Hello my name is Dean. I am a father of a three 1/2 year old boy with Developmental Verbal Dyspraxia, DVD. I am also a student teacher studing the affects dyspraxia has on childrens learning. I have six questions I would love anyone to answer, so that better strategies can be put into classrooms to help children with dyspraxia. If anyone, or all of you would like to post the answers, it would be greatly appreciated, and hopefully help children today with dyspraxia. Thank you.
1). Throughout primary school, how did your dyspraxia impact upon your language and literacy development.
2). Has having dyspraxia affected your ability to communicate and socialise with peers, if so, how?
3). What strategies or classroom modifications did you find particularly helpful in assisting you with learning.
4). Do you feel having dyspraxia has impacted upon your self-esteem in regards to learning, or life in general, and if so how?
5). Overall, on a scale of 1-10 (1=not at all, 10= very affected), please rate how having dyspraxia affected the following areas during your primary school years?
a- Reading …….
b- Writing …….
c- Communication …….
d- Self-esteem …….
e- Gross motor skills …….
f- Fine motor skills …….
g- Socialisation …….
6). If you could go back to primary school, how might your classroom be set up differently to have assisted your learning further (e.g. smaller class size, learning or teaching style).
After your help please!!
Moderator: Moderator Team
G'day Dean. Student-teacher, eh? Presumably at primary school level from the nature of these questions, how is that? I know a lot of secondary school teachers but that's not going to be the same experience.
I'll do my best with your questions, though to be honest I don't remember primary school very well. I'm still in uni, but it feels like a long time ago :P
1) Nope, my language developments been normal. When I was tested my literary IQ was normal, I get accused of eloquence from time to time and I noticed you used affect instead of effect :P
2) Absolutely. It's hard to tell how much of the difficulties I have are a result of me and how much are a result of dyspraxia (There are a lot of confounds in my case, I don't like music, I don't follow sport and I don't drink so most of my peers conversations are lost on me) However a lot of the time I do have trouble getting a concept from my head into words that other people can follow in a conversation (Nothing wrong with my language skills, give me a pen and paper and ten minutes and I'll probably provide some scrawl which expresses it fairly well, but under time pressure I can have trouble getting meaning across)
3) No dice there, primary school was far too long ago. These days I use a dictaphone and computer to help make up for my weaknesses in other areas, but that's a lot more appropriate to a university setting than a primary school one. I guess it's also affected my organisation so it probably helped a lot that my primary school was very consistant, unlike later schools and university I had all of my lessons in the same room and the teachers moved around.
4) Not in regards to learning, educationally I'm doing okay. It has affected my general self-esteem indirectly. Being bad at sports affects your peer relationships early on (but doesn't matter much anymore), not getting organised to do anything in a day is realy depressing, there are some people who if communication problems lead to you making a bad first impression will never give you a chance. So yeah, it's a problem from time to time.
5)
a 1
b 10
c 5
d 3
e 5
f 7
g 4
6) Sorry, I really can't remember primary school well enough to suggest specific methods. I'd take the above numbers with a pinch of salt too.
I'll do my best with your questions, though to be honest I don't remember primary school very well. I'm still in uni, but it feels like a long time ago :P
1) Nope, my language developments been normal. When I was tested my literary IQ was normal, I get accused of eloquence from time to time and I noticed you used affect instead of effect :P
2) Absolutely. It's hard to tell how much of the difficulties I have are a result of me and how much are a result of dyspraxia (There are a lot of confounds in my case, I don't like music, I don't follow sport and I don't drink so most of my peers conversations are lost on me) However a lot of the time I do have trouble getting a concept from my head into words that other people can follow in a conversation (Nothing wrong with my language skills, give me a pen and paper and ten minutes and I'll probably provide some scrawl which expresses it fairly well, but under time pressure I can have trouble getting meaning across)
3) No dice there, primary school was far too long ago. These days I use a dictaphone and computer to help make up for my weaknesses in other areas, but that's a lot more appropriate to a university setting than a primary school one. I guess it's also affected my organisation so it probably helped a lot that my primary school was very consistant, unlike later schools and university I had all of my lessons in the same room and the teachers moved around.
4) Not in regards to learning, educationally I'm doing okay. It has affected my general self-esteem indirectly. Being bad at sports affects your peer relationships early on (but doesn't matter much anymore), not getting organised to do anything in a day is realy depressing, there are some people who if communication problems lead to you making a bad first impression will never give you a chance. So yeah, it's a problem from time to time.
5)
a 1
b 10
c 5
d 3
e 5
f 7
g 4
6) Sorry, I really can't remember primary school well enough to suggest specific methods. I'd take the above numbers with a pinch of salt too.
1). Throughout primary school, how did your dyspraxia impact upon your language and literacy development.
no impact on language and literacy development - performed above avg.
(but speech unclear)
2) People didnt want to be my friend because they could tell i had a problem. i was not included in games and teased. Although i loved having friends and was very polite, people were scared to be seen being my friend because then they would have been made fun of too. It was also hard socialising as a kid because i couldnt join in activities at lunch time because i simply couldnt physically play the games other kids were able to play. This meant that sometimes i played with younger kids. As an adult, my friends couldnt care if I had 5 arms and 2 heads, and I have a happy social life.
4) Its hard to say if how it impacted on my self esteem I am quite resilient but had a tough time at school. I got very little recognition for my achievements. I was teased, and made to feel like an outsider – not great for self-esteem. In other words, i never really was made to feel all that good at school by teachers or students. I went to many different schools. I accepted my disability and didn’t care if I was different - the problem was how everyone else treated me. And most of the time I wasn’t treated very nicely!
a- Reading (accuracy 1, speed 8) I had no problem with learning to read but I am not fast.
b- Writing (I was good at writing but organising written work was my main problem at primary school so 8 for planning but 2 for sentence construction).
c- Communication ……4.
d- Self-esteem …… I see self esteem more like a trait for me, so it’s pretty constant. but if you mean happiness, I was very unhappy at school so maybe 5 for self esteem but 10 for happiness. Again, its indirect, I couldn’t care about my disability, it was how everyone else treated me.
e- Gross motor skills ……10.
f- Fine motor skills ……8 (im fairly accurate but very slow fine motor skills).
g- Socialisation 8.. (please note, indirectly because people didn’t want to be my friend. I had good social skills though
)
6). If you could go back to primary school, how might your classroom be set up differently to have assisted your learning further (e.g. smaller class size, learning or teaching style).
Yes, definitely smaller class sizes. No timed tests. Smaller work load – I was constantly exhausted (theres so much crap teachers give you to do for homework that really isn’t vital for learning). Flexible environment. No unnecessary pressure. Recognition. Teachers need to make a special effort to get to know the child. if teachers treat the kid with respect and praise then other kids will too. Reduce competitive elements. Extended deadlines. A relaxed atmosphere and a smile! Oh Less copying from the board!!!!!!!!!!!! And accommodations should be done without making the kid feel different.
make sure the child is NEVER chosen last
And I could write a thesis on how sports lessons could be changed…
no impact on language and literacy development - performed above avg.
(but speech unclear)
2) People didnt want to be my friend because they could tell i had a problem. i was not included in games and teased. Although i loved having friends and was very polite, people were scared to be seen being my friend because then they would have been made fun of too. It was also hard socialising as a kid because i couldnt join in activities at lunch time because i simply couldnt physically play the games other kids were able to play. This meant that sometimes i played with younger kids. As an adult, my friends couldnt care if I had 5 arms and 2 heads, and I have a happy social life.
HAHA, yeah right! No, I dont think teachers could have cared less... i was very quiet and had perfect behaviour so just blended in like furniture... i dont know if my teachers new i was there. Seriously, teachers are really bad at accommodating people like us because we perform academically quite well and thats all they care about. i was exhausted all the time.3). What strategies or classroom modifications did you find particularly helpful in assisting you with learning.
4) Its hard to say if how it impacted on my self esteem I am quite resilient but had a tough time at school. I got very little recognition for my achievements. I was teased, and made to feel like an outsider – not great for self-esteem. In other words, i never really was made to feel all that good at school by teachers or students. I went to many different schools. I accepted my disability and didn’t care if I was different - the problem was how everyone else treated me. And most of the time I wasn’t treated very nicely!
a- Reading (accuracy 1, speed 8) I had no problem with learning to read but I am not fast.
b- Writing (I was good at writing but organising written work was my main problem at primary school so 8 for planning but 2 for sentence construction).
c- Communication ……4.
d- Self-esteem …… I see self esteem more like a trait for me, so it’s pretty constant. but if you mean happiness, I was very unhappy at school so maybe 5 for self esteem but 10 for happiness. Again, its indirect, I couldn’t care about my disability, it was how everyone else treated me.
e- Gross motor skills ……10.
f- Fine motor skills ……8 (im fairly accurate but very slow fine motor skills).
g- Socialisation 8.. (please note, indirectly because people didn’t want to be my friend. I had good social skills though
) 6). If you could go back to primary school, how might your classroom be set up differently to have assisted your learning further (e.g. smaller class size, learning or teaching style).
Yes, definitely smaller class sizes. No timed tests. Smaller work load – I was constantly exhausted (theres so much crap teachers give you to do for homework that really isn’t vital for learning). Flexible environment. No unnecessary pressure. Recognition. Teachers need to make a special effort to get to know the child. if teachers treat the kid with respect and praise then other kids will too. Reduce competitive elements. Extended deadlines. A relaxed atmosphere and a smile! Oh Less copying from the board!!!!!!!!!!!! And accommodations should be done without making the kid feel different.
make sure the child is NEVER chosen last
And I could write a thesis on how sports lessons could be changed…
"Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm."
"Normal refers to someone who hasn’t had enough tests!"
"Normal refers to someone who hasn’t had enough tests!"
-
robyn
I wasnt diagnosed until I was in uni so its impossible to answer your questions. There were too many other influencing factors to beable to look back and evaluate such things effectively now. But it is very obvious that schools are set up in a way that emphasises the difficulties of a dyspraxic child and doesnt value the strengths. PE lessons that encourage competition and team sports that are more difficult for a dyspraxic child, rather than individual sports and achievements. not only is this difficult for a dyspraxic child but it is an unrealistic and unreasonable illustration of adults sports participation. compare the number of adults that partake in rugby, football, netball or hockey as a way to keep fit to those who walk, run, swim, take yoga classes, go to the gym, horse ride, bike ride, play golf etc and its obvious that the more idividual sports that would suit a dyspraxic child better are actually a far better way of encouraging childrens to keep fit, dyspraxic or orther wise as these are far more popular and easier for everybody to fit into their life styles. Maths and english are still given more value than other lessons, but with little variation in teaching styles, so for a dyspraxic child there is no way of adressing their individual learning needs, while emphasising their inabilities. Although there is a great varriety of other subjects taught, and a variety of choices for children, a dyspraxic child, with strengths in creativity and perseption will often still find that the art lesson focuses on painting inside the lines, the geography lesson focusing on spelling the capitals correctly, and the science lesson will need to be neatly drawn up and conclueded, along the same linear lines that english and maths lessons run. Within education, and child rearing, there still seems to be a massive emphasis on greating the correct end result, and effort is often over looked. Iv nodoubt that this imbalance is of great detriment to any child who does not allways fit the ideal, which lets face it is most children at somepoint.
Re: After your help please!!
Like most people this is a long time ago, but for some reason my childhood is a lot clearer than most people in my memory. At that stagethedeano wrote:1). Throughout primary school, how did your dyspraxia impact upon your language and literacy development.
quite a bit can be masked, also the trendy approach to teaching at the time was to encourage general knowledge and breadth of knowledge which I excelled at - so a lot of literacy skills and suchlike where not taught in the way they are taught now ( no bleedin literacy hours for me! ).
Obviously I wasn't as good at games and normal "play": in year 6 my friends had a game where they would do handstands or headstands on a little hill - I would be accomodated by allowed me to roly poly instead! I also found that my PE ability wasn't very good, and my schools reports often mentioned that I couldn't catch a ball yet.
I was caught out in my literacy skills a few times: my dyspraxia means
I cannot multitask to the extent where if I have to read aloud, I cannot take in the content as well. So if I was asked to read *aloud* then asked to recall facts about the story verbally, I wouldn't do well at all and this meant that I was stuck on a stage that was below my reading ability - not that people really minded/noticed however: this was still slightly above the average level of the class. To be honest a lot of this and the education I received in secondary school meant that by year 10 I just didn't really care: I just coasted along and didn't work at all - also my problem with deadlines and time management came into its own by then with coursework.
My speaking skills were just seen to be different: I tended not to pickthedeano wrote: 2). Has having dyspraxia affected your ability to communicate and socialise with peers, if so, how?
up on the slang that my friends were using and often had very factual
literal speaking skills.
This didn't really start gaining ground until the language development of
my friends accelerated in secondary school: sarcasm and suchlike took me a long time to get the hang of, and I could never really tell if someone was being horrible or not, which makes you either super paranoid ( in my case ) and unpleasant to deal with or super gullible ( like my HFA brother ).
1. Reading assessments that allowed me to read silently.thedeano wrote: 3). What strategies or classroom modifications did you find particularly helpful in assisting you with learning.
2. The general positive attitude of teachers and peers especially: it didn't matter to my friends that I wasn't amazing at games because I helped them with their schoolwork
To be honest, the most important thing is the positive atmosphere:
I didn't realise there was anything wrong with me, just that I had
a different skills profile. The only problem is that once you hit secondary
school and you haven't been diagnosed, it all starts mounting up and just
hitting your self esteem.
It has given me a negative attitude to what I can and cannot do. Afterthedeano wrote: 4). Do you feel having dyspraxia has impacted upon your self-esteem in regards to learning, or life in general, and if so how?
I was diagnosed, a lot of things started to make sense and I started to
feel more positive as to what I can do.
a- Reading My compensation skills were good enough at to time to mask it. 4thedeano wrote: 5). Overall, on a scale of 1-10 (1=not at all, 10= very affected), please rate how having dyspraxia affected the following areas during your primary school years?
b- Writing handwriting was always awful, and this was usually picked up on. 9
c- Communication 9
d- Self-esteem 2 in primary school.
e- Gross motor skills 9
f- Fine motor skills 9
g- Socialisation 3
1. More handwriting help - actual help in holding the pen rather than those stupid videos ( up, down and arroouunndd! ) or just extra practise.thedeano wrote: 6). If you could go back to primary school, how might your classroom be set up differently to have assisted your learning further (e.g. smaller class size, learning or teaching style).
2. Something I didn't get from school: proper ICT skills - this is mainly due to the times really: I was in the BBC micro age - although I still managed to blast people away on those... my father realised that computers would be important eventually: so I got an Apple mac at age 9 - woo! Also computer languages seemed to help me with my grammar, although at an older age ( 14ish ).
3. It seems to me that school aged people from less well off backgrounds tend not to be diagnosed - even now.
4. More teaching of general spelling rules - a few lessons about homophones does not cut it!
5. Less emphasis on instant verbal recall and more emphasis on written
recall of information.