Our good friends at Movement for Good will be drawing charities to receive £1,000 on 18 March.
Please nominate us today so that we are in with a good chance! We can do so much with £1,000 and improve the lives of people with dyslexia.
It takes about 30 seconds. Just click here.
Thank you!
NEC, Birmingham
Friday 15 March to Saturday 16 March
Once again, we are delighted that the Helen Arkell team will be there at this national exhibition dedicated entirely to dyslexia.
The Dyslexia Show is open to all and focuses on awareness and understanding of dyslexia in education, parenting and the workplace.
CEO Andy Cook will be a panellist in the Keynote Theatre at 10:15 on Friday alongside friends and colleagues from Patoss, British Dyslexia Association and Nasen. Book here.
Claire Harvey, Head of Education here at Helen Arkell, will be speaking at 11 on Friday, giving a talk entitled: Gaining reading accuracy and fluency: Why is it so tricky and what can we do to help? Book here.
Rachael McMullen, our Head of Dyslexia Support, and Thea Andrews, our Shop Assistant and Administrator, will be on our stand – Stand C302 – and looking forward to meeting people.
Do pop and see us if you are coming along!
For more details and to book your place, see the Dyslexia Show website.
Supporting Learners with Dyslexia/Specific Learning Difficulties is a very practical online course for Teaching Assistants or anyone supporting learners. You will be shown lots of useful, tried and tested strategies to enable you to support learners effectively. You will also have the opportunity to make attractive, practical resources that you will be able to use with your learners. The course starts on Friday 19 April and comprises six three-hour sessions:
Each session can be booked individually and recordings of sessions will be available if you cannot attend.
Book here
Join us at Worplesdon Golf Club for our annual golf day – a morning of golf followed by a delicious buffet lunch and raffle.
This is a wonderful opportunity to play this stunning course while raising money for those in need of dyslexia support. Worplesdon is one of the classic Surrey heathland courses, laid out in 1908 by J F Abercromby. Why not get a team together for a fun day out?
Please register here.
We look forward to seeing you at Worplesdon Golf Club on May 9th!
There are plenty of reasons to choose a dyslexia assessment from Helen Arkell:
• We have over 50 years of pioneering dyslexia experience.
• The assurance of the highest quality dyslexia assessment; we only employ highly qualified and experienced specialist assessors and educational psychologists. Everyone is required to take Continuing Professional Development courses and workshops to keep their skills up to date.
• Our team of assessors share their experience and knowledge. Each one is peer mentored and supported by Helen Arkell specialist staff.
• We have a variety of options for your dyslexia assessment; where appropriate, you can have an online assessment. If a face-to-face assessment is required, we offer these at a variety of locations across the south of England and the Midlands.
• We can see you quickly! For most assessments, you can be seen as soon as the paperwork is done.
• As well as dyslexia assessments, we offer top-up dyscalculia assessments for primary-age children and non-diagnostic Learning Literacy Assessments for children under eight.
• When we send you an assessment report for your child, we include a personal letter to your child from the assessor, explaining the outcome of the assessment in a way they will understand.
• Helen Arkell is a widely respected name in the world of dyslexia and education. Teachers have confidence in an assessment report’s findings and recommendations.
• You will benefit from a wide range of follow-up services including specialist tuition, parents’ and children’s courses and a range of books and learning resources to help with home study.
We want everyone to be able to access dyslexia support. We offer bursary funding for our dyslexia assessments and some other services to low-income families. We also offer the option to pay for a dyslexia assessment in instalments.
By choosing Helen Arkell, you are helping us to support other children and adults with dyslexia.
Our Patron HRH Princess Beatrice hosts a tea party
Wow, what a day we had on Wednesday! This was the day when our Patron, Her Royal Highness Princess Beatrice, hosted a tea party at St James’s Palace for 30 of the closest supporters of Helen Arkell Dyslexia Charity.
Our mouths dropped open when we saw the Queen Anne State Room, where this intimate gathering was to take place. The sense of occasion and of history, was overwhelming. We just felt so lucky to be there!
Princess Beatrice opened proceedings by talking about her long association with Helen Arkell Dyslexia Charity, initially having received help from the charity before then joining officially as Patron. She spoke openly about her own personal experience of dyslexia, and her determination to ‘change the narrative’ so that people with dyslexia are appreciated for all the many attributes they bring to the table.
In addition to having our Patron present, we were also thrilled to be joined by our Vice Patron, Susan Hampshire CBE, whilst also announcing the news that Roger Jefcoate CBE has joined us as Vice Patron too. The event was all the more poignant because our founder Helen was with us in spirit, through the presence of two generations of her family, including son ‘PJ’ and grandson Peter, who continue to be closely involved.
Our next speaker, Jemima, gave an emotional account of her own personal journey with dyslexia, and the part that Helen Arkell Dyslexia Charity has played along the way. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house when Jemima spoke emotionally of all the support she has received from her number one fan, her Mum, who has absolutely believed in her unique abilities every step of the way. The fact Jemima is in the last few weeks of training before she runs the 26.2 miles of the London Marathon for Helen Arkell is just the icing on the cake!
Princess Beatrice made a beeline for Jemima after she’d spoken, to congratulate her and wish her luck. She also circulated through the whole room, taking time to speak with all our guests and hear about their various different connections with this special charity. She heard how Lynn and Christopher from the Aegis Trust had flown in from Switzerland to join our gathering, and how their foundation have particularly supported the charity’s mission to provide bursary-funded help to disadvantaged families from lower-income backgrounds, as well as training teachers. Her Royal Highness also met David, from the Constable Education Trust, who provided bursary funding for low-income families to receive the help they need, and also sponsored two years of rent for the charity’s premises, where lots of the support of children and adults with dyslexia takes place.
Princess Beatrice then met Theo Paphitis, who has set up a Dyslexia Bursary from which training is provided to State School teachers across the UK, delivered by the Helen Arkell team of experts. She wished Theo well when she learned that he’s boosting donations to the Charity by personally challenging himself to do the cross-Pennines walk in May. She also met many others in the room who are likewise putting their bodies on the line by undertaking challenge events for the charity, or who have signed up to be members of the Friends of Helen Arkell club.
As she was about to say her goodbyes, she stopped for a chat with our brilliant volunteers Vickie and Linda, whose contribution involves anything and everything to support the charity, from stuffing envelopes to serving teas and coffees at the charity’s events. This time, however, the roles were reversed and Vickie and Linda were waited on hand and foot alongside all our other guests.
The two hours of the tea party flew by, and then it was time to make our way back through the impressive corridors of St James’s Palace, out through the ancient gates, and capture some last selfies outside before heading home. This event will live in the memories of the Helen Arkell community for a very long time, and reinforces our determination that, between all of us in a big team effort, we will not only help more and more people with dyslexia across the UK in the coming years, but in particular we will help more and more who are from disadvantaged communities and would not otherwise receive the support they need.
Onwards and upwards!
Andy
We are delighted to be working with our colleague, Dr Cathy Manning and her colleagues at the University of Reading, on a collaborative research project asking people with dyslexia, and those people who support them, what are their research priorities about dyslexia. This will help inform the direction of future research efforts and guide our focus to those areas that matter most to the dyslexia community.
We are looking for people who are aged 18 years or over who:
The nature of this practical research will include you completing a brief questionnaire and being invited to a focus group (online or face-to-face) with 5 to 7 others. You will be asked some questions about your views on dyslexia research and what you would like to be researched in the future. The session will last around an hour.
If you are interested in participating, or would like to find out more, please contact Dr Cathy Manning (c.a.manning@reading.ac.uk; 0118 378 3454), Raveen Rayat (r.rayat@student.reading.ac.uk), Ella Callus (e.m.callus@student.reading.ac.uk) or Dr Holly Joseph (h.joseph@reading.ac.uk). Please note, that by getting in touch to find out more, you are not committing to participate in the study.
We look forward to hearing from you!
Martyn is a lecturer and Ph.D. student at the University of Greenwich, working within the School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences with a focus on Video Games Development. He is currently researching reading and phonics and have developed an augmented reality application designed for phonics instruction. He is reaching out to schools in the hope of gaining expert opinions from teachers and additional learner support professionals regarding the application and its potential applications in teaching phonics.
Are you an education professional who can help with this study? Do you have experience using classroom-based tools and techniques for phonics instruction?
You can access the Participant Information Sheet here
You can find out more about the app and the study here
You can contact Martyn and join the study by emailing him at m.p.broadhead@greenwich.ac.uk
We are very sad to hear about the untimely death of Brendan Wignall. Brendan was Headmaster of Ellesmere College and the long-standing Chair of CReSTeD (The Council for the Registration of Schools Teaching Dyslexia Pupils), an organisation with which we have close ties. He will be very sadly missed and our thoughts are with his family and friends.
We are delighted to be part of Farnham’s Literary Festival once again. Our own Claire Harvey, Head of Education, will be giving a talk entitled How to Foster a Love of Writing – Practical Strategies to Support Struggling or Reluctant Writers.
Please join us on Sunday 3 March, here at 24 West Street, from 10.30. Tickets are £5 with proceeds going to Helen Arkell Dyslexia Charity.
This talk will briefly touch on some of the reasons why many learners with dyslexia and related specific learning difficulties struggle with writing and potentially become reluctant writers. But most importantly, this talk will provide attendees with simple, practical strategies, resources and activities that could be used to help improve the writing development of a weaker writer and encourage even the most reluctant writer to start writing and sharing all their wonderful ideas.
Book your place via EventBrite here.
Find out more about the Farnham Literary Festival here.
Registered charity in England and Wales (1064646). A company limited by guarantee, registered in England and Wales, company number 3432423.
