Remedial Education

The Remedial Education program is an instructional program designed for students in grade 1-5 and 6-12 who have identified deficiencies in reading, writing, and maths. This program provides individualized basic skills instruction in the areas of reading, mathematics, and writing

What is Remedial Education and why are these Program in Demand?

In simple terms, a remedial program is for students who have average or higher intellectual abilities but who are not performing well in school. Typically, remedial students are not struggling because of their intellectual abilities but instead because they are struggling with one subject area like reading, writing or mathematics. Remedial program are designed to help give the students the individual attention that they need to build their skills and their confidence so that they can live up to their potential.

Remedial programs that offer students one-on-one attention are much more in demand. Many students today find it difficult to sit down and stay focused in class because the delivery of traditional lectures does not grasp the attention of all learning types. Many public schools today will mainstream remedial program in the class offering and teachers typically need nothing more than average certificate and smaller class sizes. Tailing course to learn special remediation skills and methods can be helpful for educators to deal with common learning problems.
Dyslexia is a condition that makes it hard to learn to read and learn. It happens when there is a problem with the way the brain processes graphic symbols. The problem in dyslexia is a linguistic one, not a visual one. Dyslexia in no way stems from any lack of intelligence. People with severe dyslexia can be brilliant. Although it is a neurological condition, dyslexia is not linked to intelligence. The effects of dyslexia vary from person to person. The only shared trait among people with dyslexia is that they read at levels lower than typical for people of their age.
What is Dyslexia?

In a person with dyslexia, the brain processes written material differently. This makes it hard to recognize, spell, and decode words. People with dyslexia have problems understanding what they read. Dyslexia is a neurological and often genetic condition, and not the result of poor teaching, instruction, or upbringing. Between 5 and 15 percent of people in the United States have dyslexia.

Symptoms

Dyslexia commonly causes difficulties in word recognition, spelling, and decoding.

Dyslexia is different from delayed reading development, which may reflect mental disability or cultural deprivation. The most common signs and symptoms associated with dyslexia can be displayed at any age, but they normally present in childhood.

Childhood symptoms of Dyslexia include:

Difficulty in learning to read

Many children with dyslexia have normal intelligence and receive proper teaching and parental support, but they have difficulty learning to read.

Milestones reached later

Children with dyslexia may learn to crawl, walk, talk, and ride a bicycle later than the majority of others.

Delayed speech development

A child with dyslexia may take longer to learn to speak, and they may mispronounce words, find rhyming challenging, and appear not to distinguish between different word sounds.

Slow at learning sets of data

At school, children with dyslexia may take longer to learn the letters of the alphabet and how they are pronounced. There may be problems remembering the days of the week, months of the year, colors, and some arithmetic tables.

Coordination

The child may seem clumsier than their peers. Catching a ball may be difficult. Poorer eye-hand coordination may be a symptom of other similar neurological conditions, including dyspraxia

Left and right

The child may confuse “left” and “right.”

Reversal

They may reverse numbers and letters without realizing.

Spelling

Some children with dyslexia might not follow a pattern of progression seen in other children. They may learn how to spell a word and completely forget the next day.

Speech problems

If a word has more than two syllables, phonological processing becomes much more challenging. For example, with the word “unfortunately” a person with dyslexia may be able to process the sounds “un” and “ly,” but not the ones in between.

Concentration span

Children with dyslexia commonly find it hard to concentrate. Many adults with dyslexia say this is because, after a few minutes of non-stop struggling, the child is mentally exhausted. A higher number of children with dyslexia also have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), compared with the rest of the population.

Sequencing ideas

When a person with dyslexia expresses a sequence of ideas, they may seem illogical or unconnected.

Types

Dyslexia can be broken down into different subtypes, but there is no official list of dyslexia types because they can be classified in different ways.
However, the following categories are sometimes used:

Phonological dyslexia:

The person has difficulty breaking down words into smaller units, making it hard to match sounds with their written form. This is also known as dysphonetic dyslexia or auditory dyslexia.

Surface dyslexia:

The person cannot recognize a word by sight, making words hard to remember and learn. This is sometimes called dyseidectic dyslexia or visual dyslexia.

Rapid naming deficit:

The person cannot quickly name a letter or number when they see it.

Double deficit dyslexia:

The person finds it hard to isolate sounds also to name letters and numbers.

Visual dyslexia:

The person has an unusual visual experience when looking at words, although this can overlap with surface dyslexia. Sometimes people refer to “directional dyslexia,” meaning it is difficult to tell left from right. This is a common feature of dyslexia, but it is not a type.
If a person has difficulty with math learning, the correct term for this is dyscalculia. It is not dyslexia.

Stage of Development
Dyslexia Symptoms
Before school
  • delayed speech development and vocabulary learning
  • difficulties forming words, such as making the sound in some words backward or mixing up words that sound similar
  • problems retaining information, such as numbers, the alphabet, and colors
School Age
  • low reading level for the age group
  • difficulties processing information
  • issues with remembering sequences of objects or information
  • being unable to put an unfamiliar word into sounds
  • taking an abnormally long time with reading and writing tasks
  • avoidance of activities that involve reading
Teenage years and Adulthood
  • difficulties reading aloud
  • slow reading and writing that takes a lot of effort
  • spelling issues
  • avoidance of tasks that require reading
  • mispronunciation of words or problems recalling words for a particular object or topic
  • problems with understanding the meaning behind jokes and idioms
  • difficulties learning a foreign language, memorizing, or completing math problems
  • finding it hard to summarize a story
Types of Reading Disabilities


Phonological Deficit:
Difficulty decording or assembling words based on their sounds. Note that phonemic awareness is not a reading deficit per se since it involves only sounds and not letters.

Speed Naming Deficit:
Slow reading: poor use of sight. A sight word is a word that is instantly recognized by the reader: is not sounded out, and requires almost no effort to understand.

Comprehension Deficit
Poor understanding of what was just read.

Subtypes of Dyslexia

By Sensory System

Auditory Dyslexia
Auditory Dyslexia involves difficulty processing sounds of letters or groups of letters. Multiple sounds may be fused as a singular sound. For Examples the word ‘back’ will be heard as asingle sound rather than something made up of the sounds /b/ – /aa/ – /ck/. Single syllable words are especially prone to this problem

Visual Dyslexia
Visual dyslexia is defined as reading difficulty resulting from vision related problems. Though the term is a misnormer, visual problems can definitely lead to reading and learning problems.

Attentional Dyslexia
Attentional Dyslexia in which children identify letters correctly, but the letters jump between words on the page. “kind wing” would be read as “wind king”. The substitutions are not caused by an inability letters or convert them to sounds, but instead result from the migration of letters between words-the first letters of one word switches place with the first letter of another word.

By Deficit

Phonological Dyslexia
Phonological dyslexia is extreme difficulty reading that is a result of phonological impairment, meaning the ability to manipulate the basic sounds of language. The individual sounds of language become ‘sticky’, unable to be broken apart and manipulated easily.

Surface Dyslexia
A type of dyslexia characterised by difficulty with whole word recognition and spelling, especially when the words have irregular spelling sound correspondences”.

Deep Dyslexia
Deep dyslexia is an acquired form of dyslexia, meaning it does not typically result from genetic, hereditary (developmental) cause. It represents a loss of existing capacity to read, often because of head trauma or stroke that affects the left side of the brain. It is distinguished by two things:semantic errors and difficulty reading non-words.

By Time of Onset:

Developmental Dyslexia
Developmental dyslexia is not so much a type of dyslexia, it is dyslexia. In fact our definition of it would be the same as our definition of dyslexia generly: Extreme difficulty reading caused by a hereditary, brain based, Phonologic disability. So why do people use the term instead of just saying dyslexia? The simple answer is they are trying to be more specific, distinguishing ‘regular’ dyslexia from the other types of dyslexia. In particular, distinguishuing it from acquired forms of dyslexia that result from stroke or head trauma for example, which often present very differently. For more on developmental dyslexia.

Acquired Dyslexia
This type results from trauma or injury to that part of the brain that controls reading and writing. Late in life this can be the result of a tumor or stroke.

Other Dyslexia Types:

Directional Dyslexia
Directional dyslexia is distinguished by left-right confusion and tendency to become disoriented or lost. The term is also occasionally used to mean confusion with letters such as P and b or d and b, where there is confusion over the ‘direction’ of the letter. Generally, problems with direction are a symptom of dyslexia more than a sub type. Not all dyslexics have this problem.

Math Dyslexia (Dyscalculia)
Math dyslexia or dyscalculia is not, in fact, a type of dyslexia, but we included it here because the term is frequently used. According to the U.S National Center for Learning Disabilities, math dyslexia, or dyscalculia, refers to wide range of lifelong learning disabilities involving math, varies from person to person and affects people differently at different stages of life.
As with reading, when basic math skills are not mastered early, more advanced math becomes extremely difficult. Approximately half of people with dyslexia also have dyscalculia, though far less research has been conducted regarding testing, assessment and remediation.

Language Disorder group, Articulary and Dys coordination Group and a Visual spatial Perceptual Disorder group.

They divided the children into three groups: (I) those with brain damage who could read, (II) those with brain damage who were dyslexic and (III) those without brain damage who were dyslexic. Interestingly enough they found a similarity between those with developmental dyslexia and those with brain-damage dyslexia. On the basis of these results and a battery of neuropsychological examinations, they divided dyslexia into three syndromes.

Syndrome I Language Disorder
This syndrome is characterized with anomia, comprehension deficits, confused imitative speech and speech- sound discrimination. Vision and motor coordination is normal.

Syndrome II Articulatory and Graphomotor Dyscoordination
Children with this syndrome have gross and fine motor coordination disorders. They have poor speech and graphomotor coordination.

Syndrome III: Visuospatial Perceptual Disorder
These children score 10 points more on verbal IQ than performance IQ. Their visuospatial perception is very poor, as is their ability to store and retrieve visual stimuli.

What is dyspraxia?

Dyspraxia is a neurological disorder that impacts an individual’s ability to plan and process motor tasks. Individuals with dyspraxia often have language problems, and sometimes a degree of difficulty with thought and perception. Dyspraxia, however, does not affect the person’s intelligence, although it can cause learning problems in children.

Developmental dyspraxia is an immaturity of the organization of movement. The brain does not process information in a way that allows for a full transmission of neural messages. A person with dyspraxia finds it difficult to plan what to do, and how to do it.The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) describes people with dyspraxia as being “out of sync” with their environment.

Experts say that about 10 percent of people have some degree of dyspraxia, while approximately 2 percent have it severely. Four out of every 5 children with evident dyspraxia are boys, although there is some debate as to whether dyspraxia might be under-diagnosed in girls. According to the National Health Service, United Kingdom, many children with dyspraxia also have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Symptoms of Dyspraxia

Symptoms tend to vary depending on the age of the individual. Later, we will look at each age group in more detail. Some of the general symptoms of dyspraxia include:

  • poor balance
  • poor posture
  • fatigue
  • clumsiness
  • differences in speech
  • perception problems
  • poor hand-eye coordination
Diagnosis of Dyspraxia

A diagnosis of dyspraxia can be made by a clinical psychologist, an educational psychologist, a pediatrician, or an occupational therapist. Any parent who suspects their child may have dyspraxia should see their doctor.

When carrying out an assessment, details will be required regarding the child’s developmental history, intellectual ability, and gross and fine motor skills:

Gross motor skills
how well the child uses large muscles that coordinate body movement, including jumping, throwing, walking, running, and maintaining balance.

Fine motor skills
how well the child can use smaller muscles, including tying shoelaces, doing up buttons, cutting out shapes with a pair of scissors, and writing. The evaluator will need to know when and how developmental milestones, such as walking, crawling, and speaking were reached. The child will be evaluated for balance, touch sensitivity, and variations on walking activities.

Dyspraxia in Children

Dyspraxia symptoms may vary depending on age. With that in mind, we will look at each age individually. Not every individual will have all of the symptoms outlined below

Very early childhood

The child may take longer than other children to:

  • Sit.
  • Crawl- the Dyspraxia Foundation says that many never go through the crawling stage.
  • Walk.
  • Speak – according to the Children’s Hospital at West mead, Australia, the child may be slower in answering questions, find it hard to make sounds, or repeat sequences of sounds or words; they may also have difficulty in sustaining normal intonation patterns, have a very limited automatic vocabulary, speak more slowly than other children, and use fewer words with more pauses.
  • Stand
  • Become potty trained (get out of diapers).
  • Build up vocabulary
  • Early childhood
Tying shoelaces can be a difficult task for children suffering with dyspraxia.

Later on, the following difficulties may become apparent:

    • Problems performing subtle movements, such as tying shoelaces, doing up buttons and zips, using cutlery, and handwriting
    • Many will have difficulties getting dressed.
    • Problems carrying out playground movements, such as jumping, playing hopscotch, catching a ball, kicking a ball, hopping, and skipping.
    • Problems with classroom movements, such as using scissors, coloring, drawing, playing jigsaw games.
    • Problems processing thoughts.
    • Difficulties with concentration. Children with dyspraxia commonly find it hard to focus on one thing for long.
    • The child finds it harder than other kids to join in playground games.
    • The child will fidget more than other children.
    • Some find it hard to go up and down stairs.
    • A higher tendency to bump into things, to fall over, and to drop things.
    • Difficulty in learning new skills – while other children may do this automatically, a child with dyspraxia takes longer. Encouragement and practice help enormously.
    • Writing stories can be much more challenging for a child with dyspraxia, as can copying from a blackboard.

The following are also common at pre-school age:

  • Finds it hard to keep friends.
  • Behaviour when in the company of others may seem unusual.
  • Hesitates in most actions, seems slow.
  • Does not hold a pencil with a good grip
  • Such concepts as ‘in’, ‘out’, ‘in front of’ are hard to handle automatically
Later on in childhood
  • Many of the challenges listed above do not improve or only improve slightly
  • Tries to avoid sports.
  • Learns well on a one-on-one basis, but nowhere near as well in class with other children around.
  • Reacts to all stimuli equally (not filtering out irrelevant stimuli automatically)
  • Mathematics and writing are difficult.
  • Spends a long time getting writing done.
  • Does not follow instructions
  • Does not remember instructions.
  • Is badly organized.
Later on in childhood Dyspraxia in adults

In adults, symptoms include:

  • Poor posture and fatigue
  • Trouble completing normal chores.
  • Less close control – writing and drawing are difficult.
  • Difficulty coordinating both sides of the body.
  • Unclear speech, often word order can be jumbled.
  • Clumsy movement and tendency to trip over.
  • Grooming and dressing more challenging – shaving, applying makeup, fastening clothes, tying shoelaces
  • Poor hand-eye coordination
  • Difficulty planning and organizing thoughts and tasks.
  • Less sensitive to non-verbal signals.
  • Easily frustrated.
  • Low self-esteem.
  • Difficulty sleeping.
  • Difficulty distinguishing sounds from background noise.
  • Notable lack of rhythm when dancing or exercising.

Social and sensory – individuals with dyspraxia may be extremely sensitive to taste, light, touch, and/or noise. There may also be a lack of awareness of potential dangers. Many experience moods swings and display erratic behavior.

How does one determine which sensory perception areas should be trained?

If the child displays more than one deficiency in the following areas, then these areas of sensory perception should be trained:

Visual Recognition
  • Basic essentials cannot be understood from what is seen
  • Visually similar things are not recognized as different
  • Distinguishing important information from a multitude of stimuli is unsuccessful
  • The ability to filter something out of the background is lacking
  • The child must touch/handle everything in order to understand it
  • Difficulties with distinguishing between colours and shapes
  • Writing and recognition of letters is difficult
  • Handwriting is untidy and difficult to read
  • Lack of uniformity in the size of the letters
  • Uneven reproduction of letters and numbers
  • Confusion between letters which are different in placement (d/b, u/n)
  • The ability to distinguish between visually similar letters, arithmetical symbols, and numbers (h-k, a-o, 7-4, 6-5) is severely lacking
  • Inverted (left to right or right to left) reading or writing of numbers, for example 6 and 9
  • Increasingly occurring copy errors
  • Difficulties grasping amounts
  • Omission of letters or numbers
  • Difficulties with quantities over ten
  • Difficulties with compound arithmetic problems
  • Difficulties with structuring text exercises
Visual Memory
  • Visual information is not retrained
  • Difficulties in recognizing colours, shapes, images, patterns, and objects
  • Memorization of word images does not succeed: words are often written properly ten times, then incorrectly again
  • Difficulties with drawing patterns from memory
  • Transposition of letters a-e-o, h-k, f-t, m-n
  • The child cannot find his place in the text when reading
  • Frequently checking the pattern while copying
  • The writing is angular, curvatures and lengths are different
  • The letters a-e-o appear the same
Visual Sequencing
  • Visual sequences cannot be perceived properly
  • Difficulties with grasping the succession of letters when reading together
  • Reversing the sequence of letters when reading and writing
  • Letters or syllables are missing, they are transposed or added
  • Halting, slow reading
  • Assistance articulating, prompting of a given text
  • Switching the word order when writing
  • Omission of letters, endings or words when writing
    • Duplication of letters
  • Frequent subsequent additions of missing letters in a word
  • Uneven line spacing and spaces of the letters within a word as well as between the words
  • Reversal of the sequence of a story (for instance, while writing compositions)
  • Distraction by small details and losing the place in the story
  • Incorrect sequencing of numbers, omission of digits
  • Difficulties counting and counting off
  • Difficulties grasping amounts
  • Slow learning of basic arithmetic skills
  • Omission of intermediate steps when doing arithmetic
Acoustical Recognition
  • The basics of the sounds heard cannot be grasped
  • The ability to distinguish whether sounds are the same or not is severely lacking
  • A sound is matched with the wrong letter
  • Removing a letter from a word does not work
  • Inability to distinguish between or transposition of similarly sounding noises, words or numbers
  • Ability to distinguish between vocalized and non-vocalized consonants is severely lacking: g-k, b-p, d-t, s-z, f-v
  • Ability to distinguish between diphthongs is severely lacking: ei-eu, eu-au
  • Transposition of elongation and sharpening
  • Difficulties distinguishing between m and n, for example between 3. and 4. case
  • Difficulties repeating the same or similar words
  • Difficulties repeating unfamiliar words
  • Difficulties transcribing a series of spoken words
Acoustical Memory
  • Cannot remember and repeat what was heard
  • Frequent questions when reciting
  • Omissions or additions of letters, syllables or words
  • Failure to complete recitations
  • Severe difficulty understanding what was heard
  • Errors with b/p, d/t, g/k
  • Poor vocabulary, frequent repetitions of words
  • Short compositions with poor content
  • Prompting of sentences
  • Omission of parts of verbally assigned arithmetic problems
  • Assistance articulating, prompting of a given text or arithmetic problem
Acoustical Sequencing
  • Acoustical sequences are not perceived correctly
  • Muddled explanations, loses the thread easily
  • Difficulties with verbally presenting sentences with the correct word order and placed correctly in the thought process
  • Difficulties avoiding becoming distracted by minor details when telling a story
  • Halting, broken speech with inharmonious breathing
Spatial Orientation
  • Spatial perception is not judged correctly
  • Difficulties orienting oneself in an unfamiliar environment
  • Ability to judge spatial and temporal measures (distances, amounts, and units) is severely lacking
  • Memorizing a specified route is tiring
  • Building to a pattern or blueprint (building games) is unsuccessful
  • Difficulties learning to tell time
  • Very slow learning to dress oneself
  • Riding a bicycle and swimming are learned much later
  • Ability to imitate rhythmic movements is severely lacking
  • Problems with singing and movement games
  • Ignoring given spatial instructions
  • Uneven line spacing
  • Cannot arrange the lines properly, writing outside the margins
  • Losing the line when reading
  • Inverted writing (right to left instead of left to right)
  • Transposition of letters when distinguishing their position: b-d, b-p
  • Numbers are transposed: 6-9, 36-63
Body Perception
  • Difficulties orienting oneself to one’s own body
  • Confusion between right-left, above-below, behind-before (in back of-in front of)