Dyslexia Awareness Week runs between 03-09 October. The theme for 2022 is ‘Breaking Through Barriers’ and ‘looks at how those living with dyslexia have overcome obstacles in their lives, this could be during education, work or general day-to-day living’. According to the British Dyslexia Association (BDA): ‘Dyslexia influences at least 1 in 10 people and is a genetic difference in an individual’s ability to learn and process information. Over 6 million individuals in the UK have dyslexia and may not have received a diagnosis. Despite its commonality it is often hidden and those living with dyslexia make countless compromises to ‘fit in’ t...
Happy New Year! Whether you are a regular user of our site or someone who's just signed up, we hope 2019 will be a great year for improving your spelling. Here are some of our favourite blog posts from 2018: We began the year with a tour of our site to help you make the most of Spellzone. What your favourite feature on the Spellzone website? As usual we looked at pairs and groups of confusing words and shared tips and tricks to help you tell them apart. This year we looked at: balmy vs. barmy, by vs. bye vs. buy, capital vs. capitol, father vs. farther vs. further, faun vs. fawn, hair vs. hare, heir vs. air, hoard vs. horde, infer vs. imply, moot vs. mute, and yolk vs...
This week we’re looking at four famous people with dyslexia who flourished in their respective fields. Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath, celebrated for his technological skill and creativity. He is also famous for many of his many paintings including Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. Although there is no way of truly knowing if Leonardo was dyslexic, many researchers have suggested that he may have been. One indication is his use of mirror writing, which is a skill shared by many left-handed dyslexic people. Furthermore, his spelling was often quite irregular, but his illustrations were extremely precise. Read more here. Steven Spielbe...
What is Dyslexia Awareness Week? In Britain, the week between the 3rd and 9th of November marks Dyslexia Awareness Week and this year’s theme is “Dyslexia Matters”. The event aims to raise awareness about how to create a dyslexia-friendly environment in school and the work place. If you think you are in the position to help make your school or workplace more dyslexia-friendly, the British Dyslexia Association have a selection of resources you might find useful. You can find them here. What resources does Spellzone have to support someone with dyslexia? While Spellzone does not claim to be a complete cure all for dyslexics, our spelling course is suitable for dys...
As many of you are already aware, this week is the British Dyslexia Association’s annual Dyslexia Awareness Week (14th-20th October). This week is about raising awareness of dyslexia as a very real and complex disability and something that can potentially affect much more than a person’s ability to read and write. The British Dyslexia Association highlights that dyslexics can also face problems with organization, memorization and mathematics but also reminds us of the strengths that dyslexia can bring. One of these positive traits, common among dyslexics I’ve met is creativity and imagination – a quick browse of the #DyslexiaAwarenessWeek hashtags on Twitter ...
As you may have discerned from our last few posts, Spellzone’s adaptable features make it the perfect spelling resource for a wide range of users from a variety of different fields. If you are a homeschooler, this blog post is for you! Have you thought about incorporating Spellzone into your schooling routine? Today we are going to share some ideas for how you can make the most of Spellzone at home. Spellzone can be accessed from any device with an internet connection, depending for whatever your IT resources you may be. The course units, as well as the games, word lists, and blog, can be viewed on a conventional computer, as well as on a laptop, or mobile device. The ...
Over the last few weeks we have been looking at dyslexics who have excelled in various fields. So far we’ve looked at dyslexic writers, entrepreneurs, and even the famous polymath Leonardo da Vinci. This week we will be flying out to the land of botox and Brangelina – Hollywood! Who is Steven Spielberg? Steven Spielberg is an American filmmaker known for his work as a director, screenwriter and producer. He also co-founded the DreamWorks film studio. Although Spielberg was born in 1946, his dyslexia was not diagnosed until 2007. He is one of the most successful and influential filmmakers in the world. What is Steven Spielberg most famous for? Spielberg’s mo...
This is the second post in our dyslexia series. The first post was on Leonardo da Vinci and you can read it here. On the 19th of June, the winner of the CILIP Carnegie Medal, perhaps the most prestigious prize for children’s fiction in the UK, will be announced. With this in mind, we have decided to share a post about one of our favourite authors. Who is Sally Gardner? Sally Gardner is an award-winning novelist who writes for children and young adults. Her books have sold over two million copies in the United Kingdom. Her career is especially inspiring because Gardner did not learn to read until she was fourteen years old. Throughout school she was badly bullied for being diff...
Over the next few weeks we will feature biographies of dyslexics who have excelled in a variety of fields. Some will be people you’ve heard of, whilst others you may not know. One or two may even have made careers in writing and words. As well as this, we will look at historical figures who had dyslexia and people with dyslexia who are still living and working today. Are there any famous dyslexics that you would like us to write about? Our first post is about a man who, rather than being an expert in just one discipline, was an expert, and indeed innovator, in many. We are, of course, talking about Leonardo da Vinci! Who was Leonardo Da Vinci? Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian Ren...
Last week we blogged about why, despite being difficult, learning to spell is really worth the effort. The Spellzone course will help you get to grips with English spelling rules and their exceptions, but there will always be individual spellings that each of us will find hard to remember. In these situations it can sometimes help to come up with mnemonic. A mnemonic is a memory device. It comes from the ancient Greek word mnemonikos which means ‘mindful’. The ‘m’ at the beginning of the word is silent. Mnemonics can take a variety of shapes, such as rhymes, visual cues, and word associations, but they work best if they are personal to the individual using them....
Richard Branson recently spoke of his extraordinary success and his ways of coping with dyslexia. Interviewed by pupils from Lincoln Castle Academy as part of the BBC News School Report, he said he liked "everything to be simplified". He put some of his success down to being "quite good at delegating and getting really good people around". He continued: "I just don't think people who are dyslexic need worry because they are often really good at other things" he added "They'll realise they've got a problem in some areas but they'll be really good at other things." Incredibly, Branson, one of the world’s wealthiest men, adm...
In September 2012, the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg announced that UK secondary schools will receive £500 of additional ‘Catch-Up Premium’ funding for each Year 7 pupil (aged 11-12 years old) who did not achieve Level 4 or better at Key Stage 2 in reading and/or maths. The aim of this funding is to pay for additional support for these pupils in literacy and numeracy to help them to catch up and access the secondary curriculum more fully. This support is welcome. According to Department for Education figures (from the 2012 Key Stage 2 provisional data and the autumn 2012 School Census data), 13 per cent of UK Year 7 pupils did not achieve level 4 in reading in 2012...
When announcing the schools White Paper, The Importance of Teaching, the Education Secretary Michael Gove´s statement placed the focus firmly onto traditional school values. See: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11822208 https://www.education.gov.uk/schools/teachingandlearning/schoolswhitepaper/b0068570/the-importance-of-teaching/ No doubt there will be many who agree and probably more who will disagree with Mr. Gove´s statement and the contents of the White paper. Whatever the outcome, let´s not forget the one-in-ten pupils who have a specific learning difficulty such as dyslexia. At secondary school one of the main ways in which dyslexia manifests itsel...
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