Help is at hand for dyslexic youngsters

8:00pm Friday 14th November 2008

Comments (0)   Have your say »

PEATMOOR Community Primary School’s efforts in helping dyslexic pupils has been rewarded.

The school received the Dyslexia Friendly School Award from the British Dyslexia Association this week.

Fiona Thomson, headteacher of the school, said: “What it recognises is the worth Peatmoor attaches to providing proper services to dyslexic pupils in the classroom – how we have adapted the curriculum, provided extra resources and extra staffing.

“We concentrate on a lot of special needs and dyslexia is one of them.

“Quite a lot of children are somewhere on the dyslexia scale and all children can benefit from some of our measures.”

Dyslexia is a learning difficulty which affects literacy and language related skills.

Mrs Thomson said: “In simplistic terms a dyslexic is someone who finds it difficult to connect sounds and letters – we try to help make learning to read, write and spell easier for them.

“Like a lot of children with general learning difficulties you can get very severe or not so severe. There’s a range of resources available – for example, some children may find typing easier than writing so they may have a laptop in lessons.”

The school was visited earlier this year by the British Dyslexia Association which held discussions with parents and children, and watched how the school helped those with dyslexia. The school also had to submit evidence to the association.

“The provision may be really basic,” said Mrs Thomson. “For example, it can be easier for dyslexics to read from a cream or slightly yellow background so we try to put writing on this coloured background.

“We also concentrate on their strengths, what dyslexics often have is a good 3D vision so they may be very good at visual subjects.

“We had an assembly where we showed them famous people that have dyslexia – people like Richard Branson, Steven Spielberg and Keira Knightley, so the children don’t associate it with failure.”