Innehållsförteckning för January 2024 från Dystinct Magazine

“Do not be intimidated by the professionals at the table.” This quote by Melissa Robison serves as a powerful reminder that we parents have a seat at the table, too. Don't let the professionals in the room intimidate you. Ask all the questions you need to make sure your child is getting the education they deserve. If something doesn't quite click or feels off, don't be shy about reaching out for help. You're your child’s biggest champion, and your voice matters! As we celebrate the third anniversary of Dystinct Magazine, it has been a privilege to collaborate with Dr Pamela Snow and her remarkable team at La Trobe University’s SOLAR Lab in Australia. In this special anniversary issue, we delve into the vital work they are undertaking to revolutionise how…

THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE AND READING (SOLAR) LAB FOUNDED 2020 • Background How did the idea for setting up SOLAR Lab come to be? What were Professor Pamela Snow and Professor Tanya Serry aiming to achieve when they founded the SOLAR Lab in 2020? Professor Snow and Professor Serry’s Science of Language and Reading (SOLAR) Lab, founded in 2020, was established with multiple purposes in mind: •to advance research related to evidence-informed approaches to teaching reading. •to align La Trobe’s relevant undergraduate and postgraduate curriculum with the research. •And to help schools adopt well-established scientific approaches and improve how they teach children to read. The idea came about after Snow and Serry spent multiple decades developing their clinical, research and teaching interests, focusing on the most effective approaches to support…

The Globe Theater looms in the distance. The sun is going down, and there is a chill in the air. There is a long bridge, and we can see the theater from far off. As we get closer, we start walking faster and faster. Standing in the place where Shakespeare’s plays were originally performed is a dream come true for me. I never thought that I would like or even be able to read Shakespeare. I was diagnosed with dyslexia when I was in the first grade, and for the next few years, I worked hard to try to catch up to the level of my classmates. This felt nearly impossible. By the time I was able to read picture books, they were reading chapter books. When I finally read…

Journalist Ava Eldridge Age 10 Dyslexia NSW, Australia Ava loves art, animals, cooking, her family, playing the piano and she really enjoys reading! Her newfound love of aerial acrobatics keeps her busy. Illustrator Celina Hamdani Age 19 Social anxiety disorder & ASD London, UK Celina is a self-taught digital artist. She studies art media and design at John Ruskin College, Croydon and is enrolled in an animation course with Danimation Entertainment, Burbank, USA. Her hobbies include listening to music and creating short animation videos. Her goal is to pursue a career in animation that will allow her to merge her love for art, storytelling, and technology. Illustrator Cora Kaufmann Age 9 Dyslexia Northeast Ohio, USA Cora is a fourth-grade student in Northern Ohio. Cora enjoys camping, playing with friends, and…

Dr Pamela Snow has authored or co-authored over 200 publications, comprising refereed papers, book chapters, monographs and research reports. In 2017, she was a member of the National Year 1 Literacy and Numeracy Panel, convened by the then Federal Minister for Education, the Hon. Simon Birmingham. In 2020, she established the Science of Language and Reading (SOLAR) Lab in the School of Education at La Trobe University with her colleague, Professor Tanya Serry. The SOLAR Lab is a platform for research, teaching, advocacy and postgraduate supervision on a wide range of topics pertaining to developmental language and the transition to reading, writing and spelling in the school years. Dystinct reporters Flynn and Ava Eldridge have a chat with Pamela about her work at the SOLAR Lab and her life. EXCERPTS…

Documentation of our educational journey from pre-school to college is not always something parents think about maintaining. But for some, educational documentation can be the key to helping the educational team understand their child’s needs. Proper documentation of your child’s educational journey should be gathered to ensure your child’s needs are being met within the current classroom or school setting. As a parent, and especially as a parent of a student with diverse needs, it is incredibly important to maintain annual education records and to know your rights. In order to obtain a full set of records, phone your child’s school and ask to whom a written request for records should be sent and if there is a specific form that can be sent to make the request. Keep in…

It is Saturday, and I am with my daughters at Water Street Bookstore, one of our favorite places to spend a lazy afternoon. My fourteen-year-old daughter, Kaya, is flying through the store, gathering books in her arms as she jets from young adult to fiction to classics and back again. Within minutes, she has a dozen books piled in her arms. "I know I'm going to need to narrow these down a bit, but…" she cocks her head to the side, a silent plea for me to buy her all of the books. She will read them all, and within a few weeks, we'll be back for more. Kaya saves every book she reads because, as she tells me, "Every book is a trophy". The books she has read, an…

Pamela Snow Tanya Serry Nathaniel Swain Tessa Weadman Eamon Charles SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE AND READING (SOLAR) LAB SCHOOL OF EDUCATION The Science of Language and Reading (SOLAR) Lab was established in the School of Education at La Trobe University in 2020 to improve two-way knowledge sharing between researchers and practitioners regarding: • Optimal ways of teaching reading, writing, and spelling to all students, regardless of socioeconomic, cultural, and/or geographic circumstances. • Optimal ways of monitoring student progress to ensure high levels of ongoing success, academically and psychosocially, and • Optimal ways of supporting students who are identified as falling behind expected levels of proficiency in language and literacy domains. Our work includes the design and delivery of three online short courses open to teachers, allied health professionals, school leaders and…

The school bells rang, and kids filled the halls. It seemed like every other start to the school year in Ohio, but this fall, an important shift had begun. A shift that would have changed my dyslexic child’s life if it had happened four years ago. For the first time ever, schools were required to screen all students from kindergarten through grade three for risk of dyslexia due to the passage of Connor’s Odyssey: The Right to Read Law (Ohio House Bill 436). This legislation also provided districts with guidance for the screening process and instructional best practices with a formal "Ohio Dyslexia Guidebook". For many Ohio schools, this has been the first of several major shifts they will be undertaking within their school districts to align with the Science…

Dr. Brock Eide, co-founder of Dyslexic Advantage, a non-profit dedicated to reframing dyslexia in terms of its strengths, is a prominent figure in the field. Dyslexic Advantage, under his leadership, plays a leading role in educating parents, teachers, professionals, and the public about dyslexia, emphasizing its advantages in fostering innovation and creative problem-solving. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Washington and the University of Washington Medical School, Dr. Eide brings a wealth of expertise. He has served as a consultant to the President’s Council of Bioethics and as a visiting lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. Concurrently, Dr. Eide serves as the CEO of Neurolearning.com, a social purpose corporation dedicated to providing accurate, affordable, and informative dyslexia identification for both children and adults. Dystinct reporters…

It is 10 am on Sunday morning. I walk into the sun-lit ballet studio, and soon the only thoughts in my head are, Are my feet pointed? Are my arms in the right place? Am I dancing like I really care? The repetition of plies and tendus calms my anxious mind. I cancel out all of the other thoughts of worry, stress, and anxiety. I am here to dance. Dance has been my refuge for as long as I can remember. I started dancing when I was two. Five years later, when I was in third grade, I found out I was dyslexic. As a third grader, I did not know what it meant. All I knew was that now I had to be pulled out of my class at…