1. It’s all About the EYES and EARS Diane Geerlinks Certified Educational Therapist Director, NILD Canada

2. PLANNING AND THINKING SPATIAL ORIENTATION VISUAL PROCESSING AUDITORY PROCESSING MOVEMENT AND COORDINATION BASIC BRAIN FACTS

3. SENSORY REGISTER Our brain takes in more information from our environment in a single day than the largest computer does in a year – all detected by our five senses. All sensory stimuli enter the brain as a stream of electrical impulses that result from neurons firing in sequence along the specific sensory pathways, through the RAS (Reticular Activating System).

4.  Eye Movements(Saccades, Pursuits)  Visual Motor  Visual Memory  Laterality  Reversals EYES AND EARS AUDITORY  Discrimination  Phonemic Decoding  Prosody (Intonation,Pitch)  Sequencing  Auditory Memory  Figure Ground VISUAL

5. WARNING SIGNS – Auditory Processing  Has trouble following oral directions  Has trouble understand speech in a noisy room  Often asks you to repeat or misunderstands you ‘huh’ ‘what’  History of ear infections  Seems easily distracted  Fatigues easily during auditory tasks  Is late identifying and producing specific sounds  Weak short term memory  Sensitivity to excessive sound  Problems with comprehension, language, spelling vocabulary, reading or written language. WHAT WE DO WITH WHAT WE HEAR

6. AUDITORY SYSTEM

7. TEACHING STRATEGIES - Auditory  Reduce extraneous background noises  Sit at left front of class  Simplify verbal instructions  Insure child’s attention BEFORE giving instruction  Use visual materials to supplement auditory instruction  Ask questions to check comprehension  Use a buddy system to check notes, assignments, etc.

8.  Uses finger to keep place (after 3 rd grade)  Wiggles, moves, talks, zones out, touches  Writing is poorly spaced or crowded  Messy handwriting/printing  Misaligns columns or series of numbers  Cannot stay on ruled lines  Rubbing of eyes WARNING SIGNS – Visual Processing WHAT WE DO WITH WHAT WE SEE

9. VISUAL SYSTEM  More information is processed through the eye than all of the rest of the body at a given moment. Vision is the fastest method of processing information  The visual system is 5x larger than the entire auditory system

10. TEACHING STRATEGIES - Visual Vision and Movement – Go hand in hand  Hart Chart  Find missing  Marsden ball  bdpq Charts  Line Walk  Jumping Jacks  Directional Arrows  Find alphabet lines

11. THE READING BRAIN MaryAnne Wolf Unlike language, reading has no specific set of genes to set up its circuitry or dictate its development. Joanna Christodoulu Two routes of reading:  PHONOLOGICAL  DIRECT The typical healthy reader is thought to use both routes constantly and interactively. “We were never born to read.” MaryAnne Wolf, Proust and the Squid, 2007

12. RESOURCES  Proust and the Squid, Maryanne Wolf, 2007  Mind, Brain & Education, David Sousa and et, 2010  When the Brain Can’t Hear, Teri James Bellis, 2002  Developing Ocular Motor and Visual Perceptual Skills, Lane, 2005  How the Brain learns to Read, Sousa, 2014  Overcoming Dyslexia, Sally Shaywitz, 2003