NEWS AND RESEARCH

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• Classroom Career - Kay Richardson is a mother and a Classroom Assistant from Cefn Coch, Powys. "I've always wanted to work with children and, after I did my degree in home and community studies, I became an instructor in an outdoor pursuit centre in mid Wales. I looked after the catering, and assisted with groups of children - most with special needs. I loved it, and ended up getting married to one of the senior instructors. But when we had children, we made a decision that I would stay at home to look after them. I did a pre-school playgroup diploma, and started work in a playgroup when Matthew was eight months old which fitted in very nicely. When Matthew went to school I needed to do more work, for financial reasons. A job as classroom assistant in the local school came up which meant more hours, but again it fitted in with the children's day. There's no way that I would do a job which meant that I couldn't be there when they came home from school."
  
  
• An Extra Pair of Hands? - What can research tell us about the effects of having an extra adult in the Scottish primary school classroom? This is the question which a national evaluation of the Classroom Assistants Initiative is currently exploring.
  
  
• I think my life experience has helped - Pauline Bailey has worked in the same school as a dinner lady for 15 years. For the last five years she has also been a classroom assistant. The 57-year-old mother of two works at Burnley Brow school in Chadderton, Oldham, where a high percentage of children have special educational needs - 60 of the 360 pupils. "I started as a volunteer reading to the children and it has just gone from there," Ms Bailey said. "I have got more and more involved with the job and I have been on courses." There are five other classroom assistants, four NNEBs (diploma in childcare and education) and five bilingual support workers. "I am not really worried about the money. I think it would be good to have more recognition for classroom assistants. But I just love the job for what it is."
  
  
• Classroom Assistants to Relieve Pressure - BBC report: Schools have been given assurances of future funding for classroom assistants, who can help relieve the pressure on teachers. The Education and Employment Secretary David Blunkett has announced £400m in funding to recruit and train teaching assistants for the years 2002-2004. The announcement, which includes funding from local education authorities, secures a further two years for a classroom assistant scheme launched two years ago.
  
  
• Spin on Classroom Assistants - a well-briefed UK Sunday newspaper announced that classroom assistants would be allowed to take charge of classes in order to free teachers to get on with lesson planning and other non-teaching duties. The announcement proved to be incendiary. Before Estelle Morris had even begun to deliver the speech, the teacher unions were expressing outright opposition to the idea. Classroom assistants were not too happy either. The policy had been launched, but it looked to be plummeting fast.
  
  
• An Extra Pair of Hands? - Managing Classroom Assistants in Scottish Primary Schools - Classroom support is currently high on the national education agenda. Are classroom assistants freeing teachers to support their pupils more effectively or do they find that liaising with classroom assistants creates yet another demand on their time? Are they being used to support individual pupils or small groups? Do classroom assistants spend more time on administrative tasks or supporting pupils?
  
  
• Different Class - UK 'Guardian' newspaper report: Teachers are always saying they are overworked. So why do they sneer at classroom assistants?
  
  
• Classroom Assistants: Key Issues from the National Evaluation - results of the Scottish Classroom Evaluation Initiative. Education authority representatives, headteachers and classroom teachers believe that the most important contribution of classroom assistants is their flexibility in supporting both teachers and pupils. Many also indicate that having an extra adult in the class and 'freeing up' teachers are important.
  
  
• How to become a classroom assistant - Classroom assistants, sometimes called teacher associates or teacher assistants, will have an increasingly important role to play in schools over the coming years as the government is determined to devolve many of the teachers' traditional duties to ancillary staff. These proposed changes worry some teachers as Mike Baker, the BBC Education correspondent reports. The assistant acts as that invaluable extra pair of hands (and sometimes the eyes-in-the-back-of-the-head) that even the most efficient teacher finds invaluable. Inevitably, the assistant is expected to do the less demanding jobs (photocopying, collecting dinner money, mixing the powder paints and such like) but she also participates in many of the most rewarding classroom experiences, for example, working one-to-one with individual pupils. In some respects, the assistant enjoys the fun of teaching without being lumbered with the major responsibilities - lesson planning, assessing, form-filling, dealing with parents and the rest of that long list of reasons teachers give for looking so tired. An assistant requires no formal qualification, although it is possible to gain accreditation. However, the pay is not good and varies dramatically from school to school. According to Unison, the union that represents over 50,000 assistants in the UK, the salary range is between £7,125 and nearly £18,000.
  
  
• No Child Left behind - Wrightslaw - Information about how the new USA 'No Child Left Behind' legislation will affect you, frequently asked questions, regulations, guidance, etc.
  
  
• Schools Can't Tackle Nicola's dyslexia - A disability rights campaigner says he was forced to pull his 12-year-old daughter out of school because of the "pathetic" levels of care provided for dyslexic children in Gloucester, UK.
  
  
• Early speech difficulties may predict dyslexia - Based at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, Professor Carsten Elbro has run an eight-year project following dyslexic children through their schooling. Whilst many of the findings supported other research, his group also discovered that young dyslexic children are not so good at pronouncing multi-syllabic words as their peers. In a game with puppets who could not quite get the word out, 4/6-year olds were encouraged to 'help' the puppet by saying the correct word. An example was the word 'crocodile': the puppet could only say "co-di", and the children called out the correct pronuniciation. It seems that the children who later turned out to have literacy difficulties were less good at saying 'crocodile' clearly. Carsten Enbro.
  
  
  
• Breath test for dyslexia' - A simple breath test could identify children with dyslexia, attention deficit disorder and behavioural problems before they start school and ensure they are given essential nutrients to feed the brain.

  This method of biochemical testing can identify children who are deficient in the Omega 3 essential fatty acids EPA and DHA that are needed by the brain and lacking in today's junk-food diet. The test is non-invasive, and so simple that it can be done on pre-schoolchildren. All a child has to do is to put his mouth around a disposable tube and blow out a single breath for as long as he can.
  
  By measuring the amount of ethane, the breakdown product of Omega 3, the test can show which children and adults could benefit from Omega 3 and Omega 6 supplements - high-grade fish oil and evening primrose.
  
  The test, developed by Marion Ross at the Highland Psychiatric Research Foundation, was used on school children for the first time this year in a large-scale study in Co. Durham UK carried out by the Dyslexic Research Trust and the local education authority. (Nov 11th 02)

• Parents form dyslexic kids support group - Mary Russon of Lindon, Utah, is heading a group of frustrated parents of dyslexic children. Three parents were designated to voice their concerns before the board. The parents come from all over the Alpine School District and met on Sept.16 to discuss what they could do to consolidate information, support one another and organize themselves to work together to initiate change in the schools. Russon had spent the past six years seeking help for her daughter Kim, who is now 12. She met with Kim's teachers each year to ask that Kim be tested for dyslexia.
  
  
• Dyslexia didn't hold back author - Cedric Hurtt is a published children's book author. His books sit on the shelves of local bookstores, candy for word hungry children. But not too long ago, he couldn't have read all of the words in his books. Hurtt always knew there was something wrong with the way he saw words. He knew that he often read the word "was" as "saw". He knew that he struggled, but he didn't know why.
  
  
• Man sues school governors over failure to diagnose dyslexia (UK) - A man who claims his old school's failure to diagnose and deal with his dyslexia wrecked his education and employment prospects is suing for more than £400,000 in compensation. (Sep 9, 2002).
  
  
  
  
• Boy's dyslexia spotted days before exams - A boy who desperately struggled with lessons during his entire school life was told he was dyslexic, just four days before his vital GCSE exams (Aug 27, 2002).
  
  
  
  
  
• Exercises 'aid dyslexic pupils' - Children with dyslexia could be helped by the introduction of special movements and exercises into school sports lessons, research suggests. Special routines, designed to tap into reflexes from birth, lead to better co-ordination which in turn can improve reading and writing skills, according to psychologist Martin McPhillips. A charitable foundation, Primary Movement, has been set up - with a website - to handle queries about the exercise scheme.
  
  
  
  
  
• Dyslexia and Blood Pressure - Many dyslexic children come from families with a history of lower blood pressure - adding weight to theories of a common cause of the disorder. One possibility is that dyslexics have too much of a particular body chemical called phospholipid platelet activating factor (PAF) Blood vessel function.
  
  
• Cause of Dyslexia on Chromosome 18 - A pre-school test to identify children with a predisposition to dyslexia might be possible in the future with the discovery of a genetic link to the disorder.A study of more than 200 families of children who are dyslexic has revealed that a region of chromosome 18 – one of the 23 pairs of human chromosomes – is strongly associated with the condition.
  Scientists from the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics in Oxford say that the biggest dyslexia study of its kind has identified what could turn out to be the most important gene involved in causing dyslexia.
  
  
  
  
  
• Kenya Dyslexia Conference - William Ferguson, editor of our huge 'Resources' page, reports on the annual Kenyan Schools Dyslexia Conference: Nairobi was the setting for the annual Kenyan School’s Dyslexia Conference. Twelve leading independent day and boarding schools were represented. Many of the delegates had travelled many miles from up country to attend this annual conference.Other delegates came from schools within Nairobi. . .
  
  
  
  
  
• Left handedness - Humans are not the only creatures to be left- or right-handed. Research by Bill Hopkins at the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center in Atlanta has shown that, like humans, apes have hand preferences. Whereas about a tenth of humans are left-handed, around a third of chimpanzees are left hand dominant. This tendency is also greater in chimps who have more older siblings.
  
  
  
  
  
• New Insight into Why Learning Disorders are Genetic - Scientists analyzing new images of the brain have discovered that structures used in language processing are strongly influenced by genetics. This begins to explain why learning disorders such as dyslexia and autism can run in families. The same study also revealed that the volume of gray matter is strongly linked with intelligence.
  
  
  
  
• Dyslexia Teatment Center Offers Children a Free Hand Up - Inspiring report about the the Tennessee Center for the Study and Treatment of Dyslexia, which helps get the proper services for dyslexic children in the Madison County school system.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Mother Sacrifices all for Daughter's Literacy - Karen Hetmanski has a high school diploma, but her life has been a series of low-paying jobs and disappointments. At 37, she reads like a third-grader.
  The Millers Island woman has launched a crusade - there really is no other word for it - to keep the same thing from happening to her daughter, Amanda Watts. Amanda, who will be 13 next month, can barely read.
  "Education is very important to me, because I don't have an education," said the jobless Hetmanski, who has spent thousands of dollars on her cause and put her house up for sale. "That's why I am fighting so hard."
  
  
• Dyslexia and Gender - Most people are very careful to avoid preferential treatment for students based on gender, but new research suggests boys may need special attention to cope with a higher prevalence of reading disabilities.

  The findings, which appear in today's issue of the Mayo Clinic Proceedings, are part of a large study that examined the reading skills of 5,718 children born in Rochester, Minn., between 1976 and 1982 who remained in the area after the age of 5.

  The researchers found that boys were two to three times more likely to suffer from dyslexia than girls.
  
  

• Helping Dyslexics in the Blink of an Eye -

  State-of-the-art warplane cockpit systems that allow pilots to aim missiles with their eyes are being adapted by defence researchers and Oxford University scientists to help diagnose dyslexia by measuring whether children's eyes work properly when they read.

  The diagnosis kit - designed to measure "eye wobble", one of the key components of dyslexia - uses two tiny video cameras fixed to a pair of spectacle frames. These contain reflective glass, like that used in one-way mirrors. When children put on the glasses and look towards a fixed point or a moving target, the cameras film their eye movements, which are measured with infrared light reflected by the glass.

  A computer link then shows whether the child's eyes are fixing and tracking steadily, or whether they wobble. (The Sunday Times - Oct 28th 01)

  

• Trouble with Numbers

  It is estimated that dyscalculia - difficulty with numbers - afflicts between 3% and 6% of the population, based on the proportion of children who have special difficulty with maths despite good performance in other subjects.

  Often it is associated with dyslexia - word difficulty - but experts say the practical effects are even worse: Inability to work out change in a shop, tell the time, or even find your way around.
  
  

• Dyslexic children's brains operate more like those of normal readers following training designed to help them hear sounds in words.For the first time, researchers have shown that the brains of dyslexic children can be rewired -- after undergoing intensive remediation training -- to function more like those found in normal readers. The training program, which is designed to help dyslexics understand rapidly changing sounds that are the building blocks of language, helped the participants become better readers after just eight weeks. For the first time, researchers have shown that the brains of dyslexic children can be rewired -- after undergoing intensive remediation training -- to function more like those found in normal readers. The training program, which is designed to help dyslexics understand rapidly changing sounds that are the building blocks of language, helped the participants become better readers after just eight weeks.
   

  Continue with More News and Research, including:

  1. THE CAUSES OF DYSLEXIA

  2. EXPERIENCES OF DYSLEXIA

  3. DIAGNOSIS

  4. TEACHING

  5. OTHER ARTICLES