Dyslexia Awareness Week 2021 – navigating this blog

Welcome to the Blog of the Language and Literacy Team from the new Learning Advisory Service. Below, you will find posts containing a YouTube video on Seeing Dyslexia Differently, Dyslexia Friendly Classrooms and information on how to use Busy Things from LGFL to develop phonics and phonological skills.

Click on the Specific Learning Difficulties heading in the blue bar above and you will find a range pages to support parents and teachers with study skills, reading, spelling and handwriting

  1. Helping primary pupils with reading at home
  2. Supporting secondary students with reading
  3. Tips for helping your child with their homework (primary)
  4. Helping secondary students with study skills and homework
  5. Helping to learn spellings
  6. Learn to read and spell Common Exception  (High Frequency) Words
  7. Help your child with phonics
  8. Tips for improving your child’s handwriting
  9. Using games for literacy learning
  10. FAQ about supporting literacy

See Dyslexia Differently- video from BDA

Click the image  above to see this short YouTube video from the British Dyslexia Association. It explores the possible difficulties and strengths of young people with dyslexia. It is three minutes long.

The video could be used pupils, parents, teachers and teaching assistants.

Dyslexia Awareness Week is:

October 4th-8th October 2021

Is Your Classroom Dyslexia-Friendly?

  It’s widely accepted that about 10% of the population is dyslexic (with about 4% significantly so), so dyslexic learners will make up part of your classes in your schools/settings.  How confident are you that you are meeting their needs?

If a parent asks you what you are doing to make your classroom dyslexia-friendly, would you be comfortable giving an answer?

It’s easy to feel nervous around the term dyslexia – it’s a broad term that can be hard to pin down or define precisely.   Teachers may assume that a dyslexic learner will need specialist equipment such as coloured overlays or specific dyslexia programmes.

The good news is that many of the inclusive strategies that you use routinely in your day-to day practice will be dyslexia-friendly and reminding yourself of what you are already doing can be a helpful exercise – make visible what may have become invisible to you.

Here’s are 10 Dyslexia-Friendly strategies that you will almost certainly already be using every day:

  1. Think about purposeful seating – can the pupils see you/the board clearly?
  2. Think about grouping/setting – is the pupil able to work at their cognitive level with others who will stimulate and provide good role models?
  3. Give instructions in small chunks – break tasks down and give one step at a time – provide written reminds and repeat when requested
  4. Present information in a range of ways to ensure that learners can access through a range of learning channels – use visuals wherever possible
  5. Allow plenty of thinking time – Talk Partners is a good way of giving time to think and rehearse information
  6. Don’t ask struggling readers to read out loud in front of others
  7. Allow pupils to demonstrate learning using a range of formats so that literacy is not a barrier – eg drawing, mind mapping, creating lists & diagrams, oral presentations, role play, debates, etc
  8. Focus on strengths – feedback on content rather than areas of difficulty eg spelling or handwriting
  9. Create an ethos within the classroom where it’s okay to ask for help & make sure learners know where to go for support when they need it
  10. Avoid asking your learner to copy from the board – if copying is necessary give the pupil a sheet to copy from that they can have in front of them – better still provide a printed copy for them to stick in, use paired/shared writing, write for the learner, etc

If you would like to do a more thorough audit of your practice to check how inclusive you are, have a look at this Audit of General Teaching Strategies for Pupils with Specific Literacy Difficulties.

Using Busy Things to develop phonological awareness skills

Using Busy Things to develop phonological awareness skills

Almost all schools now offer a literacy curriculum based on systematic synthetic phonics which most children respond really well to. But, there is a small group of pupils that don’t make the progress that we expect.

The building blocks to good phonic skills include really strong phonological awareness skills (the ability to identify and manipulate sounds in spoken language e.g. syllables, rhyme etc.) and phoneme awareness  (manipulating individual sounds).  Research shows that the majority of pupils that go on to struggle with spelling, reading and writing have a relative difficulty with their phoneme awareness and other phonological skills.  This group need extra time and attention.

Early Years settings are brilliant at developing phonological awareness skills, but as children move up into Key Stage 1 and beyond, it becomes harder for class teachers to find time to spend time on this.

One useful resource, available to all schools with access to the London Grid for Learning is Busy Things.  We found their phonic games very helpful when supporting children during lockdown, as they develop phonological awareness as well as phonics.

They updated a lot of the materials in May 2021.  We like the way you can customize the games to concentrate on specific grapheme phoneme correspondences.

Games

Our pupils loved the games. There are games to support rhyming skills such as Topple the Tower and Robert Robot:

As well as games like Feed the Monster and Build the Word which focus on oral blending and segmenting:

The software allows you to choose which scheme you want to follow, as well as your regional accent preference (north or south of England):

Once pupils are confident at using the games online, you can also produce pdf’s of specific patterns to reinforce areas that they are working on. This was useful to set as targeted homework.

Busy things does not replace the work we need to do to help strengthen phonological awareness skills but it is a really useful tool. Children can independently use the game on laptops during class reading time or other pockets of the school day.

Teachers can set up class profiles and monitor how their pupils are doing.

For more information, there are youtube videos on how to get started, as well as tutorials online. Alternatively, do contact us for more information. While not experts,  we are  happy to share what we have learnt!

Tower Hamlets Language, Literacy and Communication Team

September 2021