Dyslexia

What is Dyslexia?

Dyslexia is a Specific Learning Difficulty that causes issues with reading, writing and spelling as well as some lesser-known issues. Dyslexia does not affect intelligence.

Common Issues Learners Might Have

What follows is a list of common issues that learners with dyslexia might face. They have been collated from the internet and personal experience:

Writing

• Has a poor standard of written work compared with oral ability
• Has poor handwriting with badly formed letters or has neat handwriting, but writes very slowly
• Produces badly set out or messy written work, with spellings crossed out several times
• Spells the same word differently in one piece of work
• Has difficulty with punctuation and/or grammar
• Confuses upper- and lower-case letters
• Writes a great deal but 'loses the thread’
• Writes very little, but to the point
• Has difficulty taking notes in lessons
• Has difficulty with organisation of homework
• Finds tasks difficult to complete on time
• Appears to know more than they can commit to paper
  

Reading

• Is hesitant and laboured, especially when reading aloud
• Omits, repeats or adds extra words
• Reads at a reasonable rate, but has a low level of comprehension
• Fails to recognise familiar words
• Misses a line or repeats the same line twice
• Loses their place easily/uses a finger or marker to keep the place
• Has difficulty in pin-pointing the main idea in a passage
• Has difficulty using dictionaries

Behaviour

• Is disorganised or forgetful e.g. over sports equipment, lessons, homework, appointments
• Is easily distracted. May find it difficult to remain focused on the task
• Is often in the wrong place at the wrong time
• Is excessively tired, due to the amount of concentration and effort required

General Areas

• Confuses direction - left/right
• Has difficulty in finding the name for an object
• Has clear difficulties processing information at speed
• Misunderstands complicated questions
• Finds holding a list of instructions in memory difficult, although can perform all tasks when told individually
• Anxiety

Dyscalculia

What is Dyscalculia?

Dyscalculia is a Specific Learning Difficulty that affects a learner’s ability to gain arithmetical skills. Dyscalculia does not affect intelligence.

Common Issues Learners Might Have

What follows is a list of common issues that learners with dyscalculia might face. They have been collated from the internet and personal experience:

• Has difficulty learning and recalling basic number facts such as number bonds, e.g. 6 + 4 = 10.
• Difficulty remembering number concepts
• Still uses fingers to count instead of using more advanced strategies (like mental maths)
• Poor understanding of the signs +, -, ÷ and x or may confuse these mathematical symbols
• Struggles to recognise that 3 + 5 is the same as 5 + 3 or may not be able to solve 3 + 26 ‒ 26 without calculating
• Has difficulty counting backwards
• Has trouble with place value, often putting numbers in the wrong column.
• Finds it difficult to understand maths phrases like greater than and less than
• Has difficulty working out the total cost of items and can run out of money
• Slow to perform calculations
• Weak mental arithmetic skills
• Addition is often the default operation
• A poor sense of estimation
• Struggles with visual-spatial ideas and understanding information on charts and graphs.
• Has trouble finding different approaches to the same maths problem, such as adding the length and width of a rectangle and doubling the answer to solve for the perimeter (rather than adding all the sides).
• Struggles to learn and understand reasoning methods and multi-step calculation procedures
• Has trouble measuring items like ingredients in a simple recipe or liquids in a bottle.
• Lacks confidence in activities that require understanding speed, distance and directions, and may get lost easily.
• Has trouble applying maths concepts to money, such as calculating the exact change.
• May not understand maths language or be able to devise a plan to solve a maths problem.
• Following directions
• Remembering instructions
• Organisation
• Managing time and telling the time
• High levels of mathematics anxiety

Dyspraxia

What is Dyspraxia?

Dyspraxia is a Specific Learning Difficulty that is sometimes known as developmental co-ordination disorder (DCD). It affects physical co-ordination for both fine and gross motor skills.

• Fine motor skills – small muscles – writing
• Gross motor skills – large muscles – balance, catching a ball

Dyspraxia does not affect intelligence.

Common Issues Learners Might Have

What follows is a list of common issues that learners with dyspraxia might face. They have been collated from the internet and personal experience:

• Poorly formed letters and illegibility of writing
  • Hasn’t developed memory for movements needed to form letters
  • Difficulty manipulating pen
  • Difficulty moving arm across page
  • Difficulty controlling force/extent of movements, so letters are unevenly sized
  • Paper moves when writing
• Difficulty copying from the board
  • Difficulty locating work to be copied
  • Difficulty coordinating eye tracking and head movements
  • Perceptual difficulties – “sees” diagrams differently if looking at them from the side
• Writing deteriorates over short period
• Doesn’t write enough in lessons
• Poor organisation of ideas
  • Extra concentration required for the physical writing process means individuals lose thread of arguments/story
• Tires quickly
  • Due to the amount of concentration and effort required
  • Low muscle tone affects stamina, balance and ability to hold positions against gravity
• Short attention span
• Slow to follow instructions
  • Poor auditory processing – may have only just processed one instruction while the next has already been given
  • Poor motor planning skills
• Poor organisation of work/diagrams
• Struggles with visual-spatial ideas and understanding information on charts and graphs.
• Has trouble measuring items like ingredients in a simple recipe or liquids in a bottle.
• Has difficulty using tools such as a compass or a ruler and controlling a mouse.
• Can’t tell the time.
• Doesn’t have equipment needed for lessons
• Loses work
  • Rushes to leave at the end of lessons and leaves stuff behind
  • Poor filing skills
  • Poor quality control of filing
• Sensitivity to noise, light, temperature
• Difficulty navigating busy corridors or gets lost easily.
• Difficulty working in groups
  • Difficulty listening and focusing on individual voices
  • Short attention span
  • Tendency to opt out when things are too difficult
  • Difficulty picking up non-verbal cues so appears tactless to peers
  • Difficulties understanding humour and sarcasm
  • Individual is slow to pick up social cues or unwritten rules of a group/teacher
• Stress increases emotional responses, such as fears, emotional outbursts, obsessions.
• Potentially high levels of anxiety.

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

What is ASD?

ASD or Autistic Spectrum Disorder is a lifelong neurological difference that affects how people communicate and interact with others. Most people with ASD see, hear and experience the world differently from neurotypical people, but, like neurotypical people, every autistic person is unique.

Common Issues Learners Might Have

What follows is a list of common issues that learners with ASD might face. They have been collated from the internet and personal experience:

Social Interaction

• Find it difficult to initiate and maintain relationships
• Demonstrate repetitive behaviours
• Like to strictly follow rules
• Have a strong sense of justice
• Speak in a way that is overly direct
• Have difficulty reading facial expressions and body language
• Use facial expressions that can be misinterpreted
• Have difficulty with turn taking
• Find it hard to understand and express their feelings

Communication

• Take things literally so might have difficulty with idiomatic language and sarcasm
• Will be overly honest
• Might be selective mute or non-verbal
• Might find it difficult to maintain focus or engage in a conversation that does not spark their interest
• Might avoid eye contact
• Might stare too much
• Difficulty working in groups
• Difficulty listening and focusing on individual voices
• Short attention span
• Tendency to opt out when things are too difficult
• Difficulty picking up non-verbal cues so appears tactless to peers
• Difficulties understanding humour and sarcasm
• Individual is slow to pick up social cues or unwritten rules of a group/teacher

Working Memory

• Issue with keeping key information in mind while using it
• Listening to, remembering, and following directions that contain multiple steps
• Remembering a question long enough to think about it and formulate an answer
• Carrying out the steps to a task when no longer looking at the task
• Engaging in mental maths
• Have trouble with tasks that have more than one step
• Lack skills in planning and organization
• Have difficulty applying what they learned in a previous experience to a new situation

Stress

• Living in stress
• Natural breaks for neurotypical may be more stress inducing
• Short attention span
• Potentially high levels of anxiety.
• Tires quickly due to the amount of concentration and effort required
• Stress increases emotional responses, such as fears, emotional outbursts, obsessions.
• Breakdowns more likely than neurotypicals
• Slow to follow instructions
• Poor auditory processing – may have only just processed one instruction while the next has already been given
• Poor motor planning skills

Maths

• Organising information and operations
• Flexibly moving between pieces of information
• Identifying the relevant information in the problem
• Understanding the problem holistically
• Struggles with visual-spatial ideas and understanding information on charts and graphs.
• Sometimes has difficulty telling the time

Beyond The Quick Fix

A few months ago, I recorded a podcast with Gareth Reynolds about A Personal Experience of Dyslexia. As part of that, Gareth created a list of practices that can support neurodiverse learners in the classroom.

Creating a safe learning environment where it is okay to make mistakes can encourage neurodiverse learners to take risks and be vulnerable in their learning. By promoting a growth mindset, we can help neurodiverse learners view challenges as opportunities for growth and build confidence in their ability to improve. This can be a powerful tool in accelerating their learning and development.

Identify their strengths and champion them. Instead of focusing on weaknesses, watch for moments to catch learners doing something well and celebrate their successes. This can help shift the narrative away from a deficit model and toward a strengths-based approach. By providing opportunities for learners to utilise their strengths in learning, we can help support them in their academic journey.

It is important to get to know your neurodiverse learners and understand their approaches to learning. This includes talking to them about their fears and concerns in the classroom and helping them identify and implement strategies that work best for them. Instead of relying on binary assessments, try to approach learning with the mindset that there is no single way to reach an outcome. By taking the time to understand your learners and helping them develop personalised strategies, you can better support and empower them in their learning.

By learning about neurodivergence and gaining an increased awareness and understanding of what it looks and feels like, we can inform our teaching, learning, and assessment in a more effective and empathetic way. Whether through formal or informal learning, this insight can have a real-time and long-term impact on the neurodiverse learners we work with. By being curious and open to learning about neurodivergence, we can further facilitate and enable these learners to thrive.

Contextualising content and material around a learner's passions or interests can help foster engagement and create a connection between the value or utility of maths. By tailoring the learning material to a learner's interests, we may be able to increase their motivation and engagement in these subjects.

Supporting Your Learners

As Beyond The Quick Fix shows tutors should adopt a person-centred approach when working with neurodiverse learners. Remember, your learners will know about their needs and preferred method of support. And, most importantly, all learners are different and a technique that supports one may not support another in the same way.

What follows is a series of tips to support learners across SpLD and ASD. What is important to realise is that these tips would, in reality, support all our learners:

Giving Instructions

• Simplify instructions (written and verbal)
• Do not give a list of instructions
• Do not add instructions while learners are engaged in a task
• Seek clarification from learners
• Ask concept checking questions
• Try to encourage and develop self-efficacy where a learner can breakdown tasks themselves into manageable tasks.

Creating Handouts

• Talk to learners about preferences for colours and fonts.
• comic sans, century gothic, verdana, tahoma, arial, trebuchet, calabri
• Keep instructions simple
• Keep the layout clear and uncomplicated

Giving Feedback

• Talk to learners about what type of feedback works best for them. Spoken feedback, recorded for them can be more personal and supportive than written feedback and lots of red pen.
• Have handouts prepared
• Board work
• Homework
• Ensure handouts are formatted with organisational features to draw attention to the important information (perfect for subconsciously reinforcing skills for Functional Skills English)

Classroom Environment

• Try not to do things in an open plan environment – cannot focus and lack the ability to filter
• Keep distractors at a minimum especially with noise, light and temperature
• Try not to have too busy a classroom
• Encourage regular rest breaks if needed
• Encourage learners to sit at the front of the class

Using learner whiteboards

• Can wipe and start again
• Doesn’t keep a negative record

Take a break

• Some learners work best when they can pause between tasks and take a break of some kind (walk around, stretch, or simply stop working)
• Walk and talk exercise e.g. Learners walk in pairs and discuss something they have just learnt.

Give Choices

• Solve five of the ten problems assigned
• Work alone or with a small group
• Take notes using words or pictures
• Write about this or that

Group Work

This final section comes from the amazing book Untypical by Pete Wharmby and is aimed at ASD learners but would support all learners when doing group work.

I’d find myself mentally curling into a ball and clamming up completely, hoping the ordeal would soon be over.

Pete Wharmby, Untypical

• Appoint leaders and other roles very clearly and have no ambiguity
• Allow learners with ASD to be an addition to a complete group, or
• Allow learners with ASD to be in smaller groups
• Monitor groups with ASD learners – keep an eye on interactions – so they feel supported and not abandoned

Quick Tips

• Revisit prerequisite knowledge regularly
• Refresh strategies for basic facts so they start to become automatic
• Talk to learners about how they prefer to do things
• Don’t be afraid to go back to basics

Common Traits

From a parental perspective (I have a son with dyspraxia and a son with ASD) one of the things that needs to brought to the forefront is the effect these conditions have on people. There is a need to understand that your learners may well be suffering from stress, anxiety and exhaustion brought on by their conditions. Just maintaining a sense of normality and making it through a day of education can be exhausting and we need to remember that our learners may well go through many lessons every day where their stress levels, anxiety levels and stamina are drained, before they get to our lesson. We need to be considerate of this when working with our learners.

Further Pearson Resources

Pearson has a number of other resources to support neurodiverse (and neurotypical) learners:

• YouTube playlist with webinar recordings on SpLD and ASD
• A Personal Experience of Dyslexia podcast
• Creative Writing and Autistic Learners podcast
• Neurodiversity podcast
• Maths Anxiety blog
• The Impact of Inclusion blog
• Reasonable Adjustments webinar
• A new podcast on A Parental View of Dyspraxia will be released in October