14:02 trez buckland: Welcome to the Making Connections chat room. We will start at 3:30 PM!

14:10 trez buckland: Our guests today will be Dr. Todd Richards, who has done research using MRIs and students who have dyslexia, and Ms. Bonnie Meyer, the Director of the Hamlin Robinson School, for students with dyslexia.

14:59 Trez Buckland: Hi Jenny and Todd

15:24 Trez Buckland: We are here at Hamlin Robinson School in Seattle

15:25 Trez Buckland: HRS is an elementary school for students in grades 1 - 8 with specific language disability or dyslexia.

15:26 Trez Buckland: All the students have been evaluated and found to have difficulties with reading, spelling, handwriting, and written language.

15:26 Trez Buckland: Teachers are all trained in the Slingerland Approach which is a multisensory instructional method derived from the principles of the Orton Gillingham method.

15:27 Trez Buckland: Classrooms are small - average size is 13. The classes look very conventional - just the teaching methodology differs.

15:28 Trez Buckland: Students are in the average to above average intellectual range although IQ profiles are very scattered. Strenghths usually are seen in visual spatail abilities, but not always

15:30 todd richards: We are doing research where we collect brain scans of dyslexic children

15:31 todd richards: These brain scans give us information about language processing

15:32 todd richards: During the brain scan, we give language tests like rhyming and meaning of words

15:32 todd richards: We are looking for difference between normals and dyslexic children in brain regions that process language

15:33 todd richards: We have found differences during both the rhyming task and the word meaning task in a frontal cortical region of the brain

15:34 todd richards: The brain region is called the inferior frontal gyrus and also in the temporal lobe

15:34 todd richards: We are going to study both boys and girls but up to now we have only studied boys

15:34 Trez Buckland: Todd, do you see any difference in brain activity after students have received any kind of intervention?

15:35 todd richards: Dr. Berninger has a huge reference of possible subjects that we will collect form

15:35 todd richards: We are testing new treatments for dyslexics based on the results of the brain scans

15:36 todd richards: We have published results showing how the brain activation can change with treatment

15:37 Trez Buckland: Tell us about the types of treatments that are showing promise.

15:37 todd richards: The treatment was developed by Dr. Berninger and uses phonological and alphabet principle

15:38 Trez Buckland: Dr. Berniniger's strategies are similar to those utilized by classroom teachers at HRS. We find that these students need much repetition and practice.

15:39 todd richards: These children need motivation and Dr. Berninger used the theme of Einstein Ninja Turtles

15:39 Trez Buckland: Are there other sites around the country that are having similar findings?

15:40 todd richards: The Yale group has also shown differences in the left inferior frontal gyrus in dyslexics

15:41 todd richards: The Yale group used functional MRI while we used functional MR spectroscopy

15:41 todd richards: Functional MRI measures changes in brain blood oxygenation while fMRS measures brain chemical changes

15:42 todd richards: We can measure brain chemical changes in lactate during a language test

15:43 todd richards: The dyslexic children had a different pattern of lactate activation than normals

15:43 Trez Buckland: Welcome to Plains School and N. Merritt. Do you have any questions?

15:43 Trez Buckland: Hi Barbara

15:46 Trez Buckland: We are very excited to be working with this population of studetns. Their creativity and sensitivity is extraordinary.

15:46 plains school: Does color background make a difference or is there actually any research on this

15:47 todd richards: Some people claim that color can make difference but research still needs to be done to prove this.

15:48 Trez Buckland: I know the Irlen Lens studies have given some part of this population relief in the actitivies around reading. WE have one staff meember and a couple students who wear lens.

15:48 plains school: Is there a test we can use to identify these students

15:49 Trez Buckland: The lenses may cause less eye strain, however the processing difficulties are still present. (Bonnie Meyer)

15:49 Trez Buckland: I think there are professionals trained in screening techniques. I do not have a list however.

15:51 plains school: Does this happen with certain letters for each child or is there a pattern of letters that are more frequently reversed?

15:52 Trez Buckland: Frequently reversed letters are reversals of b,d - inversions such as p,b or d - transpositions such as saw/was. Numbers are also often reversed

15:52 plains school: Students who are learning the keyboard often confuse u/y and r/t on a frequent basis. These often have trouble reading or are slow at it but not an unsuccessful student over all. Any identifying char?

15:54 barbaramorey: I had a ten year old child who would interchange groups of letters when she read them. She would read "At toy a" for "Toyota", for example. Is this common?

15:54 Trez Buckland: Those students may have directionality confusions or simply have not become automatic with key placement. One characteristic is often slow processing.

15:55 Trez Buckland: Often students have difficutly knowing where one word ends and another begins. That is all related to phoneme awareness and the concept that words are made up of individual sounds and phrases are

15:56 Trez Buckland: made up of individual words. This is often related to visual perceptual difficulties

15:56 todd richards: This is Todd Richards. I am going to have to leave now to pick up my daughter.

15:57 Trez Buckland: Thanks Todd

15:58 plains school: Does this directional diffentiation on keyboards connect with the dyslexia?

15:58 Trez Buckland: Bonnie Meyer is still here with Trez at Hamlin Robinson School in case you have any more questions

15:59 Trez Buckland: The directionality confusion on keyboards may be a component, but I would not say it would stand alone as a diagnostic criteria

16:00 plains school: Is this still considered a familial trait?

16:00 Trez Buckland: Dyslexia is very familial. Or are you speaking of the directionality difficultites?

16:02 jenlw: Bonnie, have you done any educational research with students in your classroom?

16:03 Trez Buckland: WE have gathered data on our yearly individual testing but no one has taken on the task of analyzing it beyond the usual look at progress for individuals

16:03 plains school: Is there any relationship in using a keyboard to write words showing improvements with dyslexia?

16:04 Trez Buckland: THere is beginning to be some good research out of CA looking at rates of progress for students reading their own writing.

16:05 jenlw: Bonnie, do you mean reading their hand-written or typed writing? And does it make a difference?

16:06 Trez Buckland: Another exciting potential for our students is the use of voice recognition software where students can speak to the computer and read what appears on the screen as their own words.

16:07 Trez Buckland: Reading the typed text is what I meant. I think often the difference is the quality of the writing. We have a teacher here finishing his ph.d looking at the difference in dictated text that someone

16:08 Trez Buckland: else types vs. speaking directly into the computer.

16:10 jenlw: Bonnie, what differences did he find?

16:11 plains school: What does this problem do with math?

16:11 Trez Buckland: Early in the data collection, but they think they see a differnce in the quality of writing when they can get immediate visual feedback that they read, instead of waiting for someone to transcribe.

16:12 Trez Buckland: We often see dyslexic students with great talent in math and often great difficulties in arithmetic. Memorizing facts, organizing, attending to signs, reversal of numbers and reading word problems

16:12 Trez Buckland: can get in the way of perfomance, although they really understand mathematical principles.

16:13 plains school: Is this particularly difficult in geometry

16:14 Trez Buckland: especially if they have to rely on memorization of theorums. I know many dyslexic find geometry can be the first fun they have with math

16:15 plains school: Are there some better methods in working with these students?

16:17 Trez Buckland: Well, we certainly feel we have success using simultaneos multisensory methods where we give stimulus through the auditory, visual and kinesthetic motor modalities at the same time.

16:17 Trez Buckland: Orton Gillingham and its related adaptations are seen as approaches that have good success rates.,

16:19 Trez Buckland: Good resources for more information include the International Dyslexia Association at www.interdys.org, the Report of the Naiuonal Reading Panel at www.nationalreadingpanel.org. These are both

16:19 plains school: Who is OrtonGillingham? Does he have publishing material?

16:19 Trez Buckland: research based resources. LDA always has some information. Recent books by Louisa Moats are also very good.,

16:20 Trez Buckland: Orton Gillingham is an approach developed by Dr. Samuel Orton and Anna Gillingham. It set for the principles for instruction

16:21 Trez Buckland: and separated these individuals from those with brain injury

16:23 Trez Buckland: Thanks for checking in. If you have any other questions post them on the discussion board and we will try to get answers to you. You could also email Trez at trezbuck@u.washington.edu

16:24 barbaramorey: Are there materials or approaches you could recommend for math concepts for kids with dys.who can't read well enough to use standard texts...

16:24 Trez Buckland: WE use conventional texts and the teachers read to the studnets are necessary

16:24 Trez Buckland: Bye from Bonnie Meyer and Trez