Dyslexia Awareness Week will take place from 5 – 11 October 2020. This is an annual event aimed at furthering the understanding, and raising awareness of dyslexia; what it means, what it is and what can be done to support people who have dyslexia or dyslexic tendencies.
This year, the national focus is on looking at the power of dyslexia to create ideas, to encourage dyslexics to think outside the box and use their often amazing creativity to make a valuable contribution to the world around them, with the hashtag #DyslexiaCreates.
At Barrow Hills we also recognise, however, that dyslexia can create huge challenges and barriers for some of our children. To promote the #DyslexiaCreates theme, there is a display outside Mrs Goedkoop’s room showing a whole range of creative personalities through history from Einstein to Whoopi Goldburg to Churchill with aim of inspiring the children, both those with dyslexia and those who don’t, to see the huge value that harnessed dyslexia can give to the world!
As part of the fabulous range of tailored support by staff at Barrow Hills, all levels and styles of readers are catered for in the library.
One particular range of books to highlight are the great range of Barrington Stoke books that we have available to be borrowed. These have been especially designed to be super-readable with dyslexia friendly font and specially chosen paper colour and the storylines have been developed to give a whole range of genres and age appropriateness. They even produce a range of dyslexia friendly abbreviated versions of some classic novels such as ‘Of Mice and Men’, ‘Jane Eyre’ and ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ which may be worth noting now as some of these appear later as GCSE texts too. Another range of books that often appeal to the dyslexic reader are The Diary of a Wimpy Kid and the Tom Gates series (and other similarly illustrated books) where the text is broken up with comical illustrations which assist the reader with context but which do not make them feel patronised.
Below is a quick article called ‘Thinking Outside the Box’ which you may like to have a look at, especially if you have a child who struggles with reading in the traditional sense.
I would also thoroughly recommend that you watch The Write Off’s programme on Channel 4, hosted brilliantly by Sandi Toksvig. This follows the progress of a group of adults who overcome the one thing that has always held them back and lifts the stigma around illiteracy.
Mrs Emmett
Librarian