This year is the 60th anniversary of International Literacy Day and this year’s theme 'Literacy for people, the planet and prosperity' reminds us that literacy is a fundamental human right and is vital for a peaceful, stable future.
Literacy is a journey which first begins with very young children as they listen, observe, notice and respond to language, images and text. It continues into the early years and school settings where learning begins to become more structured and planned.
Literacy builds on what has come before in the journey; a strong foundation of having access to books, pictures and language continues with structured teaching of encoding and decoding skills and the ability to extract meaning from text.
We have come a long way in how we teach reading and writing, and more teachers and schools are now embracing evidence-based approaches rather than simply adopting a ‘wait and see’ approach.
For students who have dyslexia, the International Day of Literacy takes on a particular importance. As schools and teaching teams come together to talk about what it means to have strong literacy skills, it is also a chance to do so much more to support students with dyslexia.
We know that around 8-15 per cent of students have dyslexia, a learning difference with a neurobiological origin that this impacts they way they learn to read, write, spell.
Alongside challenges with learning and literacy, students with dyslexia may also be skilled at creative problem solving, innovative big picture thinking and visual spatial tasks.
Whole school approaches
Working together as a whole school can be a powerful way of making sure students who have dyslexia experience a consistent, informed approach to their teaching and learning.
It means they can come into any classroom in the school knowing that dyslexia is recognised and understood. They can be confident that accommodations are in place to support their learning, and that teachers know that a dyslexia diagnosis simply requires a different way of teaching, with a strong focus on success and achievement.
A whole school approach also means that everyone in the team has similar training and support as they learn to provide excellent teaching for students with dyslexia.
A whole-school approach means consistent teaching that recognises issues like cognitive load, working memory and learning differences like dysgraphia that can sit alongside dyslexia and make a difference to learning for children.
Being left to fail as a result of drawing a return to the whole language approach in the lottery of teachers and classes for a year is simply not an option.
Student empowerment
As students with dyslexia get older, they become more able to engage in planning their own learning journey. They are able to advocate for their own needs and preferences, and they can talk more easily to teachers about tools and strategies that work for them.
Simple techniques like taking a screen shot of a set of notes, sharing lesson plans, pre-reading notes prior to a lesson or changing the font and layout of a page to reduce visual clutter can all make a difference to how easily students can learn.
Sharing the experience of discovering what strategies work best alongside an evidence-based approach to reading, writing and spelling helps build a stronger school-wide approach too.
Placing students with dyslexia at the centre of the planning and lesson design cycle highlights to everyone that this is a learning challenge we can and will tackle together.
International Literacy Day is a great chance to come together in teams across the school at all the levels which make a difference; from those one-on-one conversations which change something important in the classroom through to quality teacher training and a whole school approach that values evidence, knowledge and skill, literacy celebrations can be a vital part of new beginnings.
