Regional Office of Education #13

Do you suspect there are children with dyslexia in your classroom? Are you looking for new ways to help those struggling students in your classroom? Is dyslexia a mystery to you?

It’s not just an issue of trying harder or paying attention.

In this workshop you will explore how students learn to read and acquire basic skills from a brain-based educational perspective. There will be a discussion on the primary ways in which information is processed and formatted in the brain, as well as the central role of language to expand upon knowledge and retention. Specific cognitive constructs such as working memory skills, executive functioning skills and visual spatial skills will be investigated. 

Current neurological research and information will be applied to dyslexia to help you plan the most effective interventions to support sound/symbol awareness, reading comprehension and executive function. In addition, there will be an emphasis on the essential cognitive components of reading mastery; phonology, decoding, comprehension and fluency.

This dynamic, information-packed workshop will teach you strategies and methods for helping students diagnosed with dyslexia improve academic performance:

• Strategies to improve academic skills, organization and social interaction.
• Techniques to teach phonemic/ phonological awareness, decoding, fluency and comprehension.
• Simple ways to use technology to enhance traditional learning methods.
• Games, stories and activities to engage & strengthen performance across modalities.

You will leave this workshop with a comprehensive outlook on Dyslexia, with practical and effective strategies you can use immediately when returning to your school.

Objectives:

1. Analyze the three types of dyslexia and apply compensatory strategies to each specific type, such as recital, chunking, and mnemonics as they apply to visual and auditory memory.
2. Determine the executive cognitive functions and interventions that impact processing speed and reading comprehension.
3. Choose intervention strategies to address visual perceptual, auditory and visual memory deficits to increase reading comprehension, and ability to follow multi-step directions.