News, commentary, and resources about Learning Disabilities
Teacher magazine has a blog entry referring to news pieces in the New York Times and the Washington Post about Michael Phelps and his family. Interesting reading for those who are interested in ADHD and families. Check the comments.
Link to the post.
Sphere: Related ContentADDitude, a magazine about ADD and ADHD (with a nod to Learning Disabilities), is promoting a story it ran 10 years ago about Olympic swimming star Michael Phelps. Here’s some text the folks at ADDitude asked bloggers to run:
According to an interview with ADDitude magazine about his attention deficit, Michael Phelps’ mom Debbie says she helped him stay focused by reminding him to consider the consequences of his behavior. She recalls the time when 10-year-old Michael came in second and got so upset that he ripped off his goggles and threw them angrily onto the pool deck.
During their drive home, she told him that sportsmanship counted as much as winning. “We came up with a signal I could give him from the stands,” she says. “I’d form a ‘C’ with my hand, which stood for ‘compose yourself.’ Every time I saw him getting frustrated, I’d give him the sign. Once, he gave me the ‘C’ when I got stressed while making dinner. You never know what’s sinking in until the tables are turned!”
Link to the story.
Sphere: Related ContentSharon Vaughn, a professor at the University of Texas who studies reading problems and instruction, is slated to present a free, telephone-mediated session on reading for adolescents with reading problems. The dial-in conference is sponsored by the Institute for Literacy and Learning, and it occurs 19 August 2008. The slides for the presentation are already available.
The Institute for Literacy and Learning hosts a series of these events. Recently, Randy Sprick presented a session on discipline. Shari, Randy, and the other presenters in the series of sessions are for-real experts, so these are pretty valuable opportunities. Take advantage of them!
Link to the Institute for Literacy and Learning Web site and for the download of the slides. For those with an interest in the topic of adolescent literacy, note that the National Joint Committee on Learning Disabilities has published a paper on this topic.
Sphere: Related ContentProject Forum, a group that works to inform policy makers and administrators about special education issues, has announced the release of a document about US states’ policies on eligibility for special education of students with Learning Disabilities. The Project Forum paper, which was prepared by Eileen M. Ahearn of Project Forum under a Federal Cooperative Agreement, documents status and change in how states determine eligibility.
Continue reading ‘Eligibility survey of US states’
Here’s an announcement of the second in the series of polls to assess readers’ perspectives on response to intervention or response to instruction (RtI) and Learning Disabilities. RtI (which was expressly permitted in the US Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), is commonly considered to have multiple tiers of intensity with careful monitoring of students’ progress informing decisions about providing increasingly more intensive services. The mechanisms of RtI are the focus of this poll. Although they are being adopted broadly, the only RtI models that have been studied closely are in early literacy, so I’m limiting this discussion to those efforts.
Continue reading ‘Poll 2 on RtI and LD’
The first of LD Blog’s polls about response to intervention (or instruction) will close the evening (US Eastern time) of 4 August. If you haven’t cast your vote in the poll yet and you wish to do so, jump over there and pick a winner!
Sphere: Related ContentWriting in the Journal of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology under the title “The Complex of TFII-I, PARP1, and SFPQ Proteins Regulates the DYX1C1 Gene Implicated in Neuronal Migration and Dyslexia,” Isabel Tapia-Páez and colleagues revealed that they have discovered a group of proteins that apparently act together to control the transcription of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid that forms genetic material) code into RNA (ribonucleic acid which controls synthesis of proteins) code. Although the gene DYX1C1 has been implicated in only a small proportion of cases of dyslexia, it is important in general because the finding moves researchers closer to understanding how genes can influence behavior as complex as reading.
Continue reading ‘How genes may affect dyslexia’
Literacy donations
I’ve known about the Literacy Site for a long time, but never thought to link to it from LD Blog until yesterday. If you’ve been around the Internet since it’s first 5 years or so, you probably remember the sound that echoed when the Hunger Site went live. I can remember the desk and the old Mac that I was using when a friend first pointed me to it.
The Literacy Site does for books what the Hunger Site does for food: It uses sponsor-donated revenue to fund purchase and distribution of books. Once a day, users can register their presence by clicking a link on the site, and sponsors (e.g., Phi Beta Kappa) donate.
It seems like an appropriate feature for LD Blog. In fact, I might put an always-present link a sidebar for this one. In the meantime, here’s a link.
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