Bannatyne Reading Program -- FAQ ABOUT HANDICAPPED AND DISABLED STUDENTS

Bannatyne Reading, Writing, Spelling and Language Program

Third Edition

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS WITH ANSWERS

Q & A ABOUT HANDICAPPED AND DISABLED STUDENTS

(See also: STUDENT CHARACTERISTICS)

What is a reading disability, handicap or disorder? Is it an innate disorder?

A specific human functional disability, whether physical, intellectual or emotional, can be defined in terms of a significant insufficiency deviation from the so-called average normal functioning of the group in which that specific function is required and which is beneficial for that particular group. Thus all functional disabilities and handicaps are relative to the specific human group in which the individual lives. A person living in a rural community 500 years ago could not be "reading disabled" because almost no one in that community could read. In this matter, please understand I am NOT discussing the spoken/heard language, but its phonetically CODED SYMBOLS used in reading, spelling and writing that language.

If our modern literate societies required (by law) that everyone to be able to draw a fine portrait of the human face, or compose a simple symphony, how many of YOU would be disabled artists, or disabled music composers?

Learning to read, contrary to popular belief, is NOT an inborn human ability, but a learned one--like learning to read music, shorthand or the Morse code. Of course learning one's auditory-vocal language as a baby and infant IS an inborn ability, but coding and decoding that language is not. Therefore much of what we call "disabilities" or "disorders" are nothing more than a lesser ability to easily learn an artificial skill that had been imposed on everyone by everyone! Even so, in the case of reading and spelling, if the correct methods are used (as they are in the Bannatyne Program) even almost all "reading disordered" students can be taught to code and decode even an irregular phonetic language such as English.

Are you saying that there is nothing naturally abnormal about many students who find it difficult to learn to read, write and spell?

Yes, I am saying exactly that. While lots of students who find it difficult to read DO have neurological, genetic, and other abnormal deficits, there are also many students who have difficulty learning to read to the official test levels required of them. These students do not find it easy to learn to read, write and spell for two artificially imposed reasons.

The first reason is that (as described in the answer immediately above this one) that learning to read, write and spell is not a natural human function any more than (in an exact parallel situation) learning to read and write musical notation is. (See: READING in the GLOSSARY)
The second reason for the "low reading levels" of many students is even more serious. It is impossible for them to reach grade level (or a reading age level) for simple statistical reasons. Grade levels are determined by nationally standardized reading tests (they are re-standardized every few years) that have a mean, a standard deviation and a bell-curve distribution; therefore by statistical definition approximately one third of students must always be tested as being below "grade level." Thus, even if all first grade students could read very well, the statistical mean, standard deviation and bell-curve distribution of the group when they are tested would still place approximately one third of them as well below the mean (for non-statisticians that is near enough to below average). Almost all the statistics used in educational and psychological testing are based on the bell curve distribution simply because there are currently NO external criteria to permit any other supposition. Of course, as already mentioned, the "official" published reading tests are re-standardized every few years just to make sure that IS the case! And even if the standardization is in fact skewed in favor of bunching the lower students towards the "grade-level" mean (average), the test constructors statistically re-engineer the test or use non-skewing statistical formulas to make sure that the "normal" bell-curve reappears! In other words poor readers are statistically determined as below "average" and few teachers seem to understand the real meaning of the words GRADE LEVEL AVERAGE. For example, even if our elementary school students could presently read at two grades above grade level on average, one third of them would still fall below grade level on the next standardization to the mean! Obviously, most present-day students are far above the grade levels of equivalently aged students in, say 1880, but the same one third proportion of students still fail today despite this improvement, and MUST fail, because of the nationally statistically standardized definition of average. (See next entry for more on this weird national situation; also see GLOSSARY entry on statistics for definitions)

How then, can we ever get our "handicapped" students up to this statistically floating grade level?

The only way for education (as a US institution) to overcome this built-in statistical mean and bell-curve distribution problem is to declare that, as a permanent baseline, a particular year (say the year 2000) is designated to be the standard mean grade level or (reading age level) against which all future individual test scores are to be compared, using the identical or matched tests. Then, if all elementary school teachers will use efficient reading, writing, spelling and language programs like the Bannatyne Program to teach these subjects, almost all students of school age will be reading at or above the 2000 grade level within ten years--most of them long before!
Of course to avoid nomenclature confusion we will need to drop the meaningless term "grade level" and perhaps adopt "reading ages" in its place--as in the British countries. We could then say that a nine-year-old child has a reading age of 12 years 6 months for example compared with the equivalent child in 2000.
Another much better possibility is the use of standard scores from 0 to 100 that are determined after a very carefully prepared and researched master test has been given to every typical (sampled) segment of the world's English speaking population ranging from complete non-readers through language arts professors. All other reading tests would have to be synchronized with, perfectly correlated with, and matched reliably to this master test so that the scores (from 0 to100) would be identical on any version of the matched tests for any single student tested on them at one moment in time. The same could be done for spelling and mathematics. Let us make 2005 or 2010 the baseline for such baseline master tests.

How do I teach the Bannatyne Program if a student is color blind?

The short answer is, "You can; there is no problem at all." You do not have to make any special provisions for students who are color blind because research has shown that single colors on a white background, (which is the case with the Bannatyne Program) are not a problem for color blind students.

How do I help attention deficit (ADD and ADHD) students to keep a steady focus on the work in hand?

The short answer is motivation. We all have attention deficits for whatever does not interest us. Many people are bored in art museums, others are bored at symphony concerts, others are bored at rock concerts, while still others are bored watching a football match or macho movie. We all get restless (or perhaps fall asleep if we are tired) when trying to attend to material we couldn't care less about. All right, but ADD and ADHD students have to learn to read, write and spell in school by "the law of the land" so how do we teachers catch their attention. The only way is through:

Powerful motivators of all kinds like the following:
High interest materials which will interest ADD students
Fascinating content within those materials
Positive reinforcers of many kinds
Positive teachers whom the students will love to work for, and enjoy being with and interacting with
Dynamic presentations of content
Varieties of different activities constantly changing in a variety of ways, such as active to passive and back
Involvement of all a student's sensory-motor processes at once (ears, eyes, hands, intake and output)
Humorous and fun-to-do activities and games
Illustrations everywhere
Success, success, success

The Bannatyne Program incorporates all of these and a whole lot more, but the teacher provides the loving positive enthusiasm! (See: MOTIVATION)

Can I use the Bannatyne Program for "filling in the missing gaps" type of remediation. Surely it is a waste of time to take a student through the whole Program or the Ships and Planets Series of Workbooks when patching in the missing knowledge is all that seems necessary?

Sorry, but, although it has been diligently tried for over a century, the patch-up theory of remediation has failed to remediate all but a miniscule number of failing readers, and our Special Classes and Resource Rooms continue to "patch-up" the same students year after year simply because they never catch up--and the vast majority of them fall even further behind. Why? Because the patch-up remediation theory has fundamental flaws in its philosophy--or rather its simplistic belief system. The English language, including speaking, listening, reading, writing, spelling and comprehension, is NOT a pile of discrete bricks or a patchwork quilt of unrelated squares into which damaged or missing pieces can be inserted or replaced. Like mathematics, language is one of the most integrated, hierarchically organized, interlinked, inter-dependent systems known to the human race. Thus, as just one illustration of this linked complexity, we know that in mathematics adding and subtracting numbers must be taught before division, and, likewise, in a phonetic language specific phoneme-to-grapheme associations must be taught and memorized by students, before they can process efficiently the reading or writing of words composed of those specific combinations. The Bannatyne Program has been proven to be a very rapid, efficient and permanent method of "remediation" when compared with any other method. Just give your reading disorder students the Quick Placement Test on Disc 1, start them in Pearl Workbook 1 or Galleon Workbook 6 accordingly, and watch them romp along as they learn English far more rapidly and thoroughly than any "patch-up" program, or for that matter, other popular methods of teaching "remedial" reading. If you want to study the intricate, interlocking complexity of the English language, please read the following sections: EIGHTY-EIGHT TECHNIQUES, BANNATYNE PSYCHOLINGUISTICS.

What should I do with students who cannot seem to remember a phoneme-to-grapheme association from one lesson to the next and, even with review of the lesson, do not hold it?

This situation will not occur if the Bannatyne Program is properly and thoroughly taught precisely as laid out in the Teacher Guides. Having said that, please do not expect severe Specific Learning Disability (SLD) students (or indeed, any students) to be 100% perfect before moving on to the next activity or the next part of the activity (90-95% success will do). The Bannatyne Program has lots of constant review seamlessly built into it. Therefore in the case of an SLD student, usually dyslexic, who has this sound-to-symbol memory association deficit, after one review of the activity, move on to the next activity, and then the next, etc., because the cumulative effect from moving through the whole Bannatyne Program very thoroughly will establish the necessary reading, writing, spelling and language skills. The Bannatyne Program is "self-diagnostic" therefore always review a task-activity at least once when an SLD student finds that particular skill activity (such as splitting and blending, or auditory closure) difficult to master.

What do you mean when you say the Bannatyne Program is self-diagnostic?

I can only reiterate what I wrote in Chapter 2 under the heading, "STUDENTS." When used with disabled, disordered or handicapped students, the Bannatyne Program does not need any prior academic diagnostic testing or academic evaluations other than the Quick Placement Test. Of course a diagnostic workup may exist for other psychological reasons. But the Bannatyne Program itself, in terms of reading, writing and spelling diagnostics and teaching, is automatically diagnostic and automatically remedial AS it is being used, and the reason is that every facet of learning to read, write, spell and cope with language is built into the Program.

Therefore, whenever any disabled or handicapped student is a little slower to learn one particular "bit" of the Bannatyne Program, all the teacher, tutor or parent need do is to make sure that the "bit" in question is thoroughly learned, or in some instances overlearned, before moving on. For example, a student having trouble with auditory closure should spend a little more time practicing and reviewing that skill each time the Auditory Closure Activity comes along--until (each time) say 90-95% competency is demonstrated at that moment. Similarly, any disabled student having difficulty with the meanings of words should spend a little more time discussing those meanings with his or her teacher and have additional opportunities to use them in conversation with his or her teacher.

But doesn't this extra emphasis on some activities hold the group back?

If this is the situation then any students with Specific Learning Disabilities (SLD) whose handicaps are severe enough to hold back the group or lag behind it when they are all in the Bannatyne Program should receive individual tutoring at another time and not be part of any group. School systems should make special provision for this--just as they make ramps for individual students in wheelchairs! In a County that I once contracted with to make recommendations for school placement, I evaluated a very emotionally disturbed boy who had very disturbed parents and recommended he be placed in the County residential school for the severely emotionally disturbed and receive therapy there. The County said by way of reply, "But Dr. Bannatyne, you know very well that we do not have a residential school for emotionally disturbed students." I replied, "You asked me for the correct placement of this lad, and if you do not have the facilities in a County of one million people then build them, or contract with one that does, so this boy can go there. If he were totally blind there would be a school for him! Why not then build a school for severe emotional disturbance or, for that matter, for severe learning and language disabilities?"

The Bannatyne Reading Program is an excellent, tested reading program. The Bannatyne Reading Program is unlike any other reading programs currently available. This means you will find many features which are only in the Bannatyne Reading Program. In some Commonwealth countries the program may be referred to as: Bannatyne Programme, or Bannatyne Reading Programme.