Helping aids for dyslexic children

Helping aids for dyslexic children 

A Approximately fifteen percent of Czech school children are diagnosed with dyslexia. Dyslexia is a condition that is related to a difficulty with reading. Although it has been confirmed that there is no direct connection between IQ and dyslexia, dyslexic children are often characterised to be problematic and slow, which is an obstruction for them to fully use of their potential. There are many new learning aids aiming to change that.

 

B Children who are somewhat different often suffer from their dissimilarity in the classroom. It lasted many years until the Czech education system accepted left-handers and stopped forcing them to write with their right hand. There are about ten percent of left-handers in the population. Children who were forced to change hands and write right-handed had very bad effects in their later life.

 

C In 2010, a Czech artist, who suffers from dyslexia, published an audio-visual primer which was produced in cooperation with experts from Charles University. Alena Kupčíková, Czech painter, sculptor and conceptualist, explains what the new learning technique is based on. “Children who suffer from dyslexia tend to use their right hemisphere more than the left which influences their perception of things. They often think in pictures, which makes it more difficult for them to understand and read letters and written words. That’s why this learning aid is based on using pictures to make it easier for children to recognize letters and understand words and sentences.”

 

D At present, teachers understand a dyslexic child can be as intelligent, or even more intelligent than a child without learning disabilities. The ability to read is an essential tool for learning. A large part of the subject matter is taught at school. More and more children and adults need help with learning how to read, spell, express their thoughts on paper and acquire adequate knowledge of grammar. Many problems and traumas can be reduced by using special learning aids, activities and games.

 

E Nowadays, there are lots of great tools available that can help children overcome their struggles. They can use applications which adjust types of fonts and sizes of texts to make it easier to read, special programs, educational games, spelling assistance softwares, screen reading devices, or smartpens.

1) Read the article and match each of the headings to a paragraph.

1 Alena Kupčíková explains the principle of the new learning technique 

2 Accepting left-handers 

3 Learning aids for dyslexic children 

4 Teachers know dyslexia does not mean low IQ 

5 Introduction 

2) Read the article and answer the questions.

1 What is the article about? 

2 Who is Alena Kupčíková? 

3 What is the primer based on?

4 What were problems of left-handers like?

5 What are learning aids developed for dyslexic children mentioned in the text?

3) Explain the following words.

1 learning aids

2 left-hander 

3 primer 

4 to acquire adequate knowledge of grammar

5 smartpen

Adjusted to:

http://www.radio.cz/en/section/curraffrs/young-czech-artist-helps-dyslexic-children