Thread by @lifelonglit

THREAD:

An interesting (& common) question from a teacher on our Reading for Life Course:

"When teaching grade 3 and have a student arrive in your class at the start of the year wearing coloured lenses, and they have been wearing them for at least a period of 6-12 months,

I wonder how to tackle this with the parents because they have obviously sought help and this has been provided to them as the solution by 'the experts'.

By the time a student reaches grade 3 and they're behind in reading, writing and spelling, how far behind do they need to be to be considered dyslexic? Or are they just slower to make progress?"

My answer:

" If they are in Grade 3 and still behind in reading after wearing glasses for 6-12 months, the answer is right there in front of the parents: Vision is not the problem.

However, there will be a problem of logic here, in the sunk cost fallacy (we believe something is working if we've sunk money into it) and there's also the Pascal's Wager argument (I'll try something unlikely just in case is works),

so taking the glasses away or tackling the parents on this is somewhat less likely to succeed since logic and reason have already been diminished by the very presence of the glasses.

As for dyslexia diagnosis, it's not about being behind. Dyslexics shouldn't be behind. Poorly taught dyslexics are behind, but that isn't a symptom of dyslexia, that's a symptom of low quality teaching.

Dyslexia is determined by a battery of COGNITIVE tests, not academic ones. If we used academic testing to determine dyslexia, then we'd get a lot of false positives, especially in teaching systems that favoured whole language and balanced literacy.

Dyslexics are slower to make progress in low quality school systems. So are kids with other language disorders.

Yes the child you mentioned could very well be dyslexic, but if he's wearing coloured lenses and can't read, write and spell properly by Grade 3, it's not just his brain that's the problem."

#dyslexia #scienceofreading #structuredliteracy