"Audio Dyslexia"

I went to a workshop on Auditory Dyslexia put on by our local IDA chapter. The speaker was Jean Osmond from the Reading Center in Rochester, MN.Basically, auditory dyslexia was defined as difficulty with language that resulted from auditory processing weaknesses. The presentation centered on early idenitification and early remediation. Late speaking, lots of ear infections, having a proliferation of “cute” mispronunciations, articulation problems, family history of auditory difficulties, disinterest or inability to do rhymes were all listed as possible indicators of the problem.

The most fascinating part of the presentation for me was about blending. The speaker said that kids who have auditory dyslexia not only need to be taught to blend sounds, but they need to be taught to blend words to make sentences, sentences to make paragraphs, and paragraphs to make compositions. They often suffer from difficulties with comprehension all linking to their primary auditory disability.

Hope this helps.

WHat does IDA stand for? I’d like to do a search and see if I can get further info. Thanks a bunch!

IDA is the International Dyslexia Society. Here’s the URL: http://www.interdys.org/

These are very similar to my son’s language problems. He has Klinefelter Syndrome. Some of his learning and behavior problems may be due, in part, to glitches in his Central Auditory Processing system.

What is Klinefelter syndrome?

What do you mean by blending words to make sentences and sentences to make paragraphs? Do you mean that these kids need to be taught to write in a structured manner?

How does the comprehension issue relate to auditory issues?

Hi Beth-

She is talking about that fluency thing again. For readers who read from word to word, or skip small words or parts of words, or add words- they can be taught to read sentences in the same way they are taught to read words- the words go one sound at a time and the sentences go one word at a time- going back to the beginning at every error. It is really an old and very effective method- but- as with any boring therapeutic procedure- something you do regularly for short intervals. How is your son doing?

Robin

Thanks Robin. I actually regularly make my son restart sentences when he skips words. Didn’t realize it was a technique.

My son is moving along. He has become more fluent but still not like a regular person. We had a few days when he read like a regular person but then it disappeared. Isn’t that strange? I am not really using fluency approaches with him because he was so resistant. I will have to insist at some point I suppose if what we’re doing doesn’t bring it along.

He is getting private therapy through an audiologist as well (Neuronet program). We are seeing some big leaps in his auditory processing and sensory integration that I hope will translate to his reading. Certainly, the auditory processing improvements will help his listening skills, if not reading. Its a little hard to sort out what is causing what with reading since I also have dramatically increased his reading time by pulling him out of school part time (about a month after we started NN) but certainly his reading jumped when he was able to pass certain barriers in therapy. I think of your casserole analogy a lot.

I asked you this on another board but it got buried, I think. Can we keep him on an IEP (classified) but not in resource room?
We think little of the resource room teacher but don’t want to lose the classification in case we aren’t completely successful at remediating his problems and ultimately need to switch schools. He has CAPD, visual processing problems, word retreival issues, as well as sensory integration deficits. The school has him classified as a specific language disability. So he is a kid at major risk for problems for the long haul, regardless if we get him reading now.

Beth,

You and the team can configure his services in any way that seems to make sense for him. The issue you may run into has to do with third eligibility gate- Does he need specialized instruction in order to succeed. The school may make the argument that if they aren’t providing specialized instruction then all he has are accommodations and modifications. These guarantee access to the regular education program and might be interpreted more as section 504 than an IEP. On the other hand- you are providing specialized instruction under the plan in his IEP with a partial day model aren’t you? So it may be a moot point. This is a tricky one and I am not really sure of how it could go. Having parents provide partial IEP services is a relatively new twist in Special Education so I am kind of at a loss. Hmmm…

Robin

Robin,

I am providing services but not with their blessing. Our situation went all the way to the district attorney who basically told them there was nothing they could do legally to stop us. We could not agree on programming and we decided teaching him ourselves was less trouble than due process. We also reached a point of realizing that arguments weren’t worth the trouble since we had little confidence in the ability of the one resource room teacher.

We have left him in resource room for math. His reading problems prevent him from keeping up wiht the regular circulumn. But he has scores well above grade level on Woodcock Johnson in math applications so am hopeful we can move him out of resource room.

I think though, even under the best scenario, he will still need specialized instruction in fall for at least spelling and writing. I suspect, with CAPD, he would also benefit from direct instruction in reading comprehension. I was thinking of something like Visualizing and Verbalizing.

Perhaps the best thing to do is to revise his IEP in fall to reflect his new needs. We can then see what the school proposes for programming. If the same situation occurs, we can continue partially homeschooling him.

Beth

I went to a workshop on Auditory Dyslexia put on by our local IDA chapter. The speaker was Jean Osmond from the Reading Center in Rochester, MN.Basically, auditory dyslexia was defined as difficulty with language that resulted from auditory processing weaknesses. The presentation centered on early idenitification and early remediation. Late speaking, lots of ear infections, having a proliferation of “cute” mispronunciations, articulation problems, family history of auditory difficulties, disinterest or inability to do rhymes were all listed as possible indicators of the problem.

The most fascinating part of the presentation for me was about blending. The speaker said that kids who have auditory dyslexia not only need to be taught to blend sounds, but they need to be taught to blend words to make sentences, sentences to make paragraphs, and paragraphs to make compositions. They often suffer from difficulties with comprehension all linking to their primary auditory disability.

Hope this helps.

WHat does IDA stand for? I’d like to do a search and see if I can get further info. Thanks a bunch!

IDA is the International Dyslexia Society. Here’s the URL: http://www.interdys.org/

These are very similar to my son’s language problems. He has Klinefelter Syndrome. Some of his learning and behavior problems may be due, in part, to glitches in his Central Auditory Processing system.

What is Klinefelter syndrome?

What do you mean by blending words to make sentences and sentences to make paragraphs? Do you mean that these kids need to be taught to write in a structured manner?

How does the comprehension issue relate to auditory issues?

Hi Beth-

She is talking about that fluency thing again. For readers who read from word to word, or skip small words or parts of words, or add words- they can be taught to read sentences in the same way they are taught to read words- the words go one sound at a time and the sentences go one word at a time- going back to the beginning at every error. It is really an old and very effective method- but- as with any boring therapeutic procedure- something you do regularly for short intervals. How is your son doing?

Robin

Thanks Robin. I actually regularly make my son restart sentences when he skips words. Didn’t realize it was a technique.

My son is moving along. He has become more fluent but still not like a regular person. We had a few days when he read like a regular person but then it disappeared. Isn’t that strange? I am not really using fluency approaches with him because he was so resistant. I will have to insist at some point I suppose if what we’re doing doesn’t bring it along.

He is getting private therapy through an audiologist as well (Neuronet program). We are seeing some big leaps in his auditory processing and sensory integration that I hope will translate to his reading. Certainly, the auditory processing improvements will help his listening skills, if not reading. Its a little hard to sort out what is causing what with reading since I also have dramatically increased his reading time by pulling him out of school part time (about a month after we started NN) but certainly his reading jumped when he was able to pass certain barriers in therapy. I think of your casserole analogy a lot.

I asked you this on another board but it got buried, I think. Can we keep him on an IEP (classified) but not in resource room?
We think little of the resource room teacher but don’t want to lose the classification in case we aren’t completely successful at remediating his problems and ultimately need to switch schools. He has CAPD, visual processing problems, word retreival issues, as well as sensory integration deficits. The school has him classified as a specific language disability. So he is a kid at major risk for problems for the long haul, regardless if we get him reading now.

Beth,

You and the team can configure his services in any way that seems to make sense for him. The issue you may run into has to do with third eligibility gate- Does he need specialized instruction in order to succeed. The school may make the argument that if they aren’t providing specialized instruction then all he has are accommodations and modifications. These guarantee access to the regular education program and might be interpreted more as section 504 than an IEP. On the other hand- you are providing specialized instruction under the plan in his IEP with a partial day model aren’t you? So it may be a moot point. This is a tricky one and I am not really sure of how it could go. Having parents provide partial IEP services is a relatively new twist in Special Education so I am kind of at a loss. Hmmm…

Robin

Robin,

I am providing services but not with their blessing. Our situation went all the way to the district attorney who basically told them there was nothing they could do legally to stop us. We could not agree on programming and we decided teaching him ourselves was less trouble than due process. We also reached a point of realizing that arguments weren’t worth the trouble since we had little confidence in the ability of the one resource room teacher.

We have left him in resource room for math. His reading problems prevent him from keeping up wiht the regular circulumn. But he has scores well above grade level on Woodcock Johnson in math applications so am hopeful we can move him out of resource room.

I think though, even under the best scenario, he will still need specialized instruction in fall for at least spelling and writing. I suspect, with CAPD, he would also benefit from direct instruction in reading comprehension. I was thinking of something like Visualizing and Verbalizing.

Perhaps the best thing to do is to revise his IEP in fall to reflect his new needs. We can then see what the school proposes for programming. If the same situation occurs, we can continue partially homeschooling him.

Beth