“Chinmen Buns - I’ll have One of Those:” Dyslexia in the Real World
Friday, December 2, 2011
A mom told me the other day about her child trying to order something in a bakery. “Mom, what’s those “Chinmen Buns?”
“No, dear, it says Cinnamon Buns.”
“Oh, right,” the child responded in a somewhat embarrassed and sheepish grin.
One of the refrains I have heard from teachers for many years, is “It really doesn’t matter how the child reads as long as comprehension is taking place.”
Really?
Reading is not just reading stories. Reading signs, translating names, terms and places are part of being adequately literate.
Take Kate, age 15. Kate is struggling in chemistry and there is a real question as to why she is having such a difficult time. Beside the fact that chemistry can be brutally abstract for so many kids, on a much lower level, Kate can’t handle the text. Here’s a sample of a few terms that she encountered recently, but had no idea, whatsoever how to read them:
· Allotropes
· Tetrahedral
· Periodicity
· Galvanizing
Adequate decoders by 9th grade can read these like they were sight words, automatically and efficiently. For the Kates of the world, it is much tougher sledding, if not impossible.
What to do?
Above all, we need to be real. If material like this is above the kid’s head, then pretending she can manage it without some type of support, does her no good. At a minimum, Kate will need someone to preview the words for her.
So, keep countering the view that "chinmen buns" is an acceptable substitute for cinnnamon buns. It just is not.
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