home index by author index by subject

Poster P3

Friday stream 1-4 Session 16.10 - 17.25 Length 25 minutes

Aspects of banana books: Designed for dyslectics but successful in mainstream use and to complement or replace Reading Recovery

Christina A. Alexander

Kenmore, Australia Turkey.Tracks.Press@uq.net.au

Abstract

The Banana Books kits designed to overcome lags in literacy and numeracy in dyslexia sufferers. The term dyslexia is used in the generic way tio include ADD and ADHD et al. The kits comprise large format book and non-book holistic multi-sensosory, -age, -level, programmes of 3000 pages, audio visuals and innovative devices. They comprise two kits: A Boodle of Doodles 60 components. Pre-school to Year 3 level. The Big Fat Beaut book 9 volumes B2 to A3. Year 3 to superior adult standard. Statistics and Pertinent Factors: Researched and developed 1977-1995 in a private clinic setting with severe dyslexics of all ages, many levels of potential including gifted and talented. Currently the subject of Master and Doctorate theses. 90000 units have been distributed largely by word of mouth An application of the VAKT methodology of Montessori and Fernald An alternative to Ritalin Used in speech/hearing/sight/stroke impaired situations Both literacy and numeracy are addressed Weight:18kg Humour Home schooling, school, individual, teacher pre- and in-training usage Fine discovery art to stimulate visual perception Re-usable Lesson plans provided Exercises to reduce anxiety and stretch attention span included Intervention and preventive applications.

Banana Books fromTurkeyTracks press*

Methodology, Method and Techniques

The Banana Books are an application of simultaneous mulitsensory processing methodology or VAKT (visual/auditory/kinesthetic/tactile), pioneered by Maria Montessori and Grace Maxwell Fernald in the first decades of the twentieth century but which was used in ancient times with stylus and grooved tablets.

They were clinicians first, then career pedagogues who applied their theories successfully without calming drugs or 'high interest, low Reading Age' patronising, compromising materials used in conjunction with sight reading and flash cards which, without VAKT, dyslectics cannot manage well. I call it a sieve syndrome - learn and lose or learn quickly and forget quickly. Or they encode and do not store information in the short term memory so decoding is weak because there is not much to decode. The short concentration span exacerbates and distractibility. VAKT enables a team of sense memories to focus on work more potently than bimodal or mono-modal. Synthesising of numerous studies in the literature always shows that , logical though it seems to be, focus on a weak processong sense - say visual sequential memory - alone, DOESN"T WORK.

The graphic with the four riders on a four-seater cycle, encapsulates VAKT perfectly. The big mouth, goggles, hands and ears, representing VAKT, demonstrate that if a rider stops pedalling or goes to sleep on the wheel, then the cycle doesn't proceed as well. Parallel that with learning. The tactile and kinesthetic part of VAKT is too much relegated to only learners with low intellectual potential, whereas all levels, including gifted and talented and adults, learn more efficiently and happily with these stimuli. But where are the materials applying this? Plenty of simplistic sequential multisensory systems abound but nor simultaneous VAKT.

The four cyclists demonstrate how interdependent are the processing senses and how monomodal focus on one sensory deficit fails as the literature shows.

Pollysyllable words with reversals - dog/god - omissions - place/palace - are easily managed. VAKT used with spelling lists, especially in conjunction with colour-coding of syllables or letters, show spectacular results for students in tests. It is not uncommon for 17 wrong out of twenty to be reversed in two weeks. The fingertip even if the fine motor is deficited, inevitably carves the sequence correctly, and the auditory and visual - hearing saying looking- follow and strengthen. The distractibility, short attention and faulty memory are all helped enormously by VAKT. The banana books cater for it. Because the sight way had almost eclipsed VAKT, resulting largely in the shocking statistics we have in western countries, I was forced to invent. It took ages.

With only families as tutors, some keen some impatient or unwilling, and angry, violent, withdrawn subjects I was desperate. I did a Charlie Chaplain because a grandfather and a kindergartener can watch and enjoy his films together. Humour. Dr Seuss, Edward Lear were models. And exercises to stretch concentration and relieve anxiety prior to work for only a minute or two, helped a lot.

Original innovations like big print and ambiguous art which does not disclose text meaning are important. In numeracy illusory receding of faint words and numbers and advancing of dense black ones seemed to cure symbol confusions like - + x , and holistic ultimate integration of conventional strategies come later too. Once a vocabulary, reading, writing, written expression, tables, digits lined up correctly, have occurred the ordinary ways can take over. Details below.

Inclusiveness
Multiage/multilevel because graded in difficulty. Users are: mainstream, dyslectic/ADD/ADHD/LD, speech-/hearing-/sight-impaired, mild stroke victims - although the work was designed purely for normal dyslectics (in generic sense). Peer and parental aid (slave labour) is attracted by humour/poetic devices - (inspiration and extension of Cole/Lear/Seuss) .

Research and Development
After primary/secondary/tertiary, school & private special needs teaching, the difficulty of finding integrated numeracy-literacy stimulating, effective programmes inspired a private, self-funded odyssey to design one. This evolved from client needs in a one-on-one clinic setting with parental aid a prerequisite. R and D: 18 years (1977-1995). Vocabulary was integrated into texts from client miscues in speech/writing/reading over 7 years and Longman's Children's Dictionary. 90 000 users to date. Australian Centre for Educational Research is evaluating the work. The video is a chain of dubs by courtesy of TV channels 2, 7,9,10 and Briz 31, in Australia. It shows users engaged with the system, and journalists pose questions of the designer who explains.

Auxiliary Strategies
Conventional mono- or bi-modal methods are incorporated at later stages, as learners cumulate better vocabularies through VAKT. Humour and poetic devices aid affect domain and sequencing. Ambiguous fun quality illustrations in fine discovery art stimulates curiosity about what the text is about and leads reluctant readers into text because only after they have read and understood the story can they find out which scenario in a complex picture applies. Also, visual perception, notably figure-ground, is aided. Avoidance of reliance on picture clues after very early stages is necessary. Please don't shoot me for saying so. Concurrent creative writing and writing an autobiography involving new words enable consolidates, helps retention, handwriting, accuracy, spelling, comprehension and releases imagination, reduces angst. Creativity increases because of the high quality art. The cartoonist Low began his study of cartooning by tracing the work of others for technique. Though users are not to colour in the pictures they are encouraged to trace them, some are very complex, and this helps their fine motor incidentally.

Rationale for Large Format
Large format facilitates VAKT, especially finger tracing, at first needed for whole texts, then for excerpted new difficult words only prior to reading and finally not at all - except for the occasional recalcitrant word. Big print, small words gradually reverse roles. Calligraphy, preferred over print fonts to accustom students to teacher-writing variations, diminishes in size from 3cm letters to normal script size. Reduced size also accompanies greater complexity of thought, and vocabulary till polysyllable words are managed well in speech, writing and reading.

The Three-Strand Programme Components
Two kits make up the whole programme of both literacy and numeracy - seen as inextricable from each other. Holistic, consistent method, K-12 is desirable for maximum 3Rs progress and comfort.

A BOODLE OF DOODLES

K-Year 3 level Strand One - Non-readers any age for intervention.

Non-readers, pre-school for failure-prevention, school-proofing against look and say method.

Large cloth bag of 60 book & non-book parts. Small colour-coded bags for each segment for quick identification of part needed. ABOD used as future-failure-prevention for 4-year-olds or intervention for underachievers and trauma victims of many kinds. Examples: A 12-year-old because, 'I want to go back to where I got lost' and a former high school English teacher and mild stroke victim because of need to begin again.

Book and non-book components:

• 3 hessian scrolls of clown, balloon man and dog, LARGE size is paramount, teach colour and abstract symbols (think of Chinese pictographs) by a matching game. Big varied counters bear small abstractions of child-sized outlines on big scrolls, as preparation to using letters and numbers.
• 6 hessian pages, each 1. 5m x 1. 5m. develop progressively stepped literacy/numeracy from non-reading to year 3. Creative writing emerges at the end. Alphabet is integrated, never rote learned in isolation without logic, by naming familiar animal pictures. Blackboard or newspaper, chalk or crayon, drawing and printing, reading, number, sentences, creative writing.
• Cylinders - because dyslectics like 3D - replicate hessian work with matching parts of sentences, colour-coded and in smaller text, vocabulary, sentence structure, beginnings of writtn expression.
• A writing book. Wide line spacing is shown. This can be replicated on blackboards (not white boards because the fine writing instruments are difficult at this stage) or tabloid-sized newspapers, turned sideways, so the white space between the columns of print become 'ruled lines'. Rhythmic exercises and calligraphy are practised. Calligraphist contribution. Advice, exercises, 14-year-old dyslectic's essay to encourage prevention.
• Large wooden bird template. This is traced five times around outlines in which the bird looks in both ways with descriptions and numbers. It deals with the 's' being dropped or added willy-nilly in language, and assists sequencing.
• Bob Bunyip's box of words, a phonological, ambiguously illustrated funny book, gives a long poem with baroque music and ambiguous pictures in which the clown, balloon man and dog, return to complete the circle of experience. This is on audiotape and in standard-sized print for listening. It includes words commonly confused in the past. The book, and programme, ends with a no-pictures precis of the poem in big print prose - bridge into ordinary reading or commencement of The big fat beaut book which is a natural progression.
• Manual, easy instructions, diagrams of the processing parts of the brain and map of ABOD. Writing, exercises to overcome dysgraphia. case histories Users' and Teachers' Guide, files case histories. Teaching Disabilities (not a misprint), satire/tapestry/history on a cetury of dyslexia teaching.
• Zany, a book of excerpts from The big fat beaut book (below), originally collated for low literacy unemployed, injured, labourers aspiring to desk jobs. Spelling, comprehension, accuracy, writing.

Ambiguous fine discovery art where picture clues are not reliable and can only be understood after the text is read is a critically important part of the scheme after the very early ABOD work.

THE BIG FAT BEAUT BOOK

Year 3 - 18 Strands 2 and 3 Briefcase containing 13 parts servicing years 3-18 years levels being stepped: 8 volumes:

STRAND 2
2 volumes Literacy Years 3-12+, 500 A3 pages. Stepped. Reading, accuracy, comprehension, accuracy, handwriting, creative writing, autobiography, spelling, vocabulary-building, series-writing, forms of letter writing. Ambiguous fine discovery complex art with several scenarios sometimes. There is a philosophy of overcoming difficulties in the character exploits which heartens battling students and lifts the morale.

STRAND 3
2 vols Numeracy/Literacy, 500 A3 pages Storybook mathematics with embeddedness. Both genders benefit for different reasons. Girls are usually less weak at language than mathematics which frighten. Boys are often better at maths than language. The girls savor the stories and con the camouflages numeracy. The boys can often winkle the numbers but have to read to understand the problems. Of course both genders can founder in both language and numbers. The materials works for them too only more patience and time are needed. The humour and art keep them happily on track. The mathematics illustrator, a multi-award winner for illustrations in books, is dyslectic. He invented the receding advancing technique with me. The symbols often combobulate dyslectics: 3x3+ 9 is somehow perceived and written out and worked as 3+3=6 and marked wrong. Unfair but necessary. VAKT large format accommodates optical illusions to overcome this. Most maths books have tiny faint print.

4 x Literacy/Numeracy large 4-colour text/picture posters, 1m. x .8 m.

• Stepped, these encapsulate the method. Characters like the winged alligators return. These particular soft colours are found to soothe sick or anxious children. They are fun classroom or home wall pictures in their own right with pedagogic bonus.

1xTimes Tables tape

• Baroque music in background helps retention. Spike Milligan serialised story parts inserted between sets reduces perseverance and chunks information for better retention. Enables learning and retrieval of tables randomly without mental 'scrolling' and other 'mental gymnastics' or 'manual aids' leaving mental energy to be focussed instead on mathematics problems in doing multiplication and division work - without calculators except for checking work, early on so the process is understood, and sequencing is encouraged which extrapolates to other subjects.

A dyslexia consultant's mailbag: 100 letters answered: the international literacy scandal exposed and a home cure.

• From thousands of unsolicited letters received, 100 letters were selected for range of topic and problems posed, and answered. Correspondents were categorised thus: Teachers * medical and paramedical * adult dyslectics * parents and friends, * community workers. It is a reference tool and is well indexed so some solutions, or emotional or teaching, can be accessed fast.

Teaching Disabilities

• A satirical look at the plight of dyslectics at the hands of well-meaning helpers. The charcoal sketch sequence, by a prize-winning dyslectic illustrator The dyslectic's progress., after Goya, encapsulates.

Users' and teachers' guide…

• This gives true, but anonymous case histories from the researcher's files. There are diagrams and explanations without jargon so lay and professional helpers are comfortable.

Zany

Excerpted from The big fat beaut book, Zany was made for a case manager at an unemployment bureau for adults with low literacy who left school early and did labouring but through work-related accidents now needed to do desk work. Seventy lessons . One hundred pages, with the holistic, twister-embedded, spelling format involving poetic devices, humour and long words. Stepped. Colour-coding suggested. Preferred A3 format was reduced to A4, with compensating magnifier recommended, to reduce cost. A mid-difficulty twister begins, though largest print, smallest words pieces dispersed through the book are the actual starting pieces because of sensitivities (ego!). Helpers are advised in instructions to use commonsense to select suitable pieces after starting at page 23, a b/d adventure story text. Life story, handwriting, spelling, reading are combined. Cost precluded maze component so helpful to comprehension and sensory sequencing. Numeracy was also excised. Reading ages usually improve by 2-4 years on completion for users of average potential. Labour can be school, one-on-one or group tuition, using class sets, or family, neighbours, volunteers or friends. (Many have school phobia.) Class sets in primary and high schools are used in both English and remedial class settings.

A Boodle of Doodles

ABOD is shown to Education Department personnel after the international conference for Gifted and Talented Children, at Taipei.

USING A BOODLE OF DOODLES VAKT at a four-day vacation school at Kooralbyn International School, Beaudesert, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Bob's family attended and learned with him . Doctors, teachers, families, adult and child dyslectics live and learn from each other and specially trained tutors whose teacher training is only one prerequisite required.

A 4-day dyslexia vacation live-in school group at Kooralbyn International School, Beaudesert, Queensland, Australia. Many are missing because an impending cyclone caused early departure. The multiage aspect is evident.

THE TWISTER HOLISTIC TEXT Embedded vocabulary miscued in reading/ writing/speaking, collected from dyslectics in a clinic setting over 7 years. Techniques used include, poetic devices, humour, ambiguous picture clues, philosophy of overcoming difficulties. Size allows kinesthetic and tactile processing allied with visual and auditory in VAKT methodology of Maria Montessori and Grace Maxwell Fernald. Each twister involves: comprehension, accuracy, spelling, handwriting, creative writing from early stages. Many calligraphy styles help visual perception and reading varied text fonts and teacher writing.

MAZE HOLISTIC TEXT Collated miscued vocabulary arrayed in alternative choices, help sort words similar in appearance different in meaning and redress Mrs Malaprop tendencies. Tracking is improved in reading after the stimulation and focus required in following such circuitous pathways. After modified texts, thought and vocabulary may seem too difficult to teachers. VAKT enables processing and better retention of illogical and polysyllable words. Correct words are chosen for comprehension. Then incorrect words are picked for nonsense, for enrichment and fun. Integral handwriting aids improve dysgraphia. Story-writing follows. Varied script styles assist reading varied text fonts met later.

HOLISTIC STORYBOOK NUMERACY Numeracy text is less poetic in style but aids the same aspects of literacy as the twister and maze. A computeresque visual illusion focuses on symbols and problems worked. Hollow and dense black digits do this. Distracters aid critical thinking and problem solving. Both literacy and numeracy deficited users use both strands which complement each other. Comprehension is important in both. Fewer 'fonts' are used. Distracters, numbers and problems are challenge enough.

The 4 cyclists show the VAKT simultaneous multisensory team application and interdependence of sensory processing, the efficacy of which is corroborated in the literature.

The essayist is a diligent dyslectic 14-year-old high school boy of above average potential. His family are supportive and bookish. He learned reading by the sight method. On VAKT he rose four years in reading age in 6 months. Teachers say he is a bookworm who reads at lunchtime instead of playing football. He is no longer suicidal.

HOLISTIC LITERACY PUNCTUATION Processed by VAKT, then said till fluent, when the natural rhythms are felt and indicate where the marks go. Another piece of the life story is written, consolidating the new vocabulary.