We have summer dates for our personalised learning one-to-one tuition sessions!
Book as many or as few as you like and give your child a boost in study skills, literacy, writing, spelling and memory and learning techniques. Maths sessions are also available.
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
Yasmin, an MSc Psychology student at Oxford Brookes University is studying dyslexia in bilingual students. Could you take part in her research? Just complete an anonymous 15-minute questionnaire; you can stop at any time.
Yasmin is looking for students who are:
We love to support research into various aspects of dyslexia and, where we can, we pass the findings on. Research benefits us all so thank you for taking part!
We are delighted to launch a new assessment service for children who are too young for a dyslexia diagnostic assessment.
Our Literacy Learning Assessment is aimed at children in Years 1 and 2 (and early into Year 3) who are working below the level of their peers and whose progress is giving cause for concern.
This new service offers a non-diagnostic assessment, by a Helen Arkell Specialist Teacher of reading, writing and spelling skills, as well as some cognitive processing, in order to identify strengths and areas of development, as well as recommendations to support teaching and learning. As a result, appropriate early intervention can be delivered, rather than children having to wait until they are old enough for a formal dyslexia assessment.
If you feel this would be useful for your child, there are more details and you can make an enquiry here.
We are able to offer financial assistance for this service to families on lower incomes.
Here are some ways to help your child learn the spelling of tricky words at home
Most children have difficulty spelling some common words, such as ‘does’, ‘your’, ‘because’.
Top tip – whichever methods you use, try to get your child to say the letter name each time they write or select a letter, and then to say the whole word once it is complete.
Get your child to practise writing the word
Build the word
Write the letters of the word (and some extra letters that are not in the word) on individual pieces of paper. Place them around the room/garden. Get your child to collect the letters in the correct order to spell the word.
Put the pieces of paper on the floor and ask your child to jump on them in the right order to spell the word – shouting out the letter name each time they jump on the letter and then shouting the word when they have finished.
Get your child to make the word in play-dough, plasticine, Wikki stix, Lego, spaghetti – anything you have in the house.
Build up automatic knowledge of the spelling
Time your child for 30 seconds and see how many times they can write the word correctly and legibly. Repeat and see if they can beat a previous record.
Have fun and if you’d like to learn more about helping your child with their learning, our course full of practical tips for parents is now available online – full details here.
Email enquiries@helenarkell.org.uk if you have any questions.
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