Do your kids believe that ‘practice makes perfect’?
I view David Beckham as one of the greatest gifts to all parents. Here is why: 1 I defy anyone not to like him 2 He has undeniable brilliance 3 It is clear he has achieved that through practice You don’t...
read moreHow To Lead A Preschool Child Towards Reading
The foundations for successful reading are built well before a child goes to school. If you can get the early years right it will make progress with reading far easier. Here are some tips for achieving that: 1 Baby Talk is Essential. Sometimes you hear criticisms...
read morePhonics vs Sight-Reading Instruction
This is a big one. It's that eternal question which has been bandied about for the last 400 years of literacy instruction. Which is the better method for teaching children how to read: phonics or sight-reading? In most parts of the English-speaking world at this...
read moreFamous Fridays: Kara Tointon
Kara Tointon is probably best known for being one of the most talented winners of Strictly Come Dancing in recent years, or for her acting on the popular BBC soap Eastenders. What is probably less well-known is the fact that at 27 years old she has the reading age of...
read moreHow We Read
Over the centuries there have been intense debates about how we read, with some pretty crazy ideas at times which you can read about in my book manuscript. For instance, one group followed the theory that ideas are the basic units of communication and are represented...
read moreFamous Fridays: Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison, famous for inventing the lightbulb, is said to have had dyslexia. But the lightbulb isn’t all he’s known for. He developed the motion picture camera, the phonograph, an electric car battery and 1,094 other US patents, not to mention a large number in...
read moreThe Shannon Trust Story
Did you know that the first glimmer of Easyread was born in prison? Let me tell you the whole story. When my father retired, around 1990, my mother was quite worried. He’d always enjoyed work and at times we saw precious little of him. Now, she feared, he was...
read moreHow Stress Affects Reading Ability
There are several possible causes of reading difficulty. You can get an overview of them from our website. The essential key to getting a child reading confidently is to be able to identify any underlying cause of difficulty and fix it. One cause of difficulty that...
read morefMRI Evidence for Optilexia vs Dyslexia
We believe that most of the children who are labelled dyslexic are just trying to read the wrong way. With the right guidance and support the vast majority of them can learn to read and write perfectly well. Here is a new report by Nadine Gaab with lots of fMRI...
read moreHow to Help Your Child Fly
Do you know the Marshmallow Test? It was developed by Walter Mischel in the 1960s and has proved one of the most effective predictors of how well a child will do at school and through adult life. You can see an excellent article on it in the New Yorker:...
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