PRESENTERS

AISHAH BINTE ABDULLAH

LEAD EDUCATIONAL THERAPIST & RETA FELLOW
Dyslexia Association of Singapore

Aishah has been with the Dyslexia Association of Singapore since 2007 and is a pioneer member of the Maths core team.

She provides Mathematics intervention for learners with dyslexia and has years of experience with curriculum planning and designing appropriate teaching approaches and lesson materials in line with the Singapore Primary / Secondary MOE school Maths curriculum.

She aims to meet the diverse needs of DAS students of varying abilities so that they can confidently work out computation sums as well as word problems applying appropriate heuristics.

Delivering these pedagogical skills to her students, she has played a strong role in helping DAS students excel in their school mathematics examinations.

Aside from her teaching responsibilities, Mdm Aishah has experience conducting talks and workshops to parents and students. She also plays a key role in coordinating and facilitating teacher training for new Maths teachers.

Mdm Aishah strongly believes that students learn mathematics concepts readily when Mathematics is made meaningful and fun for them.

As a Lead Educational Therapist with the Dyslexia Association of Singapore (DAS), Aishah provides Mathematics intervention for learners with dyslexia keeping in line with Singapore's mainstream school Mathematics curriculum.

From 2016 till to date, Aishah with team members designed and is teaching the PSUP - Problem Sums for Upper Primary curriculum to address the needs of DAS students who are firm in the basic concepts but need specific guidance to solve the higher order multi - step mathematics word problems applying a combination of Polya processes - Understand, Plan, Solve and Check; the CRA- Concrete > Representational > Abstract approaches and DAS's unique Try > Share > Learn > Apply approach.

To test the effectiveness of the PSUP curriculum, Aishah embarked on a case study research with eight students to understand their meta-cognitive abilities in solving word problems, at the start of this year. She will share her findings in this presentation.

An insight into the experiences of Primary 6 students with dyslexia using the metacognitive-based approach of problem-solving for algebraic word problems

Abstract

Students with dyslexia often struggle with word problems because of the mathematical language and multi-steps involved. At the Dyslexia Association of Singapore (DAS), the Problem Sums for Upper Primary (PSUP) curriculum was developed in 2016 to meet the needs of our primary school students who were firm with their basic mathematical concepts but lacked the appropriate strategies to solve higher-order word problems. The PSUP curriculum utilizes a combination of Polya’s 4-step processes, the Concrete-Representational-Abstract approach (C-R-A) and the Try-Share-Learn-Apply approach as its primary teaching methodology. As the programme has yet to explore students’ meta-cognitive abilities in planning, monitoring, solving and checking word problems, this study aims to understand the thought processes of eight Primary six students in solving word problems involving Algebra concepts through interviews and pre/post tests. Students were also given a questionnaire at the beginning and end of the intervention period to assess their confidence level in solving mathematics problem sums. To evaluate the effectiveness of the PSUP curriculum teaching approaches, the students’ pre-test, review test and post-test scores were compared. The results showed that 75% of the students improved from Pre-test to Review test and from Pre-test to Post test for all the algebraic concepts. Responses from the questionnaires also showed that the students were more confident in solving word problems as compared to at the start of intervention. More findings will be included in the main research paper as students’ input is currently being analysed. Limitations and instructional implications will also be discussed.

Keywords: meta-cognitive abilities, Algebra concepts, multi-step higher order word problems

SERENA TAN ABDULLAH
Lead Educational Therapist
Assistant Director (Curriculum/Resource)
English Language and Literacy Division
Dyslexia Association of Singapore Limited

RETA Fellow

Serena Abdullah is the Assistant Director with the English Language and Literacy (ELL) Division overseeing the development and the implementation of the curriculum and resources at the DAS. She is also a Lead Educational Therapist who enjoys working and teaching children with learning difficulties. Her love and passion for teaching has led her to continuously seek new and innovative teaching methods to bring out the potential and self-confidence in her learners. She graduated with a Masters in Education (Curriculum and Teaching) from Nanyang Technological University/National Institute of Education (NTU/NIE) and has obtained a Cambridge International Diploma for Teachers and Trainers.

Effectiveness of an online learning model that delivers executive functioning and study skills curriculum to Upper secondary and Tertiary students with specific learning differences

As students transition to higher education, the acquisition of study skills, executive functioning skills, as well as life skills, becomes an important set of transferable skills in enabling them to learn and work more efficiently, thereby maximising their potential as well as the full benefit of their time and effort. The English Language and Literacy Division (ELL) at the Dyslexia Association of Singapore (DAS) developed the iStudySmart™ programme, which adopts an online learning approach which includes e-learning, that aims to empower students with learning differences in the areas of time management and prioritisation, planning and organisation, tertiary writing and presentation skills. The aims of iStudySmart™ were not only to bridge the gap in intervention and resources catered for students with learning challenges at the tertiary level but also to keep abreast with changing times, demands and expectations observed in the education sector.

As dyslexia is a life-long learning difference, specialist support should ideally continue into post-secondary. Certainly, with the acquisition of essential study skills and techniques introduced and covered in iStudySmart™, we hope to develop our students to become self-directed, independent and responsible learners (which are traits and characteristics expected at tertiary level) but more importantly, build a strong foundation for them to be able to reach their goals and aspirations not only in school but also in their future workplace. This paper evaluates the relevance and effectiveness of iStudySmart™ and also measures the students’ self-confidence, motivation, and independence through the administration of pre-and post-questionnaires. Further, qualitative data comprising testimonials from parents revealed high levels of satisfaction and recognition of the value of the approach. Results indicate that all aspects of the iStudySmart™ intervention were effective, with moderate and large effect sizes for planning and organisation, tertiary writing and presentation, although the students had not yet learnt to consistently apply the time management and prioritisation strategies learnt on the programme.

Keywords: higher education, dyslexia, specific learning difficulty, study skills, executing functioning skills, motivation, independence, self-confidence, e-learning, online learning, flipped classroom, asynchronous learning, synchronous learning

CAROL ALLEN

Carol Allen is an education advisor for ICT and Inclusion currently supporting London Grid For Learning and Alton District, Illinois - previously, Hartlepool LA and North Tyneside LA. Carol was named as one of the top ten educators 2018 in the field of educational technology for her inclusion work, #EdTech2018. She was awarded an Ed Futurist award in 2019.

Carol is currently a member of the Dept of Education Assistive Technology Expert Group; a member of the BETT Advisory Team; a BETT Awards Judge and has been a panel member and contributor to sessions at the House of Lords for the APPGAT committee.

Workshop/keynote presentations include FETC and ATIA Florida, Denmark, BETT, Singapore, Rotterdam, Manchester, Geneva, Cologne, London and two five-city conference/workshop tours around Australia in 2018 and 2019.

Fluency Dyslexia Speech Reading Sequencing Working Memory Positivity

This session will consider the importance of fluency as an achievable aim for students who face daily barriers to literacy. So often when students are struggling to decode and comprehend the written word, fluency is almost an afterthought. Yet to be fluent in both speech and reading is a clear success indicator in education and life. Fluency also has a direct impact on confidence and thus self-esteem. We will consider the nature and impact of fluency before considering a range of low and high tech options for supporting work in this area. Practical ideas, apps and technology resources will be discussed with the aim of offering delegates ideas to replicate in their own practice.

KALYANI BALAKRISHNAN
SPECIAL EDUCATOR
MADRAS DYSLEXIA ASSOCIATION, INDIA

Kalyani Balakrishnan is a Special Educator associated with Dyslexia related subjects for over 20 years. She has been associated with teaching children with special needs at middle and senior school levels with Madras Dyslexia Association.

She has been actively involved in organising events for the Dyslexia Week, every year. She is a part of the editorial team of the much-acclaimed quarterly newsletter brought out by MDA.

Currently, she has been assigned the role of Assessment Head, Madras Dyslexia Association.

Educational assessment for a child with dyslexia- what is it & how does it help

Assessment is the cornerstone for a child who is observed to be performing below his potential; it determines the way forward. The diagnosis that predicts learning potential, strengths and deficits paves way for concerted efforts for meaningful intervention.

It is well known that dyslexia can affect academic skills like reading, spelling, writing, maths and also one’s career, emotional well-being i.e. various aspects of life. Good intentions to support a child with dyslexia needs a starting point-which is assessment.

Dyslexia could impact many aspects of a child. The areas are interwoven and are exhibited in many areas-some evident while some others are subtle. Co-morbidities and side-effects of dyslexia could lead to manifestations that add another layer to the problem i.e. identification of the primary source of the problem!

The intensity of structured remedial classes, occupational therapy and other referrals required to help the child to cope with difficulties posed by dyslexia are determined by the degree of difficulty, individual’s learning style, areas of difficulties and behavioural issues.

Assessments done at Madras Dyslexia Association, strive to uncover the deficits in the underlying basic skills required for learning. This paper discusses the processes and the analysis of the data from multiple sources of information that leads up to a comprehensive assessment report. The report gives details on the status of the essential skills like Auditory, Visual and motor skills, and academic skills.

The paper goes on to elucidate how this report gives a complete picture of the child to a special educator to plan and execute individualised remedial sessions making road maps to reach their abilities. Lastly, case studies would be discussed to showcase the holistic approach to intervention that was made possible by the educational assessment.

MALIKKA BEGUM
RESEARCH ASSOCIATE
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION,
NANYANG TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY (NTU) SINGAPORE

Malikka Begum is a research associate at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. Her research interests include studying how cognitive processes contribute to learning difficulties in young children, including bi-literacy development and the impact of different instructional environments on student learning outcomes. Her work involves the use of multiple methods, including randomized control trials, surveys and classrooms observations to study all aspects of a child's environment.

Response and Non-response to Intervention for Reading Difficulties: What Role do Cognitive Correlates Play?

Within the field of learning disabilities, many intervention studies have found that some students do not respond adequately to treatment despite better understanding of reading development and improvement in the treatment for reading disability (Fletcher et al., 2011). According to previous studies, cognitive measures, including phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, verbal memory, and statistical learning were correlated with a lack of response to reading interventions (Al Otaiba & Fuchs, 2002).

In our study, we compared good and poor responders in an intervention study for early primary learning support program (LSP) students. The intervention study was conducted as a randomized controlled design, wherein 147 children (Mage = 6.75) who were identified as at risk for reading difficulties at primary school entry were allocated to either phonics or word reading based interventions. Students were assessed for reading accuracy and fluency after they had completed a tablet-based reading intervention. They were classified as responders vs. non-responders based on criterion-referenced scores for word reading and decoding accuracy and fluency. Students were classified as being responders if they attained above grade equivalent scores or if their scores were above a mean of typically developing peers. Students who did not attain age-based scores at post-intervention compared with their pre-intervention scores were categorized as being non-responders.

Differences between the two groups were evaluated for (1) the rate of growth on reading/literacy measures over the intervention phase; and (2) their weekly in-lesson performance on the tablet-based intervention activities; and (3) cognitive attributes (nonverbal cognitive ability, statistical learning, rapid naming, and phonological and orthographic awareness). The findings from this study provide valuable information in predicting the different types of interventions children may require. This will help educators working with children to develop interventions which are targeted to the specific needs of individual students.

MALIKKA BEGUM
RESEARCH ASSOCIATE
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION,
NANYANG TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY (NTU) SINGAPORE

Malikka Begum is a research associate at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. Her research interests include studying how cognitive processes contribute to learning difficulties in young children, including bi-literacy development and the impact of different instructional environments on student learning outcomes. Her work involves the use of multiple methods, including randomized control trials, surveys and classrooms observations to study all aspects of a child's environment.

Profiles of literacy skills and cognition among Primary 1 children in reading intervention

Evidence suggests that most struggling learners exemplify one of several common profiles and patterns of reading difficulties (Cabell et al., 2011; Pennington et al., 2014). Understanding these profiles and patterns is key to early identification and intervention with struggling readers as well as effective educational practices for improving reading skills. However, currently, there is no study examining this variability in Singapore. The purpose of this study was to describe potential profiles of within-group variabilities in the literacy skills of children who are at risk for learning difficulties. Seventy-six primary 1 participants (aged 63 to 88 months) who were identified according to their schools as either typically progressing students or struggling learners (requiring extra support). Thirty-eight struggling learners (SL) were matched on chronological age with thirty-eight typically developing peers (TD). Measures of literacy, oral language, working memory and vocabulary and executive control were administered to both groups of children. Between group comparisons were conducted with Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). Significant differences between the scores of TD and SL groups were found for literacy skills, as well as phonological awareness, verbal working memory, verbal and non-verbal cognition and vocabulary. The prevalence of poor performance across the different measured skills and patterns of combined deficits were further examined within the SL group. This study highlights the considerable heterogeneity of literacy abilities of children in a learning support group. The resulting profiles have theoretical and practical relevance when examining concurrent relationships between patterns of performance in various domains and reading and spelling achievement.

ANGELICA BENSON
DIRECTOR - DEVELOPMENT AND OUTREACH - LINDAMOOD-BELL LEARNING PROCESSES
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR - LINDAMOOD-BELL FOUNDATION

For over 20 years, Angelica Benson has worked for Lindamood-Bell Learning Processes – a world leader in research and remediation for specific learning disabilities, including dyslexia and autism spectrum disorder. Angelica is currently the Director of International Development for Lindamood-Bell. Angelica is also the Executive Director of the Lindamood-Bell Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing scholarships to families in need who are seeking life-changing instruction at Lindamood-Bell. She holds a Master of Education degree from Harvard University and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from the University of California.

Using the Cognitive Science of Learning as an Instructional Model to Remediate Dyslexia: Neuroscientific and Behavioral Results

The Cognitive Science of Learning offers a comprehensive view of addressing the full spectrum of language processing weaknesses, transcending a decoding only focus to help children with language and literacy difficulties, including those with dyslexia. We will present this paradigm, as contrasted to the current “Science of Reading” model, which we believe is necessary but not sufficient to comprehensively address the learning needs of all students. Based on 35 years of instructional experience, neurologic and behavioral intervention results substantiate the Cognitive Science of Learning model supported by a comprehensive theory of cognition of learning, Dual Coding Theory (DCT) (Paivio, 1979), which includes reading and serving the needs of dyslexics through differential diagnosis and individualized interventions. This evidence-based mental representational/language (DCT) model serves as a global foundation for reading, offering major hope to parents and educators addressing all the literacy needs of children with dyslexia so they can realize their full learning potential. (Lindamood-Bell Learning Processes, 2020, Eden et al., 2004, Oulade et al., 2013, Krafnick et al., 2015, Murdaugh et al., 2015, Murdaugh & Maximo et al., 2015, Christodoulou et al., 2015, Romeo et al., 2017, Huber et al., 2018).

SUTHASHA KELLY BIJAY
LEAD EDUCATIONAL THERAPIST AND RETA FELLOW
PRESCHOOL PROGRAMME MANAGER
DYSLEXIA ASSOCIATION OF SINGAPORE

Kelly is a lead educational therapist and preschool programme manager, she joined Dyslexia Association of Singapore (DAS) in 2012, and over the years has worked with a diverse group of pupils. Kelly holds a Master's Degree in Special Educational Needs (MASEN) and Second Upper Honours Degree in Early Childhood Education (BEd Hons). She manages the Pre-School Early Literacy Programme (PELP) and provides intervention for pre-schoolers with consistent early literacy learning difficulties. Kelly works closely with a specialised team of preschool educational therapists with a common goal, which is to help as many struggling pre-schoolers with literacy intervention support as possible.

Exploring the impact of the DAS Preschool Early Literacy Intervention for two kindergarteners during the pandemic

This study investigated two kindergarteners who attended the Dyslexia Association of Singapore’s (DAS) Preschool Early Literacy Programme (PELP). The study explores their learning journey as the children received continued literacy learning support during the unpredictable covid-19 Safe Management Measures (SMM). Two preschool early literacy intervention teachers delivered literacy instructions to kindergarten-aged children with early literacy weaknesses within the PELP through the pandemic which combined both classroom, and home-based learning. This qualitative and exploratory case study was conducted from March 2020 to November 2021. Data was gathered from pre-and-post early literacy assessments, and anecdotal observations. This study’s findings established that children at-risk of dyslexia and ADHD can continue to receive learning support during the pandemic and progress from receiving intervention through classroom and home-based learning support. The study also acknowledges that due to various challenges, online learning on its own is not the best way for pre-schoolers to learn. However, some modest benefits were discovered amongst the inadequacies of intervention online for pre-schoolers during the pandemic.

DR TIM BUNN
EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGIST
SINGAPORE

Tim studied psychology and philosophy at Oxford before teaching in Nigeria and Bristol. He trained as an educational psychologist in 76-77 and then practiced for 8 years in Northamptonshire, England. He returned to teaching while his own children were young, including a spell in a special school for children with severe learning difficulties. He returned to educational psychology, becoming a dyslexia specialist and later a special needs administrative officer. He left public service in 2008 and worked for a while in a small private school specialising in supporting dyslexics and other needs. Then he ventured overseas, to Singapore, where he spent 6 years working for the Dyslexia Association of Singapore, mainly as a psychologist. He now works in a private agency, SACAC Counselling. where he provides assessment services to support his counselling colleagues’ work.

He estimates he has assessed over 600 students in Singapore and perhaps 1000+ in England. He finds getting to know students through assessment both rewarding and challenging, and looks forward to having better tools to help students, parents and teachers understand learning even better.

The past and future of psychological assessment

This opinion piece follows the history of psychological assessment of learning from the later 19^th century to today, with glimpses of what neuroscience and AI may contribute. It argues that a more comprehensive model of assessment is now needed, to move away from but not abolish the model founded on IQ. Not all recent developments in psychology have yet been adequately incorporated into assessment practice, but there is already scope to develop a multi-level model into practice, which would enable psychologists to more clearly describe students strengths and weaknesses in learning, and to suggest ways to better help them. The model proposed would incorporate many hard science features of assessment but would ultimately be interpretive, and personal.

ELSA CHUI
EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGIST
MANAGER - PROGRAMMES AND SERVICES
PATHWAYS - HONG KONG

Elsa Chiu is an educational psychologist with substantial experience in working with students having special educational needs in various school settings. She has rich knowledge and solid skills in providing support to parents and teachers in the education of children with specific learning difficulties in reading and writing.  She is currently serving as the program & service manager of Pathways, she is also a lecturer for the Master Program in Professional Educational Psychology in the Department of Psychology of the University of Hong Kong.

INTERNATIONAL FORUM:

Don't wait for your child to fail – The Importance of Early Assessment and Diagnosis

UNITE SPLD 2022, would not be complete without the coming together of international specialists for discussion on significant topics like this one. It is especially significant during these challenging COVID-19 times where we have all experienced challenges. The international forum gives us a chance to pause, listen, share and understand what we have been doing in our community for early intervention. This forum helps to provide perspectives on the importance and role that early assessment plays in supporting our children who may be at risk of specific learning differences such as Dyslexia, ADHD etc. It is our hope that through this panel discussion on topics that are close to our hearts in the work we do, we will provide some guidance and advice from our diverse forum on how to approach early intervention.

ANNA LEOKADIA CIEZCZYK
Doctorate of Education Candidate,
Master of Science in Early Childhood Education
National Institute of Education (NIE), Singapore

Anna Ciezczyk is an international ECE teacher and the Assistant Head of Early Years at the Australian International School (AIS) in Singapore. Anna's passion is progressive education, democracy in early years classrooms, and emergent curriculum as well as related educational philosophies.

Classroom Documentation and the Disappearing “Incompetent Child”

The image of the child as competent has become the staple of progressive ECE pedagogies which centre the curriculum on the child. Children’s explorations, projects, and joint efforts to problem-solve are shared with the wider community through teachers’ documentation of children’s learning journeys (Edwards, Gandini, and Forman 1998). The sentimentalized utopian vision of children as capable inadvertently excludes the “incompetent child”, a concept which in ECE can be viewed as an unthinkable abomination. “Incompetent children”, however, do exist. They might struggle to form relationships or understand social cues, they might not belong in group discussions, they may not have the cognitive tools to effectively address the tasks other children complete with ease and joy. Sadly, the mere existence of “incompetent children” does not seem to be sufficient enough to save them from disappearing from the classroom documentation (Bjervås’, 2011). The “incompetent child’s” unique skills, interests, and objectives simply do not match the quality standards preschools set for themselves (Margrain and Hultman, 2019). These children often do not belong in the mainstream pedagogies and the volume on their quiet, “unimpactful” explorations is muted and then silenced in documentation. This lack of representation and recognition of children’s unique, albeit unconventional, strengths excludes them from full participation. This presentation will look at practical examples of how ECE teachers can help children exist in classroom documentation, and the reasons why this is important.

Keywords: incompetent child, image of the child, classroom documentation, ECE, early years, early childhood education, democracy, special needs

JULIA CLOUTER
Head of Education and SpLD Specialist
SCANNING PENS

Julia Clouter is Head of Educational Services for the Assistive Technology company Scanning Pens. She delivers training on a national and international level and advises on the use of assistive technology in the development of inclusive classrooms. She has been a long-serving SENCo and Designated Safeguarding Lead and has twenty-five years of teaching and leadership experience in Primary, Secondary, Mainstream and SEN provision. Her published works include learning resources for reading improvement with ReaderPens and a transition support handbook. She regularly writes and speaks about SEN, dyslexia, hidden learning needs, behaviour and Edtech solutions. Julia also regularly interviews guests for Succeed With Dyslexia and presents #SWD Webinars – A Global Movement For Celebrating Success with Dyslexia and Dyslexia Awareness.

What are the implementation challenges in supporting older students to access assistive technology?

International assistive technology company, Scanning Pens have seen an increase in requests for implementation support from both students and accessibility teams in colleges, higher and further education over the past year. Because dyslexia is recognised as a disability under the British Equalities Act of 2010, it is possible for a range of assistive technology tools to be applied for, funded and deployed through education providers. In the UK, the uptake of requests for these supports has increased in higher and further education, and this is perhaps due to the challenges of remote learning and reduced opportunities for direct contact with tutors and lecturers over the past eighteen months. The availability of disability support funding has increased and students who are confident and familiar with education technology tools, are using this opportunity to adopt a toolbox of supports that provide accessibility and increase productivity.

Jessica Colleu Terradas, M.Ed., M.Sc.Res.

Jessica has been working as a literacy and instructional coach in the Literacy Guarantee Unit in the South Australian Education Department, coaching teachers and advising leaders in implementing high-quality evidence-based reading instruction across rural, regional, and metropolitan schools (both primary and secondary schools). Prior to this role, she spent 7 years supporting students at educational risk through high impact instruction at Como Secondary College (Western Australia), using explicit Direct Instruction teaching methods. In 2019, she was awarded a Commonwealth Bank Teaching Award in recognition of her success in improving literacy and numeracy outcomes in struggling adolescents. Her work is driven by the belief that every student is capable of successful learning. Recipient of a 2020 Churchill fellowship, Jessica has been instrumental in advancing the awareness, understanding and use of evidence‐based instruction to prevent low numeracy and literacy failures across WA, SA and beyond. In 2022, she is taking a new position as a Senior Officer- Teaching and Learning (Literacy) in the Canberra and Goulburn Catholic Education, coordinating the implementation of a system-wide teaching and learning improvement program, known as Catalyst, which aims to improve student academic achievement, through developing excellence in Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment.

Say YES to the Phonics Screening Check

Australia’s declining student achievement becomes more apparent with each release of standardised assessment results: over 15% of children leave school without the baseline literacy skills to participate fully in society (OECD, 2016)[i] and about 84,000 children were identified as struggling readers (below or at NMS) in Year 3 and 5 in 2019 NAPLAN Reading (Primary Reading Pledge, 2020). Year 3 is currently the first point at which systematic action can be taken in most states and territories. To address this, emerging education initiatives in Australia are implementing the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check (PSC), first run in the UK in 2012 after being piloted. Given that phonics knowledge and skills development is an integral part of learning to read, write and spell, the PSC helps identify students who are struggling to develop reading skills including those that may have a specific learning difficulty. It gives teachers and leaders vital information about decoding skills not gained from other systemic assessments and is neither burdensome for teachers nor stressful for students. Short and simple, the assessment takes only 5–7 minutes and is carried out by classroom teachers with each student individually. Educators then analyse the results and, if necessary, plan for any additional support that students might require. In this session, participants will learn about how to administer and score the Phonics check. They will analyse and interpret the data, and explore how to respond to the results by implementing targeted teaching practices accordingly.

Professor Piero Crispiani
Unilink University Rome
Emeritus Professor Università Macerata

Scientific Director of International Dyspraxia and Dyslexia Center. He was a teacher in primary school and headmaster in special schools. He is currently A professor at Unilink University in Rome and he is the author of The Crispiani Method, Champion Pressing and Dyslexia as sequential dyspraxia. He is the Vice President of Cenro Studi Itard, and the president of CO.MIS, Cognitive Motor International Society, with many collaborations with academic researchers and practitioners.

Dyslexia: ready to learn! Neuroactivation training before reading and writing

Actions such as riding a bicycle, kicking a ball or activities such as reading and writing are excellent examples of gestalt actions that involve the practical realization of an ideomotor automaticity with a prompt initiation phase.

From our research, the dyslexic group manifested a delay from initiation to execution, with slow neuro-activation in terms of:

• Lack of coordination in motor sequences

• Irregular timing and rhythm, with a lack of sequential proceduralization

• An alteration in the spatial–time input required

Based on Champion Pressing intervention, most dyslexic children may achieve great benefits from our neuroactivation training in terms of fluency and self-regulation processes. Easy and useful practices will be presented to the audience to improve their promptness before reading and writing.

Key words: neuroactivation, timing, rhythm, synchronization

DR KRISTIANTINI DEWI
CHAIRWOMAN
DYSLEXIA ASSOCIATION OF INDONESIA

Kristiantini Dewi, the Chairwoman of Dyslexia Association of Indonesia, is a female pediatrician who completed her degree in the Faculty of Medicine, University of Padjajaran, Bandung, Indonesia in 2005. Currently, she is working as a pediatrician at Indigrow Child Development Center (CDC) and Melinda Child Development Center of Melinda 2 Hospital. She is also in charge as coordinator of Special Class for Children with Dyslexia as well as coordinator for Vocational Class for Children with Autism, Intellectual Disability, and other related disorders at Indigrow Child Development Center, Indonesia. In addition, she is also part of the editorial team of the Asia Pacific Journal of Developmental Differences.

Empowering Teachers, Empowering a Nation

In earlier research, a large-scale questionnaire study of 1781 teachers revealed a high degree of misunderstanding and belief in myths about dyslexia within the teaching population in Indonesia. In response to this perceived need, the Dyslexia Association of Indonesia undertook the development and dissemination of a training course for teachers, over a 5 year period, originally designed to be delivered in person, but most recently delivered online in 2021, in response to the limitations of Covid. 894 teachers in all benefitted from this training, delivered over 28 sessions that covering the topics of developmental milestones of a child, covering the areas of gross motor development, fine motor skills, language, social interaction, cognition and personal skill in carrying out daily activities. Participants were asked to commit to attending regularly and completed pre-tests, post-tests and reflection on the course. Those who had achieved solid results from this initial training were able to join a more focused bursary funded dyslexia workshop in which they learned how to differentiate cases of general learning difficulties and specific learning difficulties, differentiating between Delayed Development and Intellectual Disability, The Milestone of Dyslexia across life-span, Executive Function, Learning Strategies for Students with Dyslexia, Multisensory Approach Learning, Phonemic Awareness, Reading Comprehension, Socio-Emotional Problems in Dyslexia, Best Practice of Parenting for Children with Dyslexia, Handwriting and Dysgraphia, Dyscalculia, Comorbidities of Dyslexia, ie. Dyspraxia, ADHD and Gifted. In this article, the potential of this approach is discussed for reaching a wider population of teachers in order to increase dyslexia awareness and understanding, and ensure that appropriate support for dyslexia can be provided more widely in Indonesia

DR KRISTIANTINI DEWI
CHAIRWOMAN
DYSLEXIA ASSOCIATION OF INDONESIA

Kristiantini Dewi, the Chairwoman of Dyslexia Association of Indonesia, is a female pediatrician who completed her degree in the Faculty of Medicine, University of Padjajaran, Bandung, Indonesia in 2005. Currently, she is working as a pediatrician at Indigrow Child Development Center (CDC) and Melinda Child Development Center of Melinda 2 Hospital. She is also in charge as coordinator of Special Class for Children with Dyslexia as well as coordinator for Vocational Class for Children with Autism, Intellectual Disability, and other related disorders at Indigrow Child Development Center, Indonesia. In addition, she is also part of the editorial team of the Asia Pacific Journal of Developmental Differences.

INTERNATIONAL FORUM:

Don't wait for your child to fail – The Importance of Early Assessment and Diagnosis

UNITE SPLD 2022, would not be complete without the coming together of international specialists for discussion on significant topics like this one. It is especially significant during these challenging COVID-19 times where we have all experienced challenges. The international forum gives us a chance to pause, listen, share and understand what we have been doing in our community for early intervention. This forum helps to provide perspectives on the importance and role that early assessment plays in supporting our children who may be at risk of specific learning differences such as Dyslexia, ADHD etc. It is our hope that through this panel discussion on topics that are close to our hearts in the work we do, we will provide some guidance and advice from our diverse forum on how to approach early intervention.

TUTY ELFIRA
LEAD EDUCATIONAL THERAPIST & RETA FELLOW
P2P PROGRAMME MANAGER
DYSLEXIA ASSOCIATION OF SINGAPORE

Tuty has been with the DAS since 2010. She provides intervention for learners with dyslexia on the Prep 2 PSLE (Preparation for English Paper 2 PSLE) and Main Literacy programmes. In addition, she oversees the development of curriculum and resources for Prep 2 PSLE, training of its teachers and evaluation of their classroom practices. She also conducts talks organised by the DAS Parents’ Support Group (PSG) to offer parents practical tips and strategies to help their child overcome their learning difficulties. Tuty has a Masters of Arts in Special Educational Needs (SEN) from the University of South Wales. Her previous research explored the use of picture books to improve the vocabulary and comprehension skills of learners with dyslexia. Her research interests include social-emotional learning and promoting philosophical thinking among children and young adults.

Supporting learners with dyslexia in grammar as they transit to secondary school

As students transit from primary to secondary school, an area of difficulty they face is grammar. Our team has often received feedback from learners with dyslexia that they struggle to attempt the Editing component in their school activities, where students are required to edit grammatical errors in a short written text. Launched in 2018, a team of educational therapists from the DAS has designed a 6-hour pre-secondary curriculum to help students understand the rules of Subject-verb agreement (SVA). In this webinar, the team will be presenting topics ranging from understanding the basic rules of SVA, choosing the correct SVA in sentences where abstract nouns are used, to more complex rules of applying SVA in sentences with gerunds/gerund phrases, collective nouns and indefinite pronouns. Based on results of pre- and post- tests conducted in 2019, an 83% increase in scores was observed for the Grammar component of the pre-secondary curriculum. You will be given an opportunity to take a sneak peek into how we deliver these topics in a sequential, structured and cumulative manner that effectively engages and supports learners with dyslexia.

ANGELA FAWCETT
RESEARCH CONSULTANT
DYSLEXIA ASSOCIATION OF SINGAPORE

Professor Angela Fawcett is a leading international researcher into dyslexia and other developmental disabilities, encompassing a range of theoretical and applied contributions to this field. Her approach is broad and interdisciplinary ranging from child and cognitive development to educational screening and intervention, as well as development cognitive neuroscience. She is the Vice President of the British Dyslexia Association and also the Former Chair and Director of the Centre for Child Research at Swansea University, UK.

Creating the DST-2, an online screening battery for dyslexia across the age-range

We have revised our well-renowned screening tests for dyslexia, the DEST, DST and DAST batteries, published by Pearson Education. The plan was to introduce updated research in the area of executive function, as well as simplify the test and make it appropriate for all age groups from 4.5 years (pre-literacy skills) to 65+. We spent considerable time developing this revised test, evaluating this on a clinical sample and controls, establishing that all the tests worked well at all ages, were well received, and clearly discriminated between those at risk of dyslexia and those without. We were poised to start collecting the norms on over 1300 people, a major task, when Covid struck, schools were closed down, and it became clear that our only way forward was to put the screening test online. This involved developing different techniques, and further evaluation to check that all the tests worked online and spoken material could be heard accurately. We tried out all the new tests on children and adults online, made minor adjustments and revised the stimuli as appropriate. In September 2021 everything was in place including recruiting testers, developing videos for training and we were about to start collecting data. We then have to simply collate, tabulate and analyse the data, and publish the test which should capture the impact of the pandemic on learning We are excited to share this breakthrough in screening with participants in Unite SpLD 2022, opening up new opportunities to screen remotely suitable for use with English speakers worldwide!

SHARYFAH NUR FITRIYA
EDUCATIONAL ADVISOR AND ASSOCIATE RETA FELLOW
DYSLEXIA ASSOCIATION OF SINGAPORE

Sharyfah is an Educational Advisor at DAS. She joined DAS in 2012. She holds a Master in Special Educational Needs from the University of South Wales, United Kingdom. She obtained her Bachelor of Biomedical Sciences at University of Queensland, Australia. Prior to joining DAS, she had worked with students with schizophrenia and mood disorders for a year. She has over 9 years of experience working with students with dyslexia. As an Educational Advisor, her present role focuses on training and mentoring programmes to trainee Educational Therapists to ensure a seamless and consistent delivery in the quality of teaching at DAS. She has also presented her paper in the British Dyslexia Association (BDA), 2018 and Association for Reading and Writing in Asia (ARWA), 2019.

Evaluating the longitudinal progress of a large sample of dyslexic children in reading, spelling, and writing.

The purpose of this research was to demonstrate whether the reading and writing skills of dyslexic students improved following a period of English literacy intervention via the Main Literacy Programme (MLP) at the Dyslexia Association of Singapore. These improvements would be made using improved curriculum teaching methods and our intervention. A statistically significant result would validate the improvement of knowledge acquisition to the students as a result of the assessment tools as well as the MLP intervention. This study evaluated the progress made from 1,343 students, ages 7-17, who were enrolled in the (MLP) for six school terms from 2016 to 2018. All participants were assessed using a Curriculum-Based Assessment (CBA), which focuses on three test items: words to read, words to spell, and writing tests. The CBA test was developed in-house. The test items were analysed using the Central Limit Theorem (CLT) and hypothesis testing. The results indicated a significant improvement in literacy components. This supported the research hypothesis that attending the MLP can improve the reading, spelling and writing scores in a population of dyslexic students. The findings from this study show the importance of the in-house curriculum in the English Main Literacy intervention and these results support the efficacy of the MLP programme.

FONG PEI YI

REGISTERED EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGIST
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, SPLD ASSESSMENT SERVICES
DYSLEXIA ASSOCIATION OF SINGAPORE

Pei Yi started out at the DAS as a Specialist Psychologist in 2012. Since then, she has completed the Master of Arts in Applied Psychology programme at the NIE and is a Registered Psychologist with the Singapore Psychological Society. Pei Yi is currently the Assistant Director of the SpLD Assessment Services at the DAS, a team that provides a one-stop psycho-educational assessment service and facilitates the placement of students in learning programmes at the DAS. She also conducts psycho-educational assessments for individuals who experience difficulties with learning.

INTERNATIONAL FORUM:

Don't wait for your child to fail – The Importance of Early Assessment and Diagnosis

UNITE SPLD 2022, would not be complete without the coming together of international specialists for discussion on significant topics like this one. It is especially significant during these challenging COVID-19 times where we have all experienced challenges. The international forum gives us a chance to pause, listen, share and understand what we have been doing in our community for early intervention. This forum helps to provide perspectives on the importance and role that early assessment plays in supporting our children who may be at risk of specific learning differences such as Dyslexia, ADHD etc. It is our hope that through this panel discussion on topics that are close to our hearts in the work we do, we will provide some guidance and advice from our diverse forum on how to approach early intervention.

Dr Fu Sai Hoe is a remedial officer in Sandakan district education office, Sabah, Malaysia. He graduated with a PhD in Science Education from the University Malaysia Sabah under the direction of Professor Dr Chin Kin Eng. He developed a new framework for dyscalculia remediation based on his PhD study. Prior to joining Sandakan district education office, he was a Literacy and Numeracy Facilitator at Baram district education office, Sarawak, Malaysia. Sai Hoe's primary research interests include early mathematics, primary mathematics and Dyscalculia.

An Overview Of Dyscalculia

Dyscalculia is one of the specific mathematics learning disabilities characterized by persistent difficulties in numbers and arithmetic. Dyscalculia affects about 3–6% of the population. Pupils with dyscalculia are weak in numerosity comprehension, for example, they cannot perform subitizing and counting, late responses to give answers to mathematics questions, recalling simple mathematics facts, and writing symbols. This study presents a single case study of how a remedial mathematics teacher incorporated an instructional intervention into her teaching practices in order to teach numeracy to an at-risk dyscalculic pupil. This new theory-driven intervention which was named “Reconnecting Learning” blended Tall's (2013) theory of mathematical thinking and Feuerstein's (2015) structural cognitive modifiability theory. Data were collected through interviews, lesson observations, and reflective journals. The findings revealed that the proposed intervention has great potential to improve the at-risk pupil’s numeracy skills.

SHERILYN GOH
RESEARCH ASSISTANT
NATIONAL INSTITUE OF EDUCATION
NANYANG TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY (NTU)

Sherilyn Goh is Research Assistant at the Centre for Research in Child Development at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University. She previously worked as an associate psychologist in a special school serving students with intellectual disabilities.

Understanding the emotional and behavioural needs of primary students with specific learning disorders

Background: Specific learning disorders (SpLDs) are one of the most frequently occurring conditions among students with special educational needs (SEN). Although it may seem that SpLDs affect mainly learning, students with SpLDs frequently also experience emotional and behavioural difficulties.

Objectives: In this paper, we seek to understand the presentation of emotional and behavioural difficulties of primary children with SpLDs. We also hope to understand the extent to which these emotional and behavioural difficulties are related to cognitive processes and social outcomes.

Method: Data from approximately 100 participants will be drawn from a larger longitudinal study of students with SEN in Singapore schools. Emotional and behavioural difficulties measured by the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), cognitive processes will include parent completed inventories as well as findings from the Singapore Ability Scales. Social outcomes will be measured by the SDQ as well as a bullying survey.

Conclusion: The findings will be interpreted in the light of needing to understand and support students with SpLDs in a holistic manner.

Siti Halimah
Senior Educational Therapist and RETA Member
Dyslexia Association of Singapore.

Siti Halimah has been supporting students with Dyslexia and Specific Learning Difference (SpLD) since 2012. Besides teaching the Main Literacy Programme (MLP), she also teaches the Prep 2 PSLE Programme, equipping learners with strategies and skills to tackle the English examinations. She actively contributes to the development of curriculum and resources as well as conduct talks and workshops for parents and students. Having recently graduated from Nanyang Technological University with Masters in Arts (Applied Linguistics), she hopes to continue providing her students with an enriching and fulfilling learning experience.

Supporting learners with dyslexia in grammar as they transit to secondary school

As students transit from primary to secondary school, an area of difficulty they face is grammar. Our team has often received feedback from learners with dyslexia that they struggle to attempt the Editing component in their school activities, where students are required to edit grammatical errors in a short written text. Launched in 2018, a team of educational therapists from the DAS has designed a 6-hour pre-secondary curriculum to help students understand the rules of Subject-verb agreement (SVA). In this webinar, the team will be presenting topics ranging from understanding the basic rules of SVA, choosing the correct SVA in sentences where abstract nouns are used, to more complex rules of applying SVA in sentences with gerunds/gerund phrases, collective nouns and indefinite pronouns. Based on results of pre- and post- tests conducted in 2019, an 83% increase in scores was observed for the Grammar component of the pre-secondary curriculum. You will be given an opportunity to take a sneak peek into how we deliver these topics in a sequential, structured and cumulative manner that effectively engages and supports learners with dyslexia.

Rima Natasha Hartanto
Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Specialist
Dyslexia Association of Indonesia

Rima Natasha Hartanto is a specialist doctor in physical medicine and rehabilitation. Rima joined the Dyslexia Association of Indonesia since 2015, since she found that dyslexia affects various aspects of life and finding dyslexia early will prevent failure in children. Her main concern is early detection and early intervention before reading instructions. Rima also interested in the comorbidity of dyslexia, especially developmental coordination disorder. She is now active in Dyslexia Association of Indonesia, as a speaker in seminars for dyslexia awareness, teaching dyslexia for teachers and parents, and also manages program classes for dyslexia early intervention and remedial services for dyslexic students. She is now practising as a physiatrist in Siloam Hospital Lippo Village and Rumah Terapi Kirana, Tangerang, Banten, Indonesia.

Profile of Children with Specific Learning Disabilities on the Griffith III Developmental Scale

Children with dyslexia can be known from pre-school. Early identification of dyslexia can be identified by the child's development from various aspects, long before reading instruction given, such as motoric coordination and language development. Language development predicts early signs of dyslexia. The Griffith III Developmental Scale provides a gap between Chronological Age (CA) and Developmental Age (DA) and a gap between Developmental Quotient (DQ) in subscales. The subscales consist of Foundation of Learning (A), Language and Communication (B), Eye-Hand Coordination (C), Social-Emotional (D) and Gross Motor (E). A cross-sectional study involved 35 children (mean age 41 months±16) with Specific Learning Disabilities and received Griffith III Developmental Scale to determine the potential for intelligence and developmental stage. The results are DQ subscale A (96±16, p<0.05) is higher than subscale B (76±23), a gap between DA and CA in Subscale B is higher than A (p=0.001), higher than Subscale C (p=0.029), higher than D (p=0.001), and higher than E (p=0.052). Delayed motoric coordination, particularly in eye-hand coordination (subscale C), can predict difficulty in handwriting. Although this report found no significant differences between Subscale B to Subscale E (p=0.052), it might need further study with a larger subject pool. With profiling of dyslexia children, parents and teachers can intervene not only on language but also social skills, fine motor activity and gross motor.

RAIHANA BINTE MOHAMED HASHIM
PRESCHOOL EDUCATIONAL THERAPIST
DYSLEXIA ASSOCIATION OF SINGAPORE

Raihana Binte Mohamed Hashim is a preschool educational therapist at Dyslexia Association of Singapore. She graduated with a Diploma in Child Psychology and Early Education from Ngee Ann Polytechnic and is currently pursuing a degree in early childhood education at Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS). A passionate early childhood educator, Raihana strives to nurture children's confidence and esteem through fun, meaningful and developmentally appropriate learning experiences.

Exploring the impact of the DAS Preschool Early Literacy Intervention for two kindergarteners during the pandemic

This study investigated two kindergarteners who attended the Dyslexia Association of Singapore’s (DAS) Preschool Early Literacy Programme (PELP). The study explores their learning journey as the children received continued literacy learning support during the unpredictable covid-19 Safe Management Measures (SMM). Two preschool early literacy intervention teachers delivered literacy instructions to kindergarten-aged children with early literacy weaknesses within the PELP through the pandemic which combined both classroom, and home-based learning. This qualitative and exploratory case study was conducted from March 2020 to November 2021. Data was gathered from pre-and-post early literacy assessments, and anecdotal observations. This study’s findings established that children at-risk of dyslexia and ADHD can continue to receive learning support during the pandemic and progress from receiving intervention through classroom and home-based learning support. The study also acknowledges that due to various challenges, online learning on its own is not the best way for pre-schoolers to learn. However, some modest benefits were discovered amongst the inadequacies of intervention online for pre-schoolers during the pandemic.

SAFINAH HASSAN
LEAD EDUCATIONAL THERAPIST & CURRICULUM DEVELOPER
RETA ASSOCIATE FELLOW
DYSLEXIA ASSOCIATION OF SINGAPORE

Safinah Binte Hassan is a Lead Educational Therapist based at the Jurong Point Learning Centre. She started her career at the DAS in 2005 as an Educational Therapist and has since held various portfolios. She was one of the pioneers who launched the DAS Pre-School service and played an active role both as a Pre-School Program Manager and Educational Therapist. She has also conducted workshops at DAS Preschool Seminar in 2017 and 2018. Apart from that, Safinah was also involved in the training, mentoring and support of trainee Educational Therapists as an Educational Advisor. Currently, Safinah is a Curriculum Developer with the English Language and Literacy Division (ELL) where she is instrumental in the development and enhancement of the curriculum. She presented at the Unite SpLD Conference 2019. Safinah constantly aspires to provide quality service to dyslexics of all ages.

RETA Case Management Discussion: What's the hype with ADHD?

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) presented by its Predominantly Inattentive, Predominantly Hyperactive-Impulsivity or Combined traits can affect many children. If left unaddressed, ADHD can disrupt children’s learning, motivation and socialization among family members and peers. Children with ADHD and a learning difficulty such as dyslexia are likely to struggle with academics and social interaction such that they become a big source of concern to parents and educators. What is more concerning, ADHD grows with the child – ADHD can develop as the child develops – and this may increase its severity if not tackled early on. While medication is an option to consider, this may not be the choice for many parents. How then can children with ADHD be helped? At the Dyslexia Association of Singapore (DAS), a group of students with dyslexia and a co-morbid diagnosis of ADHD are supported by Educational Therapists and Educational Advisors to help them with both literacy and behaviour management. Students are not only given phonics instructions and explicit teaching of language skills to remediate literacy difficulties, they are also guided with behaviour strategies to aid in impulse control and hyperactivity so that they can better assimilate in a group setting. This presentation will highlight case studies on students with dyslexia and ADHD, as well as invite experts in this area to share their knowledge in dealing with children with ADHD. The data on case studies were collected through classroom observations and interactions with Educational Therapists. Strategies and suggestions are provided to inspire educators and parents to adopt them so as to form a consistent structure between what is implemented in the DAS classroom and what can be done at home.

KIRANJIT KAUR
EDUCATIONAL THERAPIST AND RETA ASSOCIATE MEMBER PLUS
Dyslexia Association of Singapore

Kiranjit is an Educational Therapist from the Dyslexia Association of Singapore since 2017. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Arts and has completed her Postgraduate Certificate in Special Educational Needs. She teaches and supports dyslexic learners in both the DAS Main Literacy Programme and the Maths Programme. She is passionate about providing learning opportunities to students and enjoys working with them.

An insight into the experiences of Primary 6 students with dyslexia using the metacognitive-based approach of problem-solving for algebraic word problems

Abstract

Students with dyslexia often struggle with word problems because of the mathematical language and multi-steps involved. At the Dyslexia Association of Singapore (DAS), the Problem Sums for Upper Primary (PSUP) curriculum was developed in 2016 to meet the needs of our primary school students who were firm with their basic mathematical concepts but lacked the appropriate strategies to solve higher-order word problems. The PSUP curriculum utilizes a combination of Polya’s 4-step processes, the Concrete-Representational-Abstract approach (C-R-A) and the Try-Share-Learn-Apply approach as its primary teaching methodology. As the programme has yet to explore students’ meta-cognitive abilities in planning, monitoring, solving and checking word problems, this study aims to understand the thought processes of eight Primary six students in solving word problems involving Algebra concepts through interviews and pre/post tests. Students were also given a questionnaire at the beginning and end of the intervention period to assess their confidence level in solving mathematics problem sums. To evaluate the effectiveness of the PSUP curriculum teaching approaches, the students’ pre-test, review test and post-test scores were compared. The results showed that 75% of the students improved from Pre-test to Review test and from Pre-test to Post test for all the algebraic concepts. Responses from the questionnaires also showed that the students were more confident in solving word problems as compared to at the start of intervention. More findings will be included in the main research paper as students’ input is currently being analysed. Limitations and instructional implications will also be discussed.

Keywords: meta-cognitive abilities, Algebra concepts, multi-step higher order word problems

MASARRAT KHAN
CEO,
MAHARASHTRA DYSLEXIA ASSOCIATION, INDIA

Masarrat Khan is the Chief Executive Officer of the Maharashtra Dyslexia Association (MDA), a Global Partner of the International Dyslexia Association. She holds Master’s degrees in Clinical Psychology and English Literature from Mumbai University and is a Structured Literacy Dyslexia Specialist and a Certified Academic Language Therapist. Ms. Khan has an invaluable experience of three decades in the area of Learning Disabilities. She is the Course Coordinator for the Dyslexia Therapist Training Programme being offered by MDA in collaboration with the Multisensory Language Training Institute of New Mexico. She is a Pre-Primary and Primary Curriculum Developer and Trainer for the English Language and Maths. Ms Khan was one of the Primary Investigators in the development of DALI-Dyslexia Assessment for Languages of India and has co-authored Research on ‘Ancestral Variations of the PCDHG Gene Cluster Predispose to Dyslexia in a Multiplex’ and Paper on ‘Determination of Marginalized Youth to Overcome and Achieve in Mathematics: A Case Study from India’ and contributed to the booklet Are You Aware? aimed at increasing awareness in parents and caregivers on the importance of early detection of developmental delays in children. She is currently working on a research project on ‘Importance of Phonological Awareness and Phonics Instruction’.

INTERNATIONAL FORUM:

Don't wait for your child to fail – The Importance of Early Assessment and Diagnosis

UNITE SPLD 2022, would not be complete without the coming together of international specialists for discussion on significant topics like this one. It is especially significant during these challenging COVID-19 times where we have all experienced challenges. The international forum gives us a chance to pause, listen, share and understand what we have been doing in our community for early intervention. This forum helps to provide perspectives on the importance and role that early assessment plays in supporting our children who may be at risk of specific learning differences such as Dyslexia, ADHD etc. It is our hope that through this panel discussion on topics that are close to our hearts in the work we do, we will provide some guidance and advice from our diverse forum on how to approach early intervention.

Mandy Lau BEng (Hons), MDes

Mandy is a designer of Inclusive Play. She holds a Bachelor of Product Analysis with Design (First Class Honours) and a Master of Design. Her research of Reach & Match® Inclusive Education Kit received the Monash University Vice-Chancellor’s Social Inclusion Award and other international awards including the OpenIDEO Award, Good Design Award and Red Dot Award. In. 2019, the Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade has endorsed the effectiveness of the program for early intervention.

Holistic early intervention program supports children with multiple disabilities to achieve educational and therapy goals

Reach and Match® Learning Kit is an award-winning Inclusive Education program helps students with sensory impairment and multiple learning needs to learn and engage with their peers through deepening cognitive understanding. It was developed by founder Mandy Lau through her Master’s research for children with vision impairment and multiple needs to develop braille and print early literacy and social skills through tactile strategies and play-based activities. Research into braille literacy, early intervention skills, and inclusion in education informed the design of the Reach and Match learning kit and was developed with a range of educators, therapists and O&M specialises utilising a user-centric methodology and co-design approach.

Reach & Match has been partnering with international and local organisations and schools for years to research and evaluate the benefit of the program for individual learning and group play. The presentation will include case studies conducted with international organisations, the American Printing House for the Blind and BLENNZ (Blind and Low Vision Education Network New Zealand)

Both case studies will share educational and therapeutic applications by educational teams and parents including Early learning, Orientation & Mobility, Physical therapy and Occupational therapy. The audience will learn a holistic program that was supported and tested by a group of educators and specialists for children with vision impairment and multiple needs. The audience will also receive valuable insight into how play enhances children’s cognitive, physical, social and communication skills and the relationship between body movement and literacy development.

LEE CHIEW LIM
RESEARCH ASSOCIATE
NATIONAL INSTITUE OF EDUCATION
NANYANG TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY (NTU)

Lee Chiew Lim is Research Associate at the Centre for Research in Child Development at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University. He is an educational psychologist and previously worked as a head of department at a secondary school.

Understanding the emotional and behavioural needs of primary students with specific learning disorders

Background: Specific learning disorders (SpLDs) are one of the most frequently occurring conditions among students with special educational needs (SEN). Although it may seem that SpLDs affect mainly learning, students with SpLDs frequently also experience emotional and behavioural difficulties.

Objectives: In this paper, we seek to understand the presentation of emotional and behavioUral difficulties of primary children with SpLDs. We also hope to understand the extent to which these emotional and behavioural difficulties are related to cognitive processes and social outcomes.

Method: Data from approximately 100 participants will be drawn from a larger longitudinal study of students with SEN in Singapore schools. Emotional and behavioural difficulties measured by the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), cognitive processes will include parent completed inventories as well as findings from the Singapore Ability Scales. Social outcomes will be measured by the SDQ as well as a bullying survey.

Conclusion: The findings will be interpreted in the light of needing to understand and support students with SpLDs in a holistic manner.

LEE ER KER
SENIOR SPEECH AND LANGUAGE THERAPIST
DYSLEXIA ASSOCIATION OF SINGAPORE

Lee is a Senior Speech and Language Therapist at the Dyslexia Association of Singapore (DAS) who has been helping children with speech, language and communication needs for more than a decade. His experience includes working with children in mainstream schools with or without a diagnosis of dyslexia, as well as managing speech, language, swallowing/feeding and Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) issues faced by children and teenagers with special needs in both an EIPIC centre and a Special Education (SPED) school, many of whom have multiple disabilities and complex communication needs. Besides conducting assessments and intervention, he is actively involved in developing and conducting numerous training programmes and workshops for allied health professionals, special education and mainstream school teachers, parents and caregivers over the years. Lee is currently the Programme Manager for the SLT service at DAS and is registered with The Allied Health Professions Council (Full Registration). Prior to being a speech and language therapist, he was a qualified Ministry of Education (MOE) mainstream school teacher.

Effectiveness of DAS speech-language therapy: A controlled evaluation

School-age children enrolled in the DAS speech-language therapy programme are often diagnosed with both dyslexia and language disorder. The current study shows the positive impact of language therapy on these children as it is practised by speech-language therapists (SLTs) at DAS.

The study involved 23 children in mainstream education aged 5 to 12 who were diagnosed with dyslexia and subsequently with mild-severe language disorder at the start of the study. A small-scale quasi-experimental design with a control group was used without random assignment of participants to either an intervention condition (n=11), or a control condition (n=12). The intervention group underwent language therapy directly delivered by DAS SLTs in a group setting (1 SLT : 2-3 children) once a week, an hour per session, for at least a term (i.e. ≥ 8 sessions). Participants in the control group matched those in the intervention group overall on age and level of severity but did not receive any speech-language therapy for the duration of the study. All participants in both groups received the same level of literacy support from educational therapists in the curriculum-based DAS Main Literacy Programme (MLP) whilst the study was on-going.

Participants in the intervention group showed performance improvements compared to those in the control group in the primary outcome measures of different language skills as measured by the core language subtests of CELF®–4UK, a standardised assessment tool. A statistically significant improvement were found in both the raw and scaled scores of the Formulated Sentences subtest. In addition, positive effect sizes ranging from small to large were observed for other subtests. The findings support the use of small-group intervention as effective for children with a range of severity in language disorders.

Loo Chien Ling
Chinese Programme Manager,
Senior Educational Therapist (Chinese) and RETA Associate Member Plus
Dyslexia Association of Singapore

Chien Ling joined Dyslexia Association of Singapore in 2017. She is a Senior Educational Therapist, providing intervention for students with dyslexia in the Chinese programme for primary and secondary students. She oversees Chinese team as a Programme Manager, where she led development of the team in areas of training, mentoring, curriculum and research. She is currently pursuing her Master in Education (Chinese Language) in National Institute of Education (NIE) to deepen and widen her knowledge in areas of Chinese Language and Education.

The impact of a Curriculum-Based Approach on Chinese Secondary 3 Trial Programme for students with dyslexia

Chinese language learning at the secondary school level focuses on increasing the proficiency of students in their reading and writing abilities. Given the variety of text types as compared to what they have been exposed to at primary school level, a student who has a language learning difficulty, such as dyslexia, would find learning Chinese in school an

increasingly difficult task. Our Secondary Programme adopted a curriculum-based approach to help learners bridge the learning gap to access the mainstream curriculum. As we expanded into Secondary 3 trial Programme in 2021 with some adjustments to the teaching materials and literacy tests, progress of students were tracked for a year using measures such as literacy ability tests, school results, parent and student survey as well as teacher's observation. Results showed that students have improved in their overall language skills and our Educational Therapist played an important role in motivating the students to learn.

DR KITTY YEN HAN MO
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
HONG KON SHUE YAN UNIVERSITY

Dr Kitty Yuen Han MO is currently working as an Associate Professor of Hong Kong Shue Yan University. She has a long-standing interest in the field of special education and social services for dyslexic students and their families. Her background in social work and special education enables her to understand the difficulties facing these specific group of people. She is currently an Associate Editor of International Social Work.

Positive stress coping strategies in parents of children with special education needs

Parents of children with special education needs faced stress in managing the learning needs and daily behaviours of their children. The characteristics of children, the belief system of parents and the environmental system all contributed to parental stress. In fact, parental characteristics such as personality, value, competence, self-efficacy and belief system guided parents to take necessary actions about the management of stress. In a recent qualitative study, a total of 21 parents of children with special education needs were interviewed. The findings revealed that parents had used positive and practical strategies to cope with stress. Identified strategies included doing physical exercise, sharing with other parents who were encountering similar problems, actively seeking help from others such as teachers, asking for family support, discovering positive resources in the society such as services provided by social service agencies, and learning new knowledge and skills about child care and parenting. The findings recommended the building of a positive coping intervention system in schools by social workers or teachers which aimed at supporting parents to build their own stress coping strategies.

Harini Mohan
Chief Operating Officer - Academic Operations
Madras Dyslexia Association

Harini Mohan is a Special Educator associated with Dyslexia related subjects for over 20 years. She has been associated with teaching children with special needs at middle and senior school levels during the initial part of her career with the Madras Dyslexia Association. She subsequently moved on to resource mobilization and conducting awareness sessions. She has been working actively with educational institutions, governmental agencies and corporate organisations in spreading awareness about dyslexia at a pan India level. She has also worked with NGOs and branches of Rotary International. She has been recognized for her contribution to dyslexia awareness at various forums and is an active speaker on this topic. Her interviews have been featured in TV channels, news magazines and newspapers.

She is also a faculty member of teacher training programs offered by MDA. She loves to teach math and study skills.

Currently, she has been assigned the role of Chief Operating Officer - Academic operations of Madras Dyslexia Association

She dreams that the seed that is sown now will grow into a big tree giving shelter and support to all the children with Dyslexia.

Her dream is to see each and every child happy.

Educational assessment for a child with dyslexia-what is it & how does it help

Assessment is the cornerstone for a child who is observed to be performing below his potential; it determines the way forward. The diagnosis that predicts learning potential, strengths and deficits paves way for concerted efforts for meaningful intervention.

It is well known that dyslexia can affect academic skills like reading, spelling, writing, maths and also one’s career, emotional well-being i.e. various aspects of life. Good intentions to support a child with dyslexia needs a starting point-which is assessment.

Dyslexia could impact many aspects of a child. The areas are interwoven and are exhibited in many areas-some evident while some others are subtle. Co-morbidities and side-effects of dyslexia could lead to manifestations that add another layer to the problem i.e. identification of the primary source of the problem!

The intensity of structured remedial classes, occupational therapy and other referrals required to help the child to cope with difficulties posed by dyslexia are determined by the degree of difficulty, individual’s learning style, areas of difficulties and behavioural issues.

Assessments done at Madras Dyslexia Association, strive to uncover the deficits in the underlying basic skills required for learning. This paper discusses the processes and the analysis of the data from multiple sources of information that leads up to a comprehensive assessment report. The report gives details on the status of the essential skills like Auditory, Visual and motor skills, and academic skills.

The paper goes on to elucidate how this report gives a complete picture of the child to a special educator to plan and execute individualised remedial sessions making road maps to reach their abilities. Lastly, case studies would be discussed to showcase the holistic approach to intervention that was made possible by the educational assessment.

Mary Mountstephen MA (SEN) MA (RES)
Learning Differences Consultant UK

Mary Mountstephen is a former primary headteacher and was the Director of Learning Development of a major independent school for ten years, leading a large team of specialist dyslexia teachers working with 120 students, from many countries. She has extensive experience working internationally in the field of dyslexia and she holds specialist qualifications in this field. She is currently an EdD candidate at The University of Reading, researching the role of Physical Education in English primary schools, in the context of the cognitive-motor-affect domains in child development and education. She is the author of several books and many articles and is the Reviews Editor for SEN Magazine, as well as providing teacher training in learning differences as an independent consultant.

International Observations: A Cognitive-Motor-Affect Perspective In Addressing SpLD

This presentation is based on Mary Mountstephen’s independent practice, academic study, professional development, and collaboration with international colleagues over the last twenty years. She will provide some insights into the relationship between dyslexic difficulties and the cognitive, motor and affect domains of learning and the implications this has for assessment and interventions in her practice and international training for early years and primary classroom practitioners. She aims to raise awareness of how teachers can fine-tune their thinking about dyslexia and provide information about actions that can improve student engagement and progress.

HANI ZOHRA MUHAMAD
LEAD EDUCATIONAL THERAPIST AND EDUCATIONAL ADVISOR
RETA FELLOW
DYSLEXIA ASSOCIATION OF SINGAPORE

Hani Zohra Muhamad is a Lead Educational Therapist and an Educational Advisor (EA). Hani joined the Dyslexia Association of Singapore in 2006 and has over the years been teaching and working with students with dyslexia and other co-morbidities. Hani contributes to the mentoring and training of new educational therapists, as well as support colleagues with challenging students. Hani holds a Masters Degree in Education (Special Education) from Nanyang Technological University (NIE-NTU), a Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Management from the University of London (UOL) and a Cambridge International Diploma for Teachers and Trainers (Dyslexia). Hani is a Fellow member of the Register of Educational Therapist Asia (RETA).

RETA Case Management Discussion: What's the hype with ADHD?

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) presented by its Predominantly Inattentive, Predominantly Hyperactive-Impulsivity or Combined traits can affect many children. If left unaddressed, ADHD can disrupt children’s learning, motivation and socialization among family members and peers. Children with ADHD and a learning difficulty such as dyslexia are likely to struggle with academics and social interaction such that they become a big source of concern to parents and educators. What is more concerning, ADHD grows with the child – ADHD can develop as the child develops – and this may increase its severity if not tackled early on. While medication is an option to consider, this may not be the choice for many parents. How then can children with ADHD be helped? At the Dyslexia Association of Singapore (DAS), a group of students with dyslexia and a co-morbid diagnosis of ADHD are supported by Educational Therapists and Educational Advisors to help them with both literacy and behaviour management. Students are not only given phonics instructions and explicit teaching of language skills to remediate literacy difficulties, they are also guided with behaviour strategies to aid in impulse control and hyperactivity so that they can better assimilate in a group setting. This presentation will highlight case studies on students with dyslexia and ADHD, as well as invite experts in this area to share their knowledge in dealing with children with ADHD. The data on case studies were collected through classroom observations and interactions with Educational Therapists. Strategies and suggestions are provided to inspire educators and parents to adopt them so as to form a consistent structure between what is implemented in the DAS classroom and what can be done at home.

Yashodhara Narayanan

Yashodhara Narayanan, is an expert in the area of child development having spent over 3 decades working with children of different age groups and with specific learning disabilities (SLD). She is one of the few who has the skills, training and expertise around Multiple Intelligences, a concept conceived by the well-known Dr. Howard Gardner. Yashodhara, has worked extensively with and nurtured especially younger children to bring out their otherwise latent abilities thus giving them a perfect head start to building out their scholastic and co-curricular skills.

Over the years she has worked as a kindergarten faculty in a number of schools in India across various Boards, as well as a volunteer teacher in the United States. At present, she is a full-time volunteer in the not-for-profit Madras Dyslexia Association (MDA) that focuses on the overall development of children with specific learning disabilities. She is the Project Head of the Multiple Intelligences Foundation (MIF).MIF is entrusted with the responsibility of discovering latent skills in children and honing them. MIF follows train the trainer model to incorporate MI into the curriculum of Ananya, which is a project learning centre of MDA as well as other organizations across India. She is also involved in assessing children under 5 who may be ‘at-risk’ for SLD. She also takes the lead in training teachers of various schools on MI and early intervention.

By way of education, Yashodhara has a post-graduate degree in preprimary education from Bombay University.

Enabling online remediation using multiple intelligences - an online classroom approach

The proposed talk is about how at MDA, Multiple Intelligences(MI) was used to enable effective online remediation for children with specific learning difficulties (SLD). This presentation explains how MI is being used to create a nurturing environment focusing on the needs of the child in order to empower and enable their potential. It will also look at the impact of using MI in the classroom (offline and online). With the pandemic causing havoc in our lives, the lives of school-going children have been impacted the most. Their academic, social and emotional wellbeing has been severely impacted, more so for children with SLD. They were deprived of the social and emotional connection that they thrived on, and the hands-on learning that made remediation possible was also impacted.

The remediation offered at our full-time facility Ananya Learning and Research Center needed to be reoriented to the online space, and using a multi-modal, multisensory approach incorporating Multiple Intelligences was the only way to effectively reach out to the children. For example, A colour coded Venn diagram (spatial intelligence) was created by the child to learn the differences between two animals. We will describe how we plan an IEP and Lesson plan based on MI, and how this helped in integrating the child into mainstream school after one year of remediation. We will use videos, and case studies to demonstrate the strategies used and how they impacted learning. Our aim is to demonstrate the reach of the MI model, in helping build the social, emotional and academic needs of the child of SLD, thereby providing holistic development in the online mode.

Patricia Ng Mui Hoon
Educational Consultant

Patricia Ng Mui Hoon is an educational consultant who provides research, assessment and remedial services and has taught pre-service and in-service teachers in special education. Her work has been recognized with the award of the Dean’s Commendation for Research in her Master’s in Education degree from the National Institute of Education/Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and the 2013 Society for Reading & Literacy Research Award. She also chairs the Learning Differently Special Interest Group of the Society for Reading & Literacy and has published works in the areas of language and literacy development, challenging behaviours, robotics and virtual reality applications, as well as in Mathematics, Music, Special Needs and Physical Education.

Remediating Comprehension Deficits in Hyperlexia: The Scaffolding Interrogative Method

Children with severe reading comprehension deficits with no word recognition issues have traits associated with hyperlexia, which is an advanced word recognition ability in children. Scaffolding supports have been recommended for affected children as they have difficulties in the formation and organization of schemata for processing information. The Scaffolding Interrogative Method (SIM) is a remediation strategy developed based on this recommendation. Post-intervention results following six months of remediation indicated significant improvement in reading comprehension with a very large effect size for a sample of thirty-three subjects. Recommendations and limitations of the study are discussed for further research.

DR BETH O'BRIEN
Senior Research Scientist
National Institute of Education, NTU, Singapore

Dr O’Brien is a Senior Research Scientist at the National Institute of Education, NTU, Singapore. She heads the Bilingual and Biliteracy Development area within the Centre for Research in Child Development. A cognitive psychologist by training, Dr O’Brien’s research focus is on reading development from a cognitive neuroscience perspective; in particular, how different types of learners (bilingual, learning-disabled, at-risk) interact with different educational environments and experiences. She has conducted research on developmental dyslexia with multicomponential and technology-based interventions, as well as on the typical development of reading, reading fluency and biliteracy.

Response and Non-response to Intervention for Reading Difficulties: What Role do Cognitive Correlates Play?

Within the field of learning disabilities, many intervention studies have found that some students do not respond adequately to treatment despite a better understanding of reading development and improvement in the treatment for reading disability (Fletcher et al., 2011). According to previous studies, cognitive measures, including phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, verbal memory, and statistical learning were correlated with a lack of response to reading interventions (Al Otaiba & Fuchs, 2002).

In our study, we compared good and poor responders in an intervention study for early primary learning support program (LSP) students. The intervention study was conducted as a randomized controlled design, wherein 147 children (Mage = 6.75) who were identified as at-risk for reading difficulties at primary school entry were allocated to either phonics or word reading based interventions. Students were assessed for reading accuracy and fluency after they had completed a tablet-based reading intervention. They were classified as responders vs. non-responders based on criterion-referenced scores for word reading and decoding accuracy and fluency. Students were classified as being responders if they attained above grade equivalent scores or if their scores were above a mean of typically developing peers. Students who did not attain age-based scores at post-intervention compared with their pre-intervention scores were categorized as being non-responders.

Differences between the two groups were evaluated for (1) the rate of growth on reading/literacy measures over the intervention phase; and (2) their weekly in-lesson performance on the tablet-based intervention activities; and (3) cognitive attributes (nonverbal cognitive ability, statistical learning, rapid naming, and phonological and orthographic awareness). The findings from this study provide valuable information in predicting the different types of interventions children may require. This will help educators working with children to develop interventions which are targeted to the specific needs of individual students.

DR BETH O'BRIEN
Senior Research Scientist
National Institute of Education, NTU, Singapore

Dr O’Brien is a Senior Research Scientist at the National Institute of Education, NTU, Singapore. She heads the Bilingual and Biliteracy Development area within the Centre for Research in Child Development. A cognitive psychologist by training, Dr O’Brien’s research focus is on reading development from a cognitive neuroscience perspective; in particular, how different types of learners (bilingual, learning-disabled, at-risk) interact with different educational environments and experiences. She has conducted research on developmental dyslexia with multicomponential and technology-based interventions, as well as on the typical development of reading, reading fluency and biliteracy.

Profiles of literacy skills and cognition among Primary 1 children in reading intervention

Evidence suggests that most struggling learners exemplify one of several common profiles and patterns of reading difficulties (Cabell et al., 2011; Pennington et al., 2014). Understanding these profiles and patterns is key to early identification and intervention with struggling readers as well as effective educational practices for improving reading skills. However, currently, there is no study examining this variability in Singapore. The purpose of this study was to describe potential profiles of within-group variabilities in the literacy skills of children who are at risk for learning difficulties. Seventy-six primary 1 participants (aged 63 to 88 months) who were identified according to their schools as either typically progressing students or struggling learners (requiring extra support). Thirty-eight struggling learners (SL) were matched on chronological age with thirty-eight typically developing peers (TD). Measures of literacy, oral language, working memory and vocabulary and executive control were administered to both groups of children. Between group comparisons were conducted with Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). Significant differences between the scores of TD and SL groups were found for literacy skills, as well as phonological awareness, verbal working memory, verbal and non-verbal cognition and vocabulary. The prevalence of poor performance across the different measured skills and patterns of combined deficits were further examined within the SL group. This study highlights the considerable heterogeneity of literacy abilities of children in a learning support group. The resulting profiles have theoretical and practical relevance when examining concurrent relationships between patterns of performance in various domains and reading and spelling achievement.

ANABERTA OEHLERS-JAEN
HEAD, DAS INTERNATIONAL
PROGRAMME DIRECTOR OF SCHOOL-BASED PROGRAMMES
DYSLEXIA ASSOCIATION OF SINGAPORE

Ms Anaberta Oehlers-Jaen started her career at the DAS in 2005 as an Educational Therapist and has since held various portfolios. For 4 years, she was the Preschool Manager of the DAS Preschool Service and was actively involved with children at risk of literacy delay and helped to launch the service at DAS. She assumed the position of Head of DAS International in 2011 in order to support both the local and expatriate international community of students, who may be experiencing learning differences through Specialist tutoring and Assessments. In her role as Maths Programme Director in 2014, Anaberta has presented at International conferences delivered in Singapore, ASEAN region and the UK.

She is also actively involved in research and has published articles in the Asia-Pacific Journal of Developmental Differences. She holds a Masters Degree in Special Needs from NTU, BA( English Language and Literature) from SUSS, a Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education from the London Metropolitan University as well as a Cambridge International Diploma for Teachers and Trainers (Dyslexia), along with Early Childhood Diplomas. She is also a qualified trainer with the Advanced Certificate in Training and Assessment (ACTA) by the Singapore Workforce Skills Qualification (WSQ). She has Fellow status at RETA, Register of Educational Therapists (Asia) and is also a Senior Educational Therapist. Delivering a professional service to the families of students with Specific Learning Differences is high on her priority and hopes to continue to serve this community both in Singapore and the region.

INTERNATIONAL FORUM:

Don't wait for your child to fail – The Importance of Early Assessment and Diagnosis

UNITE SPLD 2022, would not be complete without the coming together of international specialists for discussion on significant topics like this one. It is especially significant during these challenging COVID-19 times where we have all experienced challenges. The international forum gives us a chance to pause, listen, share and understand what we have been doing in our community for early intervention. This forum helps to provide perspectives on the importance and role that early assessment plays in supporting our children who may be at risk of specific learning differences such as Dyslexia, ADHD etc. It is our hope that through this panel discussion on topics that are close to our hearts in the work we do, we will provide some guidance and advice from our diverse forum on how to approach early intervention.

Ong Yun Mei
Educational Therapist (Chinese) & RETA Associate Member Plus
Dyslexia Association of Singapore

Yun Mei is an Educational Therapist with the Dyslexia Association of Singapore. She specialises in providing intervention for learners with Dyslexia struggling with Chinese Language, at the Primary and Secondary levels. She has helped pioneer the Secondary 3 programme curriculum to ensure that the sequential and cumulative practices can aid learners of different abilities to gain mastery of higher literacy skills. She is also part of the core team where she led the development of the team by conducting training and mentoring junior Educational Therapists where she offers guidance on lesson planning and execution.

The impact of a Curriculum-Based Approach on Chinese Secondary 3 Trial Programme for students with dyslexia

Chinese language learning at the secondary school level focuses on increasing the proficiency of students in their reading and writing abilities. Given the variety of text types as compared to what they have been exposed to at primary school level, a student who has a language learning difficulty, such as dyslexia, would find learning Chinese in school an

increasingly difficult task. Our Secondary Programme adopted a curriculum-based approach to help learners bridge the learning gap to access the mainstream curriculum. As we expanded into Secondary 3 trial Programme in 2021 with some adjustments to the teaching materials and literacy tests, progress of students were tracked for a year using measures such as literacy ability tests, school results, parent and student survey as well as teacher's observation. Results showed that students have improved in their overall language skills and our Educational Therapist played an important role in motivating the students to learn.

Dr Ow Yeong Wai Mang Elizabeth
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION (NTU), Singapore

Dr Elizabeth Ow Yeong has taught in the mainstream primary school system for the past 25 years. She has served as HOD (Student Development), amongst other appointments. Currently seconded to the National Institute of Education, she focuses on training pre-service teachers, allied educators for learning and behavioural support, as well as in-service teachers in the area of special needs. Her research interests include special needs education and constructivist teaching approaches. In 2017, Dr Ow Yeong was awarded the President’s Award for Teachers for her services to education.

Use of Technology by Singapore Educators to enhance learning for students with Special Educational Needs

The use of technology in special education helps break the barriers for students with special educational needs and enables educators to exercise higher flexibility and differentiation in educational methodologies. With modern technology, educators can adapt to the needs of their students more easily and are able to choose a number of available learning tactics designed to meet the needs of individual learners. This exploratory research looks into the use of technology by Singapore educators in the special schools and mainstream schools to enhance support for students with special educational needs in various academic subjects. It showcases the technological resources which Singapore educators have found effective in supporting and motivating students with special educational needs and illustrates how these educators combine various domains of learning to enable teaching and learning to be considered as effective for these students.

DR ELEONORA PALMIERI
DIRECTOR OF PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PEDAGOGICAL
VICTOR CENTER MACERATA, ITALY

Dr. Eleonora Palmieri is the Director of Psychological and Pedagogical Victor Center Macerata ( Italy) involved in dyslexia, dyspraxia, autism according to the Crispiani Method practices. She is a clinical psychologist, neruopsychomotricist and Itard Specialist. She is interested in special pedagogy and neurodevelopment disorders ( language, motor, perception) She has been involved in international projects as a trainer ( Singapore, Mumbai, Hong Kong, Poland, Malesia) and she often attends as an expert speaker at International Conferences.

She has developed and coordinated partnerships with many experts in different countries, including universities ( Poland, England, Spain, Hong Kong, Singapore, Mumbai), training organizations, research centres, pedagogical advice for teachers and parents.

She is the author with Prof. Piero Crispiani of Champion Pressing, Special Intensive Practices of Cognitive Motor Training by Istituto Itard, collana Les sauvages; She has also realized a Video Motor Training Itard, she is the author of many articles and Working Method of Champion LIRM ( Intensive Reading and Motor Speed).

Dyslexia: ready to learn! Neuroactivation training before reading and writing

Actions such as riding a bicycle, kicking a ball or activities such as reading and writing are excellent examples of gestalt actions that involve the practical realization of an ideomotor automaticity with a prompt initiation phase.

From our research, the dyslexic group manifested a delay from initiation to execution, with slow neuro-activation in terms of:

• Lack of coordination in motor sequences

• Irregular timing and rhythm, with a lack of sequential proceduralization

• An alteration in the spatial–time input required

Based on Champion Pressing intervention, most dyslexic children may achieve great benefits from our neuroactivation training in terms of fluency and self-regulation processes. Easy and useful practices will be presented to the audience to improve their promptness before reading and writing.

Key words: neuroactivation, timing, rhythm, synchronization

DR KENNETH POON
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR,
PSYCHOLOGY, CHILD AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT ACADEMIC GROUP
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION, NTU, SINGAPORE

Dr Kenneth Poon is Associate Professor at the Psychology, Child, and Human Development Academic Group at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University. He also serves as Associate Dean (Education Research) at the Office of Education Research, and as Centre Co-Director at the Centre for Research in Child Development. Kenneth obtained a PhD specializing in early childhood intervention and in autism spectrum disorders. Bringing his training as a psychologist and early childhood special educator, Kenneth is currently Principal Investigator of Tran-SEN, a study of about 700 children with special educational needs in Singapore primary and special schools.

Understanding the emotional and behavioural needs of primary students with specific learning disorders

Background: Specific learning disorders (SpLDs) are one of the most frequently occurring conditions among students with special educational needs (SEN). Although it may seem that SpLDs affect mainly learning, students with SpLDs frequently also experience emotional and behavioural difficulties.

Objectives: In this paper, we seek to understand the presentation of emotional and behavioral difficulties of primary children with SpLDs. We also hope to understand the extent to which these emotional and behavioural difficulties are related to cognitive processes and social outcomes.

Method: Data from approximately 100 participants will be drawn from a larger longitudinal study of students with SEN in Singapore schools. Emotional and behavioural difficulties measured by the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), cognitive processes will include parent completed inventories as well as findings from the Singapore Ability Scales. Social outcomes will be measured by the SDQ as well as a bullying survey.

Conclusion: The findings will be interpreted in the light of needing to understand and support students with SpLDs in a holistic manner.

Padma RameshSpecial EducatorMadras Dyslexia Association

After one decade of a successful banking career, Padma Ramesh, evolved to pursue her passion in developing skills to train special children. This became the catalyst for her to complete professional training in dyslexia from Madras Dyslexia Association. Here, she continued her professional career in providing remedial education for children with dyslexia.

Enabling online remediation using multiple intelligences - an online classroom approach

The proposed talk is about how at MDA, Multiple Intelligences(MI) was used to enable effective online remediation for children with specific learning difficulties (SLD). This presentation explains how MI is being used to create a nurturing environment focusing on the needs of the child in order to empower and enable their potential. It will also look at the impact of using MI in the classroom (offline and online). With the pandemic causing havoc in our lives, the lives of school-going children have been impacted the most. Their academic, social and emotional wellbeing has been severely impacted, more so for children with SLD. They were deprived of the social and emotional connection that they thrived on, and the hands-on learning that made remediation possible was also impacted.

The remediation offered at our full-time facility Ananya Learning and Research Center needed to be reoriented to the online space, and using a multi-modal, multisensory approach incorporating Multiple Intelligences was the only way to effectively reach out to the children. For example, A colour coded Venn diagram (spatial intelligence) was created by the child to learn the differences between two animals. We will describe how we plan an IEP and Lesson plan based on MI, and how this helped in integrating the child into mainstream school after one year of remediation. We will use videos, and case studies to demonstrate the strategies used and how they impacted learning. Our aim is to demonstrate the reach of the MI model, in helping build the social, emotional and academic needs of the child of SLD, thereby providing holistic development in the online mode.

Dian Dwi Sary is a clinician from the University of Riau Indonesia, who takes care of children with special needs at the Arifin Ahmad Hospital in Riau Province Indonesia.

Parental first concern according to age and type in children with ASD

Parental concerns regarding children’s developmental problems should be considered as a step in diagnosing children with autism spectrum disorder along. Further investigation is needed to gain a clearer picture of parental concerns of behaviours exhibited by their child. Studies that compare parental concerns of children with ASD and children diagnosed with other developmental disorders are limited. A cross-sectional study to examine the type and children’s age when parental concerns first arise in children with ASD and other developmental disorders was conducted in the Child Developmental Centre in Surabaya Indonesia from August to December 2019. The T-test and chi-square tests were used to analyse differences in subject variables and types of concern. Most parents of both children diagnosed with ASD and non-ASD indicated the first parental concerns were in communication, social skill, and behaviour problems. The average age of parents’ first concern of ASD children is 30.14 months and 31.39 months for non-ASD children. Significant differences were found between ASD and non-ASD groups in communications, behaviour, and sensory problem concerns. The main concern of parents of both groups is communication problems, socialization skills, and behavioural issues. Parents of children with ASD would first report concerns at an early age compared to parents of children with no ASD diagnosis.

Keywords : parent concern, autism, communication.

Rosie Shand
Executive Centre Director,
Regional Director of International Development Lindamood-Bell Learning Processes

Rosie Shand is the Executive Centre Director of Lindamood-Bell Learning Centres in Hong Kong SAR and Singapore, where she works with families to improve their children’s reading and language comprehension skills. Rosie joined Lindamood-Bell in 2018, providing sensory-cognitive instruction for children and adults with a variety of learning needs, including students with Dyslexia, Dyscalculia, and Autism Spectrum Disorders. She has worked with students in many different countries via Lindamood-Bell's online instruction platform. Rosie holds a Masters of Arts (with Honours) in Politics, Psychology, Sociology and International Studies from the University of Cambridge (UK).

Using the Cognitive Science of Learning as an Instructional Model to Remediate Dyslexia: Neuroscientific and Behavioral Results

The Cognitive Science of Learning offers a comprehensive view of addressing the full spectrum of language processing weaknesses, transcending a decoding only focus to help children with language and literacy difficulties, including those with dyslexia. We will present this paradigm, as contrasted to the current “Science of Reading” model, which we believe is necessary but not sufficient to comprehensively address the learning needs of all students. Based on 35 years of instructional experience, neurologic and behavioral intervention results substantiate the Cognitive Science of Learning model supported by a comprehensive theory of cognition of learning, Dual Coding Theory (DCT) (Paivio, 1979), which includes reading and serving the needs of dyslexics through differential diagnosis and individualized interventions. This evidence-based mental representational/language (DCT) model serves as a global foundation for reading, offering major hope to parents and educators addressing all the literacy needs of children with dyslexia so they can realize their full learning potential. (Lindamood-Bell Learning Processes, 2020, Eden et al., 2004, Oulade et al., 2013, Krafnick et al., 2015, Murdaugh et al., 2015, Murdaugh & Maximo et al., 2015, Christodoulou et al., 2015, Romeo et al., 2017, Huber et al., 2018).

ABOUT JUNE:

Dr June Siew is a thought leader in the field of special educational needs (SEN), focusing on dyslexia. She holds a grounded perspective of SEN, developed through her extensive experiences with students and their community of support. She is a pioneer in advocating inclusive practices in schools and has been training allied educators since they were first introduced to the mainstream school system in 2005. She passionately believes that the family and community are key to a child’s success and works closely with them to help students with SEN thrive.

June holds a Doctor in Education from the National Institute of Education (Singapore) and Institute of Education, University College London. She is a Fellow with the Register of Educational Therapists (Asia) and a qualified trainer with a WSQ Advanced Certificate in Training and Assessment (ACTA).

The Role of Special Educational Needs Officers (SEN) in promoting a whole-school approach to SEN support

Despite the growth of international research on paraeducator deployment, the understanding of its working in Singapore remains nascent.

This research addresses the limited knowledge of paraeducator deployment in Singapore by examining how SEN (previously known as Allied Educators (Learning and Behavioural Support) [AED(LBS)]) spend their time in school, how they work with the school community of teachers and school leaders, and the factors that affect the process of working together using Wenger’s (1998) community of practice framework.

The findings encourage a reimagination of the SEN role in mainstream schools, moving from a role mainly concerned with student support to one with a growing influence on the school’s inclusive culture. Beyond having a tangible impact on teachers and school leaders through practical support rendered, SEN were observed to exert an intangible influence on colleagues through their voice and visibility. This intangible influence won their colleagues’ trust, facilitated their inclusion into school communities and encouraged teachers’ willingness to participate in the support of students with Special Educational Needs (SEN). Through their voice and visibility, SEN enabled a whole school approach to support. Both leaders and SEN played a part in determining the extent of SEN voice and visibility. Recommendations for increasing SEN voice and visibility will be provided.

TAN CHEE SOON
EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGIST
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF EDUCATION, SINGAPORE

TAN Chee Soon is a lecturer at the National Institute of Education and a Registered Educational Psychologist in Singapore. She is involved in teacher education as well as the professional development of psychologists. She seeks to equip trainee psychologists and special educators with foundational knowledge of a multi-tiered system of support, which will enable schools to identify and serve students who struggle with reading and require additional support. She was also an Educational Psychologist and provided assessment and consultation services to schools. Her research interests are in literacy assessment and intervention, systems support for students with reading difficulties, resilience and positive education.

Response and Non-response to Intervention for Reading Difficulties: What Role do Cognitive Correlates Play?

Within the field of learning disabilities, many intervention studies have found that some students do not respond adequately to treatment despite better understanding of reading development and improvement in the treatment for reading disability (Fletcher et al., 2011). According to previous studies, cognitive measures, including phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, verbal memory, and statistical learning were correlated with a lack of response to reading interventions (Al Otaiba & Fuchs, 2002).

In our study, we compared good and poor responders in an intervention study for early primary learning support program (LSP) students. The intervention study was conducted as a randomized controlled design, wherein 147 children (Mage = 6.75) who were identified as at risk for reading difficulties at primary school entry were allocated to either phonics or word reading based interventions. Students were assessed for reading accuracy and fluency after they had completed a tablet-based reading intervention. They were classified as responders vs. non-responders based on criterion-referenced scores for word reading and decoding accuracy and fluency. Students were classified as being responders if they attained above grade equivalent scores or if their scores were above a mean of typically developing peers. Students who did not attain age-based scores at post-intervention compared with their pre-intervention scores were categorized as being non-responders.

Differences between the two groups were evaluated for (1) the rate of growth on reading/literacy measures over the intervention phase; and (2) their weekly in-lesson performance on the tablet-based intervention activities; and (3) cognitive attributes (nonverbal cognitive ability, statistical learning, rapid naming, and phonological and orthographic awareness). The findings from this study provide valuable information in predicting the different types of interventions children may require. This will help educators working with children to develop interventions which are targeted to the specific needs of individual students.

TINA TAN
ADHD PARENT TRAINER AND COACH
SPARK

Tina is a mother of 3 boys, 19, 18 and 13 years of age. She is Social Work trained. Her second son was diagnosed with ADHD and Dyslexia at age 6, and ASD at age 10. This led her to be very involved in learning about ADHD and supporting other families who have ADHD children. She is also a freelance parent trainer and coach, and she also designs and runs workshops and training programs on ADHD for SPARK (The Society for the Promotion of ADHD Research and Knowledge). She has a Bachelors degree in Social Work and Psychology from NUS, is an accredited Triple P Trainer with MSF, and is also sitting on the MOE COMPASS Council.

RETA Case Management Discussion: What's the hype with ADHD?

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) presented by its Predominantly Inattentive, Predominantly Hyperactive-Impulsivity or Combined traits can affect many children. If left unaddressed, ADHD can disrupt children’s learning, motivation and socialization among family members and peers. Children with ADHD and a learning difficulty such as dyslexia are likely to struggle with academics and social interaction such that they become a big source of concern to parents and educators. What is more concerning, ADHD grows with the child – ADHD can develop as the child develops – and this may increase its severity if not tackled early on. While medication is an option to consider, this may not be the choice for many parents. How then can children with ADHD be helped? At the Dyslexia Association of Singapore (DAS), a group of students with dyslexia and a co-morbid diagnosis of ADHD are supported by Educational Therapists and Educational Advisors to help them with both literacy and behaviour management. Students are not only given phonics instructions and explicit teaching of language skills to remediate literacy difficulties, they are also guided with behaviour strategies to aid in impulse control and hyperactivity so that they can better assimilate in a group setting. This presentation will highlight case studies on students with dyslexia and ADHD, as well as invite experts in this area to share their knowledge in dealing with children with ADHD. The data on case studies were collected through classroom observations and interactions with Educational Therapists. Strategies and suggestions are provided to inspire educators and parents to adopt them so as to form a consistent structure between what is implemented in the DAS classroom and what can be done at home.

Dyslexia-associated cognition: Not a disorder, but an evolved Specialisation in Explorative Cognitive Search

This research provides a new and different view of dyslexia-associated cognition, reframing it not as a disorder, but rather, as an evolved specialisation in Explorative Cognitive Search, indicating that this form of cognitive processing plays a critical role in how our species adapts to change.

A new theoretical lens, namely information Search, is used to understand the cognition of individuals being diagnosed with developmental dyslexia. Regulating search is fundamental to adaptive success at both evolutionary and ecological (i.e. cognitive) time scales. Appropriately balancing this process is so central to survival that it is believed to be one of the most important selective forces operating in the evolution of cognition.

It has long been argued that individuals with developmental dyslexia possess a talent for global (versus local) information processing and enhanced abilities in realms such as creativity, divergent thinking and invention. These are all ways of processing information that are associated with global information search. It was therefore hypothesised that individuals with dyslexia are specialised in explorative cognitive search - since this would explain both the higher-level strengths and difficulties that have been observed.

The study predictions derived from a new scientific theory of human cognitive evolution - The Evolution of Complementary Cognition - which itself is grounded in complex adaptive systems theory. The purpose of this study was not to debate the existing evidence concerning developmental dyslexia; rather the aim was to use Search as a new framework from which to interpret the evidence. It was hypothesised that higher-level strengths observed in individuals with dyslexia reflect an underlying specialisation in explorative information search. This hypothesis makes two predictions. The first was that underlying cognitive and neurological differences favour global search. The second was that these would be clustered, i.e. a global search bias would be found in more than one area of cognition.

In general, whichever aspect of dyslexia-associated cognition was looked at, evidence indicated a relationship to explorative information search. Even some features previously understood as deficits, such as lower working memory, enhance explorative search. Areas of deficit on the other hand, are consistently related to local information search. The evidence concurs with the hypothesis that the cognition of individuals with dyslexia is specialised for greater explorative search. The importance of this cannot be over-emphasised. Specialisation by such a significant proportion of the population indicates that our species regulate search at the group level. In other words, it indicates that our species adapt through group-level cognition. This finding emphasises the urgency of changing educational practices and nurturing the strengths in this group of people, to both value individuals with this way of thinking and to enable us as a global community to move towards a more adaptive and sustainable society.

ABOUT HELEN:

Creator of ‘The Evolution of Complementary Cognition’ – a new scientific theory that explains how our species adapt and evolve.

Project Lead, Complementary Cognition, Business & Entrepreneurship, University of Strathclyde.

Affiliated Scholar, McDonald Institute University of Cambridge.

Helen is currently a Research Associate and Project Lead on Complementary Cognition, Entrepreneurship & Societal Adaptation at the University of Strathclyde. She works in collaboration with Professor Nigel Lockett and Professor Eleanor Shaw. Helen did her Bachelor and Masters degrees at the UCL and won further scholarship funding to do her doctorate at the University of Cambridge where her PhD research investigated the emergence of social complexity in humans. For her subsequent post-doctoral work she researched dyslexia to try and understand what this form of cognition was and why it existed. From this, she developed a new theory of human cognitive evolution which draws on economic and complex systems theory and is supported by a range of evidence from cognitive psychology, neuroscience, evolution, paleo-environmental evidence and archaeology.

Read more here: complementarycognition.co.uk

ROSALYN WEE
Lead Educational Therapist and RETA Fellow
Curriculum Developer - English Language and Literacy Division
Dyslexia Association of Singapore

Rosalyn Wee joined DAS in 2010 and is an educator with more than ten years of experience working with children at the Dyslexia Association of Singapore (DAS) and a Fellow of the Register of Educational Therapists - Asia. She has a Masters of Arts in Applied Linguistics from the National Institute of Education, a Postgraduate Certificate in Specific Learning Differences from London Metropolitan University, a Certificate in Gifted Education from the University of New South Wales, and a Cambridge CELTA. Other than being a Curriculum Specialist, and Lead Educational Therapist, she is also a certified trainer with a WSQ Advanced Certificate in Training and Assessment and she mentors and lectures as an Adjunct Lecturer. She is currently the project lead and develops the content of iStudySmart which is a programme to help students in upper secondary and tertiary education improve in their executive function, life skills and academic skills.

Effectiveness of an online learning model that delivers executive functioning and study skills curriculum to Upper secondary and Tertiary students with specific learning differences

As students transition to higher education, the acquisition of study skills, executive functioning skills, as well as life skills, becomes an important set of transferable skills in enabling them to learn and work more efficiently, thereby maximising their potential as well as the full benefit of their time and effort. The English Language and Literacy Division (ELL) at the Dyslexia Association of Singapore (DAS) developed the iStudySmart™ programme, which adopts an online learning approach which includes e-learning, that aims to empower students with learning differences in the areas of time management and prioritisation, planning and organisation, tertiary writing and presentation skills. The aims of iStudySmart™ were not only to bridge the gap in intervention and resources catered for students with learning challenges at the tertiary level but also to keep abreast with changing times, demands and expectations observed in the education sector.

As dyslexia is a life-long learning difference, specialist support should ideally continue into post-secondary. Certainly, with the acquisition of essential study skills and techniques introduced and covered in iStudySmart™, we hope to develop our students to become self-directed, independent and responsible learners (which are traits and characteristics expected at tertiary level) but more importantly, build a strong foundation for them to be able to reach their goals and aspirations not only in school but also in their future workplace. This paper evaluates the relevance and effectiveness of iStudySmart™ and also measures the students’ self-confidence, motivation, and independence through the administration of pre-and post-questionnaires. Further, qualitative data comprising testimonials from parents revealed high levels of satisfaction and recognition of the value of the approach. Results indicate that all aspects of the iStudySmart™ intervention were effective, with moderate and large effect sizes for planning and organisation, tertiary writing and presentation, although the students had not yet learnt to consistently apply the time management and prioritisation strategies learnt on the programme.

Keywords: higher education, dyslexia, specific learning difficulty, study skills, executing functioning skills, motivation, independence, self-confidence, e-learning, online learning, flipped classroom, asynchronous learning, synchronous learning

MICHELLE-LYNN YAP
DEPUTY COURSE CHAIR FOR STUDENT MANAGEMENT
NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT (NIEC)

Michelle is currently the Deputy Course Chair for Student Management with the National Institute of Early Childhood Development (NIEC) at the Ngee Ann Poly (NP) campus, under the Diploma in Early Childhood Development & Education (ECDE). She joined NP in Jan 2016 and lectures mainly on childhood developmental needs, as well as supervises Year 3 interns both in the EC and Early Intervention settings. Michelle was the Course Lead for the Specialist Diploma in Early Childhood Learning Support (SDELS) from Oct 2016 - March 2021. As part of her role, she worked closely with the KKH (Consultancy Team) as well as MSF & ECDA to ensure quality and currency of the course, and also coached new practicum supervisors on the Literacy and Social Skills Support packages. Currently, Michelle contributes to SDELS by teaching the Literacy Support content to Learning Support Educators (LSEds) and being a practicum supervisor. Michelle also spent a year with the Community Psychology Hub on practical work attachment (Oct 2020 – 2021) and contributed to the building up of the Inclusive Support Programme Pilot Project, as the Design Lead (Technical Assistance). Prior to joining NP, Michelle was with the DAS for over 11 years as a Senior Educational Therapist, as well as with the DAS Academy as a lecturer and the Director for Continuing Professional Development.

RETA Case Management Discussion: What's the hype with ADHD?

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) presented by its Predominantly Inattentive, Predominantly Hyperactive-Impulsivity or Combined traits can affect many children. If left unaddressed, ADHD can disrupt children’s learning, motivation and socialization among family members and peers. Children with ADHD and a learning difficulty such as dyslexia are likely to struggle with academics and social interaction such that they become a big source of concern to parents and educators. What is more concerning, ADHD grows with the child – ADHD can develop as the child develops – and this may increase its severity if not tackled early on. While medication is an option to consider, this may not be the choice for many parents. How then can children with ADHD be helped? At the Dyslexia Association of Singapore (DAS), a group of students with dyslexia and a co-morbid diagnosis of ADHD are supported by Educational Therapists and Educational Advisors to help them with both literacy and behaviour management. Students are not only given phonics instructions and explicit teaching of language skills to remediate literacy difficulties, they are also guided with behaviour strategies to aid in impulse control and hyperactivity so that they can better assimilate in a group setting. This presentation will highlight case studies on students with dyslexia and ADHD, as well as invite experts in this area to share their knowledge in dealing with children with ADHD. The data on case studies were collected through classroom observations and interactions with Educational Therapists. Strategies and suggestions are provided to inspire educators and parents to adopt them so as to form a consistent structure between what is implemented in the DAS classroom and what can be done at home.

CHRISTIAN VOEGELI
DYBUSTER FOUNDER AND CO-CEO

Christian Vögeli received his M.Sc. in Computational Science from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich in 2005. He was rewarded the SFIT Medal for his outstanding Master thesis on improving the information-theoretical model behind Dybuster Orthograph, Dybuster’s intervention tool for writing. As a research assistant he directed, with the support of psychologists, the successful user study which included over 85 school children. He has effectively led the development of Orthograph from prototype to commercial product, and was the project leader for developing Calcularis, the first intervention tool for dyscalculia, for which neuronal improvements were shown. He was awarded multiple prices such as the Venture Leaders or ACES award. Christian Vögeli is currently the co-CEO and Managing Director of Dybuster and supports teachers and parents in their quest to unlock their children’s full academic potential

Orthograph: Multisensory, Computer-Guided Spelling Training – Efficient Even for Dyslexics

Orthograph is a novel, scientifically developed, web-based training tool for orthography and vocabulary. Originally developed for children with dyslexia, it was proven to be efficient both for children with and without learning difficulties. The presentation describes the private, interdisciplinary motivation behind Orthograph. The main concept - supporting and automating phonological processes through multi-sensory cues such as colors, shapes, structures, and tones - is explained. Afterwards, the presentation describes the scientific studies, which proved the effectiveness of Orthograph, in particular a reduction in spelling by more than 30% after three months of training. It continues to describe, how Orthograph is used daily by schools and children, and which English curricula are available. It finishes with an outlook on future work.

References

Gross M. and Voegeli C., A Multi Media Framework for Effective Language Training, Computers & Graphics, Vol. 31, Pages 761 – 777, Elsevier 2007.

Kast M., Meyer M., Voegeli C., Gross M. and Jaencke L.. Computer-based multisensory learning in children with developmental dyslexia, Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience, Vol. 25, Pages 355 – 369, IOS Press, 2007.

M. Kast, G.M. Baschera, M. Gross, L. Jaencke, M. Meyer. Computer-based learning of spelling skills in children with and without dyslexia, Annals of Dyslexia, Springer Verlag, pp. 1-24, 2011

www.dybuster.com/en