I spend a lot of time with students teaching them how to read. For most dyslexic learners, that means a lot of work on phonemic awareness, and direct, explicit, and systematic teaching on decoding words. But that’s not the end of the story. Most teachers will rightly point out that this is only a small part of learning to read. Children need to also learn fluency, vocabulary and have a good grasp of comprehension. After all, the whole point of reading is to learn the author's point of view and then relate it back to the world we live in. Research has told us that wide reading is one of the mos ..read more

I’ve heard over and over again in my time as a reading tutor that the English language is so hard because it doesn’t have any rules. And that this lack of rules makes spelling next to impossible! This is simply not true. Reading and spelling can be decoded or encoded around 85% of the time by understanding the sounds that letters make, how to blend them together, and practicing some simple rules. And the news gets better from there. A further 12% of words have only one sound that does not follow phonetic rules, but are decodable by context or experience. Students who learn to read using a sys ..read more

There has been a bit of press around lately about how to help our dyslexic students the best. Minister Tracy Martin has recently introduced a Dyslexia Kete, and SENCOs have been made a full time feature of many of our schools. While this sounds like a great step forward for the education of our dyslexic learners, many have criticised the approaches as not enough. There has been a call for the government to introduce an approach based on ‘the science of reading’ and a call for parents to look for programs that take an evidence based approach. So what do these two phrases mean, and why do they ..read more

Writing is a known difficulty for dyslexic students everywhere. They often struggle with the physical act of forming letters, trying to spell correctly, use finger spacing, punctuation and correct grammar, and that’s all before we even talk about structure, editing and planning. Fortunately assistive tech has removed many of these obstacles - speech to text on Google docs, Grammarly and Google Read and Write are three of my favourites. But unfortunately none of these assistive technologies address the core components of writing: planning, structure and editing. Another roadblock to writing fo ..read more

Teaching dyslexic children to read Having a child with dyslexia can be a frustrating experience. They have difficulties keeping up with their peers at school, and start to develop anxieties around learning. Schools also find it difficult to support our dyslexic children; teachers are not trained in best practice remediation, nor do they have the resources to provide the intensive one on one approach that best works for our children. It falls to us, the parents to help our children through a system that seems to set them up for failure. Where do we start to help our children? To me, we can hel ..read more

It’s no secret that I am a fan of audiobooks. I always have one on the go, and have made my way through more literature than ever since beginning on my audiobook journey. I can listen to them when I’m walking, driving in the car, cooking dinner, you name it! I’m also a fan of audiobooks for my dyslexic students. While they’re learning the process of decoding, they can access material they wouldn’t otherwise be able to read. Their comprehension and vocabulary improves, and the audiobooks put them in a better position to launch into a lifelong love of reading. And as they get older and complete ..read more

What is working memory? Working memory is the information you can consciously hold in your mind in any given moment. It’s like a workspace where we temporarily keep information we’ll need only for a short time. Having a strong working memory is having the ability to retain fresh information long enough to do something with it. Why is working memory important? Poor working memory is the cause of many in the classroom. Students who have trouble following directions, struggle with multi-step directions, forget things they were just taught or have trouble copying information and taking notes ofte ..read more

You may have heard of the ‘summer reading slide’, a phenomena where children are at standard at the end of the school year, but after six or so weeks of no practice, slide back to a lower level than where they left off before the break. This is proven for children of more disadvantaged backgrounds, and it could be argued as true for children with learning differences such as dyslexia. Children who suffer from this ‘slide’ will spend the start of the new school year getting back to their previous levels, rather than moving onto new and exciting areas of the curriculum. Well meaning advice sugg ..read more

One of the best books I have read is called “The Dyslexic Advantage”, written by Doctors Brock and Fernette Eide. It changed my mindset from ‘dyslexia is a problem to be fixed’ to ‘dyslexia comes with challenges, but also significant advantages’. As I read, I felt they were describing my family exactly. They break the significant advantages of dyslexia into four areas - calling them M.I.N.D. strengths: Mechanical reasoning Interconnected reasoning Narrative reasoning, and Dynamic reasoning. Because their descriptions are so good, I will use some of their words when they were interviewed by ..read more

Just like all of us, dyslexic learners are unique - the traits they display, and the severity of them vary from person to person. However, just because someone has one or a number of the traits, it doesn’t mean they are dyslexic. But if 10 or more traits jump out at you, it might be worth getting checked. Here are some common red flags that may indicate a person thinks like a dyslexic: Reading and Spelling Problems learning the names and sounds of letters, compared to other children. Problems with being able to break down individual sounds within a word, and replacing sounds within a word to ..read more