Accommodations vs. Building Neural Pathways in your Brain
By Dr. Penny Stack, OTR
and
https://dyslexiaida.org/accommodations-for-students-with-dyslexia/
What is the best way to support my child in school and also build new neural pathways in their brain for faster, more automatic reading?
Define terms: “Accommodations can be provided for both testing and instruction. It changes the way students access information and demonstrate their knowledge, skills, and abilities; they do not change academic standards or expectations” International Dyslexia Association, 2020. An accommodation involves the teacher instituting change in order for the student with Dyslexia to find optimal success. Examples of accommodations are audio recordings of books, text to speech technology, allowing students to verbally express themselves to display mastery of the content, extended time for testing and a quiet testing environment. This list is not comprehensive.
Strategy: A general plan to achieve one or more long term or overall goals under conditions of uncertainty. Examples include, but are not limited to: mnemonic for learning the planets, a song for multiplication facts, chunking for writing things off the board.
Modification: A modification is a change in the content and their assessment. The child’s IEP team is responsible for making formal decisions about this. A modification usually lowers the performance expectations. Example: Write 1 paragraph instead of 5, memorize multiplication tables to 5 instead of 13.
When you are trying to decide which path to take, remember that an accommodation needs to meet the end game, otherwise it just forms bad habits. A strategy needs to be taught and immediately used on homework or an assignment for practical application. But a strategy will not build more neural pathways in your brain. It is a way for the student to keep up with their peers, temporarily, in a way that works for their brain’s style of learning.
According to Sally Shaywitz from Yale University, who researches dyslexia, found that while using an MRI a non dyslexic will read by mostly lighting up the left side of the brain in the Wernike and Broca motor areas. This is very efficient and automatic for reading. The struggling reader, however, has no firing in Wernicke's area (which is responsible for word analysis, responds to spoken word and phonetic sequencing), but the Broca area is enlarged or working extra hard. The majority of firing for the struggling reader is noted on the right side of the brain near the frontal and parietal lobes. This right side of the brain can read, but it is inefficient and not automatic. Hence the student needs to sound out words that they have already been working on and should be automatic.
So how do we build the pathways from the right side of the brain to the left side? I’m glad you asked. You need a struggle, an opportunity for the Golgi Tendon Organ, which is in each muscle fiber, to send a message to the brain that it is fatigued and needs help. Overtime, the brain then sends information back and more muscle fibers are built and it gets bulkier. The brain doesn’t grow in size because the skull limits its size, but it can make more pathways.
The Wall Sit example from Dr. Penny Stack, OTR
When you are sitting in a chair, do you notice your thighs? Are they burning? No, of course not. Now, go stand with your back to a wall, sink down until your legs are at about 90 degrees with your knees behind your toes and wait…… Now do you feel your thighs and other muscles? Are they screaming for help? In this example, could you stay in that wall- sit and pay attention to a lecture… NO! How about if you left the wall and sat back in your chair again, could you start to pay attention and relax your legs…. Probably. The chair, in this example, was the accommodation to help you attend and focus on the lecture, but it did not build muscle fibers or neural pathways. If you spend every day for a two week period, slowly increasing the time on the wall sit, you would build muscle fibers in your legs and neural pathways in your brain…..yes!
In conclusion: I would use accommodations to support my dyslexic student to take tests and function in the classroom. During dyslexia interventions, I would encourage the student to press into increasing challenges so that while supported by the parent and/or professional, they can build more neural connections and start making the left side of the brain more activated when reading.
https://dyslexiaida.org/accommodations-for-students-with-dyslexia/
