During the month of October there are lots of Dyslexia Awareness days throughout the world to try and ensure that there is a greater understanding of dyslexia.
The British Dyslexia Association have activities going on throughout their Dyslexia Week 4-10 October. https://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/support-us/awareness-events/dyslexia-awareness-week/dyslexia-week-2021 The British Dyslexia Association are focusing on invisible challenges that come with dyslexia. They are providing free resources and powerpoints to help people understand dyslexia.
Helen Arkell Dyslexia Charity are offering a free online talk on the evening of Wednesday 6 October for parents of children with dyslexia. https://www.helenarkell.org.uk/event/dyslexia-awareness-week-2021.php.
BBC are offering a collection of teaching resources during their Dyslexia Awareness week 5-11 October. https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/dyslexia-awareness-week-teaching-resources/zkw7qfr.
I have mentioned the challenges that the dyslexic learner faces, but I must also mention their great strengths, which are to be celebrated. Dyslexic individuals are usually good problem solvers, creative, observant, excellent big-picture thinkers, good at making connections, have three-dimensional thinking, display strong narrative reasoning and show high levels of empathy.
Ernst and Young, in collaboration with Made by Dyslexia, have published a report to analyse how dyslexic strengths match closely to the skill requirements of the changing world and discuss the huge benefits to be had from taking action to maximise dyslexic strengths at: https://www.madebydyslexia.org/assets/downloads/EY-the-value-of-dyslexia.pdf The billionaire Richard Branson says that dyslexia is at least partially responsible for his success and those with dyslexia are likely to have the ‘skills for the future’. In a blog post, Branson stated that many dsyslexic individuals have a vivid imagination, noting that Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and Steve Jobs were all dyslexic.
Kate Griggs is an award winning British social entrepreneur, a leading voice in Global Dyslexia advocacy and in 2005 she founded the dyslexia charity Xtraordinary People which united the UK dyslexia charities. Her high-profile campaign culminated in the UK’s Dyslexia Review and Kate was given an award by former Prime Minister Gordon Brown in recognition of her campaigning work. She is the founder and CEO of Made By Dyslexia, a charity run by famous and successful dyslexics. Launched in May 2017 this global charity aims to help the world properly understand, value and support dyslexia by developing campaigns and tools which explain Dyslexic Thinking. In January 2020 Kate published her first children’s book Xtraordinary People: Made by Dyslexia (read by HRH Princess Beatrice in the video below). This lovely book helps children to understand dyslexia and celebrate their strengths. Kate has also written another book, which has been published this year which is entitled ‘This is Dyslexia: The definitive guide to the untapped power of dyslexic thinking and its vital role in our future’.
HRH Princess Beatrice also speaks about dyslexia in this interview for Made by Dyslexia.
I am hoping to start adding more strategies for study skills etc onto this site. In the meantime, a simple but highly effective way to help improve the way the dyslexic individual learns is to use a mindmap. Imagery with different colours will help a learner to retain information and improve organisation skills. I have found this video on Youtube which explains the basics of using a mindmap.
Finally, this week I discovered another way to help learners who tend to guess some words rather than decode them when reading. Often in my sessions, children play the game ‘Treasure and Bin’ or a sorting game on ‘Phonics Play’ so they have to concentrate and accurately decode real and pseudo words to encourage accurate decoding. This week I came across a new game to play, whilst a child is reading to me, to encourage them to decode instead of guessing some words. The children who have played this so far have found it enjoyable and it is proving effective. I have two pots, with a lot of treasure (counters) in one pot for the child and another empty pot for me. If the child guesses a word whilst reading, instead of decoding it, then I can ‘steal’ a piece of their treasure. However, if they decode a new word I have to give some ‘treasure’ back to them. It is a bit of fun, which the children seem to enjoy, but it is suprising how quickly the learner ensures they are decoding instead of guessing unknown words. 🙂
Be yourself…….everyone else is already taken
🙂 PJ
Help your child learn to read, write and spell 