Issue 12: Dyslexia from the Inside and Out | Dr Helen Ross

Inside my own dyslexia

My journey with dyslexia is absolutely the foundation for why I do the work I do now. There are so many different factors that have nudged me along the way to working as a dyslexia specialist and researcher. It all informs where I am now and where I aim to be in the future.

Flashback: Warwick, England, Late 1990

I didn't read voluntarily until after the summer of my A-levels. My coverage of the core texts which I was meant to read for GCSEs was cursory at best. In year 10 (aged 15), I'd told my mum that I couldn't follow text well and found reading really, really tricky. I had an eye test and got glasses that I was too stroppy to wear. When I did start wearing them in 6th form, I still struggled to read and make sense of questions. A-level mechanics, the physics-flavoured part of maths, highlighted my stresses and strains. I had to read questions, draw a forces diagram and then work out what maths to do. I cried (literally) on my teacher and told my mum too. They put their heads together and worked out that perhaps I had something like dyslexia, making it hard for me. So in 1999, in the Malvern Hills, just near Birmingham, aged 17, I was assessed and found to be dyslexic. It explained everything! It didn't take away the time and years of not feeling clever or having to work ten-to-the-dozen to get to where I wanted academically. At least I knew why I found things hard.

Teaching: A snapshot of my 20s

I did mechanical engineering in French at Sheffield University in the early noughties. I was going to be a chartered engineer. In the end, it wasn't the best pathway for me; I found that I wanted to work in a setting where interactions and relationships were dynamic throughout the day. I wanted to work with young people and engage them in learning, so I did teacher training in Sheffield and then started working at some challenging schools in Barnsley. Working in Barnsley was amazing, but it certainly wasn't an easy option. There were some difficulties in the wider communities where I worked, meaning engagement with the school was not always easy for the young people and their families. Literacy and numeracy attainment among the wider population was lower than national averages so working to support families and children brought some extra layers of challenge.

In the schools where I worked, young people often said that they didn't like to read or that it was a chore for them. Others struggled substantially with decoding, so accessing the curriculum itself was very difficult for them. That is not to say that they were not clever or able; they just needed help accessing the written word. The position of helplessness and 'feeling a bit thick' was part of the journey for those young people, just like it was for me, but they didn't necessarily have the support I did at home. So it started me off on a journey that landed me here!

30 Plus (a few)

Sitting in a café in Cusco in 2012, I decided to apply for PhDs. I frequently read consultations from the government, and they often implicated people with 'Prof' or 'Dr' in front of their names. So fueled by the idea that I wanted to do useful work around supporting people with dyslexia, I applied for PhD programmes, and the University of Bath accepted me. I was supported by the most wonderful supervisors and friends during my PhD. I graduated in 2017, having focused on the experiences of young people, their families and teachers in regard to support for dyslexia in a mainstream school.

During my PhD, the people around me knew I had dyslexia, and I was supported through it by people and structures adapting for me. I was consistently treated with kindness and grace when I had moments of weakness. The same wasn't always true at work. However, in the last school I worked at, people were amazing, and so it was with a heavy heart I left there to work more on research and policy relating to SEND and dyslexia. I still teach and keep in touch with schools through professional and personal networks- it is something so important to me!

Dyslexia from the outside

Over the last few years, I have been working on understanding how to support dyslexic young people effectively from the perspective of young people themselves and their families and educators. This section of the article will link different elements of my work to how young people with dyslexia can be supported in various settings. I suggest relatively quick, low-cost applications and other more costly and/or resource-intensive strategies.

In the classroom

Any support or strategies implemented should be done with sensitivity and not draw attention to young people .

There are many ways to support young people in the classroom, through tweaks to teaching materials, careful deployment of teaching assistants, and technological solutions. A key feature of the discussions and experience I've had working with young people is that any support or strategies implemented should be done with sensitivity and not draw attention to them. Young people want to have control of the narrative of their own dyslexia sometimes educators disclose their dyslexia as a by-product of support strategies they implement or through active disclosure of their difficulties. Wherever possible, a dyslexia friendly classroom should mean that support is implicit and unobtrusive.

• Dyslexic young people benefit immensely from resources written in a sans serif font, such as Calibri, Tahoma, Abadi or Ariel, where there is space between lines to reduce the density of text.
• Bullet-pointed notes rather than paragraphs can be helpful. Printouts of notes reduce the copying burden so that they can then focus on the content, not decoding or writing.
• If some students find it easier to read from different coloured paper, print on that colour for everyone so that no one stands out.
• Make sure you don't put children on the spot to read or answer questions. Give them time to process and formulate their answers, then let them volunteer to answer. Young people won't feel as pressured, and the responses given will better reflect their understanding of topics.
• Wherever you can, teach young people how to plan so that they have a range of strategies in their repertoire, depending on the type of passage they are writing.
• Give them extra time to complete tasks wherever possible.

These strategies are low cost and can be relatively high impact, and are something tangible to make learning more accessible to all learners.

There are technological solutions that are available as well, which can have a substantial impact on young people's outcomes and ability to access the curriculum.

• Electronic readers can be empowering for young people because they can focus on content and not worry about decoding passages of texts. These readers also facilitate independence for young people as they are able to work without needing to ask others for support.
• Use of a word processor can be liberating for young people, as they can commit their ideas to 'paper' and edit very easily without worrying about their presentation.
• Speech-to-Text can be very powerful and allow them to compose written passages effectively without the focus on dexterity needed for both hand-written and typed work.

However, these measures can sometimes be prohibitively expensive; subsequently, their feasibility will vary according to what every educational setting has at its disposal. Often consistent technological resources for an individual in school are connected to additional funding. However, it is always worth asking your child's school or setting if they can provide it.

At home or around the classroom

• To help young people with spelling, I am a big fan of alphabet fridge magnets. They are a cheap and accessible way to help young people engage with words. They can look at words written on their fridge, decode them, change them, and make silly ones without having to form any letters by hand. They can get a grip on what letters feel and look like, which can ultimately help commit them to memory.
• Cooking, baking, shopping and collecting things from different rooms in the house are slightly sneaky ways of helping children and young people to engage with literacy. They have to read but might not quite realise that they are doing it!
• Playing board games such as Taboo and problem-solving together at home supports literacy development without feeling too heavy. This can be important for some young people if they are bombarded by literacy and find it challenging!

There are times when more structured interventions are helpful for young people. These can be through apps such as Doodle English/Spelling or via online learning platforms such as Nessy, Units of Sound, or IDL, among other things. There are many different apps available, and any support should be carefully coordinated between home and school to ensure consistency and that learners are not overloaded.

Having every error highlighted can be very upsetting .

Young people need to feel supported. When they make mistakes in their work, particularly with spelling, having every error highlighted can be very upsetting. Support from home and school needs to focus on positive elements of written work or reading so that young people know they are succeeding.

More broadly

Building on young people's strengths is key in any element of education. Different people find different areas of learning challenging at different points in their lives. However, young people with dyslexia may feel that they struggle more than others because it can feel very 'visible' when literacy is tricky. Those working to support young people can play a substantial role in helping them see their potential and recognise their value.

Tweaked, conscious, and dyslexia-aware teaching can overcome many barriers, but dyslexia can still make literacy tricky. However, it can also make people creative, empathetic, and amazing out-of-the-box thinkers with determination to do life differently. And that is what we, as adults supporting young learners, need to focus on so our children can flourish and be their best selves!

References

• Ross, Helen (2021). 'I'm Dyslexic but What Does That Even Mean?': Young People's Experiences of Dyslexia Support Interventions in Mainstream Classrooms. Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research, 23 (1), pp. 284–294. [doi.org]
• Ross, H. (2021) 'From A to B and all the way to Z, but what do you do when they can't get there?: Supporting your child at school. 'Invited chapter in the British Dyslexia Association, Dyslexia Handbook 2021. Bracknell, UK: British Dyslexia Association.
• Ross, H (2020) '"It's a Battle!": Parenting and Supporting a Child with Dyslexia' In Dyslexia by J. Glazzard (ed), pp 289-311. [intechopen.com]
• Ross, H (2020) 'Review 2: The support systems for individuals with SpLDs' in Council for Science and Technology, Current Understanding, Support Systems, and Technology-led Interventions for Specific Learning Difficulties Evidence reviews commissioned for work by the Council for Science and Technology London: The Council for Science and Technology. [publishing.service.gov.uk]

Dr Helen Ross

Dr Helen Ross is a fully qualified special needs teacher and former SENCO, working as an independent educational research consultant, specialist assessor and SEND expert. Helen is based in Wilshire, near the city of Bath in the UK, but works internationally and has fully embraced the art of video-calling! Her mission in life is to ease the load for people with dyslexia and other needs; she doesn't want people to feel like she did through school.

Helen is a Co-Vice Chair of the British Dyslexia Association and is Chair of the Wiltshire Dyslexia Association. She has consulted for the British Dyslexia Association, The Committee for Science and Technology, and Wiltshire Local Authority. She also works internationally with various third-sector and commercial organisations with evaluation, consultancy and resource development. She also assesses young people for specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia and supports young people in developing their literacy skills through 1:1 support.

Extracts from Dystinct Magazine