognitive or Educational Benefits to Osmo Monsters? Yes. There are a number of benefits. Drawing helps kids to develop fine motor skills. Creative play helps...

Rapid Automatic Naming Impacts Reading: Memory Strategies and Games Help

What is Rapid Automatic Naming? Rapid automatic naming (RAN) or rapid naming is the ability to quickly verbalize a series of familiar items including letters, numbers, colors or things. Research purports that RAN tests are highly correlated to one’s reading abilities because the faster and more efficiently one can access information from the memory banks, the easier it is to read and comprehend text. How Does Rapid Automatic Naming Happen in the Brain? Although we know RAN impacts reading, there are three competing viewpoints in the literature. One view indicates that RAN involves how well one can retrieve phonological information and then verbalize a response. The difficulties lie in the brain’s ability to process sounds into language. Another theory indicates that RAN is a “complex set of cognitive processing” areas that work together in concert thus defining one’s reading fluency capabilities. This perspective further suggests that individuals with RAN and phonemic awarenes...

Scrible: Amazing Annotating Writing Tool for Dyslexic and Struggling Writers

Like a complex braid, great writers weave and multitask with sentence rules, spelling, idea formation, content organization and more. And when learners struggle with one or more of these processes, writing can become a frustrating tangle of ideas, an apparent, impossible knot to unsnarl. Research papers can be particularly tricky, because students also have the added obstacles to collect relevant articles, organize the information into a structured layout, paraphrase and manage citations. This week, I am so excited to share with you an assistive technology video blog with Victor Karkar, the CEO of Scrible. Scrible is an amazing online tool that students can use to annotate and color-code online text and simplify the process of writing research papers. This extraordinary technology, that is recognized by the National Science Foundation, can help students to read and write more efficiently. What's more, it offers a step by step process that can be monitored and supported by teac...

Dyslexia and Juvenile Delinquency: A Path of Ashes

It is not uncommon to hear about all the high achievers and entrepreneurs with dyslexia, but did you know that there is also a disproportional number of juvenile offenders and criminals with this learning disability? Although it is true that some individuals with dyslexia are able to succeed in life despite their learning disability, unfortunately, many more have tragic stories to tell. In fact, the United States Department of Education reported that 60 percent of American inmates are illiterate and 85 percent of all juvenile offenders have reading problems. In New Zealand, an estimated 10% of the population is dyslexic, yet percentages climb as high as 90% in their prisons. This week, I’m going to tell you the story of Ash Cousins. Ash has dyslexia, and when he was an adolescent, he followed a path of crime. It was a choice that had a tragic outcome, and Ash asked me to share his story, because he wants to do all that he can to assure that others don’t make the same mistake. ...

List of Reasonable Accommodations and Modifications for Students with Learning Disabilities

Getting the best reasonable accommodations for struggling learners with disabilities can be a challenge. The list of possible options is rarely made available to parents, so many remain unaware of the diverse options. The first step is the understand the difference between reasonable accommodations and modifications. Accommodations vs. Modifications? The United States clumps accommodations and modifications under the term reasonable accommodations, but other countries, such as Canada make a distinction between the two. An accommodation describes an alteration of the environment, curriculum format, or equipment that allows an individual with a disability to gain access to content and/or complete assigned tasks. Since accommodations do not alter what is being taught, instructors should be able to implement the same grading scale. Some examples of accommodations include: preferential seating, audiobooks, and speech to text technology. A modification describes...

Cognitive Remedial Therapy for Student with Learning Disabilities: What is it?

The brain is much like the body. If we exercise areas that are weak or underdeveloped, we can overcome significant difficulties. In fact, we may even be able to turn a weakness into a strength. Just like a personal trainer or physical therapist can strengthen an underdeveloped bicep or repair a sprained ankle, a learning specialist or educational therapist can remediate troublesome cognitive processing areas like visual processing or auditory memory. In fact, I often tell my students that I'm a personal trainer for the brain. What is Cognitive Remedial Therapy? Cognitive remedial therapy involves activities that improve mental abilities such as attention, working memory, reasoning, visual and auditory processing, cognitive flexibility, processing speed, stamina, organizational skills, time management and more. In addition, educational therapists and learning specialists can use activities to strengthen other areas of weak cognition such as language, as well as visual an...

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