Dyslexia Awareness Week
This week we have celebrated Dyslexia in school. The week began with some of our year 6 dyslexic pupils presenting a film about themselves, their struggles and strengths to years 3-6.
In addition to this some members of staff attended an event held by Dyslexia Gibraltar at Theatre Cafe.
We ended the week with Go Red for Dyslexia where all pupils and staff wore a touch of red and took part in some fun activities to raise awareness.
World Dyslexia Day website.
Thank you to one of pupils for making this video raising awareness of World Dyslexia Day on 8th October.
What is dyslexia?
People with dyslexia have trouble matching the letters they see on the page with the sounds those letters and combinations of letters make. And when they have trouble with that first step in learning to read, all the other steps are harder.
Dyslexic children and adults struggle to read fluently, spell words correctly and learn a second language, among other challenges. But these difficulties have no connection to their overall intelligence. While people with dyslexia are slow readers, they often, paradoxically, are very fast and creative thinkers with strong reasoning abilities.
With the right support, everybody with dyslexia can fulfil their dreams. Many successful dyslexics believe that their success is thanks to their dyslexic skills. For example, scientist and Novel Prize winner Carol Greider, has said that although standardized tests were a great challenge and almost ended her scientific career before it began, she believes that the dyslexic gave her the skill to be able to “pull more information out of context and put together difficult ideas” and this led to the discovery that won her the Nobel Prize in 2009.