According to the International Federation of Dyslexia and Dyscalculia Associations, 1 in 5 people are affected by dyslexia. This is a learning difference that affects an individual’s ability to read and spell words.
Dyslexia affects more males than females
You may have heard that dyslexia affects more males than females. This is true.
You do not grow out of dyslexia
Dyslexia is a lifelong language-based learning difference that affects the brain’s ability to process written language.
It is the most common learning difference
Dyslexia is a learning difference that affects the way you think, read, and write. It is the most common learning difference, affecting one in five people.
80% of those in Special Education are dyslexics
People who are dyslexic often have difficulty processing what they see on the page or hear in their head into words they can understand and say out loud.
Some of the most brilliant people had dyslexia
Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, Winston Churchill and Thomas Edison were all dyslexic. They had trouble reading and sometimes writing.
Erik Arnesen, a music teacher at a New York City public school (PS 18) in Park Terrace, Manhattan, remembered hearing how some children had difficulty decoding printed letters that looked alike when reversed. At the time, he only had a vague idea that dyslexia meant seeing letters and numbers jumbled, out of order, or turned around. He decided to write a song about the subject, and subsequently created a video with the children singing and acting it out. His YouTube channel is called Mr. Arnesen School Songs and features the children starring in several musically inspired educational videos. Mr. Arnesen’s YouTube channel also has songs about opposites, manners, science, music, and more. It can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/user/fearless5009
Albert Einstein, Nikola Tesla, Michael Faraday, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Robin Williams, Henry Ford, Da Vinci, Newton, Walt Disney, Thomas Edison, Picasso, John Lennon, Winston Churchill, Alexander Bell, Thomas Jefferson, John F Kennedy, Woodrow Wilson, George Washington, the Wright Brothers, Mohammed Ali and many more.
Now for the famous dyslexic people who are alive:
Richard Branson, Cher, Whoopi Goldberg, Tom Cruise, Andy Warhol, Anthony Hopkins, Ozzie Osborne, Steven Spielberg, Sylvester Stallone and many more.
What do they all have in common? They struggled at school. Yes, they did not get A’s or 10 out of 10 and yet they became a genius in their field. So, why?
The reason why dyslexia is a gift is that we use the right side of our brains, Sally Shaywitz of Yale University put dyslexic and non-dyslexic people in a study using an fMRI tunnel and proved this.
About 10% of the world’s population suffers from the gift of dyslexia and has this right brain gift that is fit for creativity. In a study, the Cass Base Business school in the UK showed that dyslexic people are five times more likely to be innovators compared to non-dyslexic people and this is why: We can see things that others cannot.
So, the key is to know you have a gift and not worry about not doing so well at school, but rather concentrate on doing things you excel at and love. Non-dyslexic people that make up about 90% of society suffer from the gift of using the left brain, which is great for sequential things.
So, great for the educational system and getting A’s and 10 out of 10. This is a massive gift in its own right.
Yin and Yang. The ancient Chinese knew that for every positive, there must be a negative. In science, for every negative, there must be a positive.
So, if you believe in Yin and Yang, know that because you are struggling at school means that you have a huge gift on the other side. It turns out that, as discussed before, it is because we, as dyslexic people, use the right side of the brain.
For the full video that explains above in more detail:
Does your child love to doodle and draw? Do they learn best through pictures? Here’s a surprising way to nurture their creative skills and build their confidence – it’s called cartooning!
Meet artist, Sarah Jane Vickery. She’s taken the skills she learned during her own struggles with dyslexia, to develop Cartoon Club – a program that helps kids build confidence through the ageless art of cartooning.
Cartoon Club started out as an after-school activity in local schools but quickly grew in popularity with the children to become a program of weekly online art classes as well as a Cartoon Club Game and Online Course.
Sarah believes that a creative mindset is not just about thinking outside of the box and inventing new things, it’s also key to expressing thoughts, processing ideas and telling your own story. These are the tools that children develop by cartooning. By fostering the skills of creative thinking, children build confidence to adapt and change, not just when they are drawing, but in everyday life too.
In order to reach more children, Sarah has developed the Introduction to Cartooning Online Course. Based on her Cartoon Club class, it’s more than just a step-by-step instruction on how to draw. Sarah explains how she approaches each drawing, how she plays with ideas to design interesting characters, and the types of questions she asks herself when she get stuck or her picture isn’t working out how she wants. Her goal is to give children the skills to be creative with their drawings and have the confidence to solve challenges when they’re working on their own.
Cartooning has the connotation of being light-hearted or even silly, but it’s that very freedom to think outside of the box that Sarah says enables students to free their imagination and come up with new ideas they never thought possible. It’s a real confidence boost for dyslexic children who are often very strong visual learners.
The Online Course has lots of creative challenges for children. In one exercise, Sarah shows children how to brainstorm to develop their ideas from a simple starting topic into a complete cartoon scene. That’s another great thing about cartooning – you don’t have to take so seriously that it stifles in your creativity. In fact, it is quite the opposite. Parents say that they are amazed at how imaginative their children are and what they are able to produce from the topics Sarah presents in Cartoon Club.
Sarah says that “as someone with dyslexia myself, I have always struggled to communicate in words. Drawing and cartooning have always made it so much easier. I find it’s this combination of brainstorming, juxtaposing different ideas and translating that into a cartoon narrative picture, that enables me to develop and communicate my ideas so much more effectively.”
If you’d like to learn more, Sarah has given us a little taste of what you’ll learn in the Online Course. If you’re wondering if it’s right for you, you can grab your pencil and have a go at drawing along with her in the FREE Course Taster. This sample exercise is one on Capturing Expression. It’s about 20 minutes long and all you need is a pencil and paper. It’s a lot of fun and you’re going to be surprised at what your children can produce. You can have a go too!
Online Course Description
This is an online cartooning course for anyone who loves to doodle and get creative. If you want to not only improve your drawing skills but also create your own cool characters and draw fantastic cartoon scenes, this is the course for you!
Who’s the Course for?
The course is aimed at both beginners, who have not done a lot of cartooning before, as well as keen doodlers who want to develop their own style. This online cartooning course is based on my Cartoon Club for Kids (ages 8-12) and Discover Your Inner Cartoonist (adult) online art classes. So no matter your age, if you enjoy putting pen to paper, I think you’ll be surprised at just how creative you can be!
What will you learn?
The fun way to be drawing simple cartoons in no time
The Dragon Defenders series of five middle grade novels underwent its worldwide release on Amazon in February this year with an overhaul of its text to make it dyslexic-friendly. In New Zealand, where author James Russell resides, The Dragon Defenders series are something of a phenomenon, outselling many of the major children’s book franchises. Over 50,000 copies have been sold in a country where just 5000 books constitutes a best-seller. The books are unique in that they include digital content by way of the use of an app. Readers download the free app AR Reads (AR stands for ‘augmented reality’) from the App Store or Google Play onto any device. In each of the Dragon Defenders novels, there are four or five pages where readers can use the app – marked with a symbol of a tablet or a phone on the bottom. Readers point their device at that page, and the digital content is unlocked. It may be that a code is cracked before the reader’s eyes, or a video plays a message from the bad guy. It can be a 2D or 3D animation, a news story or a simple audio file where the user overhears a telephone conversation.
“No one had seen anything like it before,” says Russell. “It was intended as a bit of fun, but then something amazing happened. I started to receive a huge amount of emails from parents saying it was incredibly effective with their reluctant readers; the augmented reality was drawing them through the book.” Many of those emails came from parents whose children were dyslexic, and they were overjoyed to see their children voluntarily reading for pleasure.
View of the AR app in use
“I knew nothing about dyslexia,” says Russell. “Then, our son was diagnosed, and suddenly a whole world was revealed. A chance meeting with a dyslexia advocate in a library in Christchurch resulted in me learning what sorts of fonts, spacing, kerning and justification made reading more accessible for dyslexic children and adults. My first thought was: why isn’t this universal, used everywhere, widely known? It’s the very definition of a no-brainer.” Russell sought advice from specialists and made the changes to his Dragon Defenders series, so that when they were released onto the global platform Amazon, they were immediately accessible to those readers.
They’re also available on Kindle, and Russell was delighted to find that the app works just as well on e-reader screens.
See more at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lh9zWzt9pMY He also set about narrating and recording the first two books of the series as audiobooks, which are now available on all audiobook retail platforms.
Temple Grandin was nonverbal until the age of four. Today, she is a professor of animal science at Colorado State University, and one of the leading authorities on livestock facility design, as well as an autism awareness advocate.
Temple Grandin shares 4 tips on how to deal with sensory overload.
1. Allow protective gear like headphones part of the time
2. Help de-sensitize through experiences where the person is allowed to control exposure
3. Slow down when you talk
4. Check out the clinical study: “Environmental Enrichment as an Effective Treatment of Autism”
Parenting coach, John Hicks, answers questions from parents of dyslexic children about self-esteem and dyslexia taken from the Dyslexia Show Virtual webinar “Why is it important for a child with dyslexia to have good self-esteem?” on the 7th May 2020.
https://youtu.be/LK_dcW2t3Qg
Key Links:
The Studying With Dyslexia Blog article – www.studyingwithdyslexiablog.co.uk/blog/dyslexia-show-virtual-questions-about-self-esteem
http://DyslexicAdvantage.org “Don’t listen to what anyone tells you what you can or cannot do…there is no dyslexia ceiling. Doesn’t exist unless you create it in your own mind.” – MIT Professor of Chemistry and Biology Catherine Drennan, PhD. Dr Drennan also shares how she is able to read molecular spatial configurations like how she learned to read. The Conference was made possible by a generous grant from the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation
The Easy Reading Card – Easier Reading with System!
Reading is the key to success. Anyone who reads well and who understands what has been read automatically learns the rules of correct spelling.
Precise, accurate reading is a prerequisite for writing and learning. The specific design for children of the Easy Reading Card makes reading easy and fun.
Scientific studies have shown that a majority of individuals that exhibit reading problems are affected by subjective visual perception. When reading, the visual channels have to work precisely timed together so that there is no overlap of visual information.
Science has proven the positive effects of the influences of colors while reading. Especially the color blue leads to a phasic activity of the channels, which leads to an increase in reading achievement, reading comprehension and reading speed. The color thus supports the sub-processes of the visual sensors.
Teachers from around the world are already using the Easy Reading Card when working with children.
