Silk, Astronauts and Eye-tracking
While you’re reading this it may feel as if your eyes are moving in a linear way across the page, smooth as silk. In fact this is not the case. What is actually happening is that your eyes are making little jumps from one group of words to the next. These miniscule...
read moreNew Phonics Check in UK Schools: In Review
The government have been testing a check on the progress 6-year-olds have made with their phonic understanding. We are in total support of the principle behind this test. The sooner that a teacher/parent team sees that a child is heading down a sight-reading path...
read moreReading Difficulty and the Cerebellum
You will know that one of our main seven identified causes of reading difficulty is a problem within the cerebellum. We are not alone! Here is an article about dyspraxia and its links to dyslexia: Dyslexia could be caused by defects in the part of the brain that controls muscle co-ordination, Edinburgh scientists have discovered. […]
read morePutting the fun back into learning to read…
There are a few simple games that will guide your child down the path to becoming a confident and happy reader when he or she is first learning to read. We regularly come across very bright children who are really struggling with their reading, but only because they...
read moreFrench Dyslexia Study
A French team has published their report on the cause of dyslexia. Here is a typical report on what they have said. You will see others in the press and around the web:...
read moreDyslexia Video
Here is a nicely made video about reading difficulty with a number of famous people talking about their own experiences: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8m1fCz3ohMw&feature=share As you listen to it you will see lots of examples of the 7 causes of difficulty that we...
read moreNew Literacy Tests for 6-year-olds
Here is an article about the new tests being introduced: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-14930193 We are generally in favour of this direction because it is essential that children develop a decoding and blending ability. However, the difficulty still comes when they start to grapple with the great complexity of English spelling. That is when children often begin to […]
read moreUK Primary Literacy Results 2011
Here are the latest results for 11-year-old literacy in the UK: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-14371183
read moreWake-up call: ‘The boy failed by the system’
As part of the Evening Standard’s recently established ‘Get London Reading’ scheme, an interesting article was published last week about the struggles of a boy named David. At his current age of nine, David has a reading age of just four. Since he was very young, he displayed clear signs of being a highly visual […]
read moreAutism and Reading
Here is an interesting article on the nature of autism: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12937009 What they are saying fits with our experience with autistic children going through the course. Most of them do surprisingly well because they have a strong visual facility and so they can process our trainertext well. That then helps open up the auditory code […]
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