Read it... write

FOUR soft, cricket ball-sized beanbags are lined up on the windowsill. They are covered with multicoloured cloth and on each one is stitched a single word or phrase. Ideas, says one; Logical Order, another. Paragraph and Writing, the final two.

What are they? I ask senior dyslexia teacher Marylyn Dent.

Marylyn picks them up. A teaching aid, she says. She uses them with dyslexic teenagers struggling to be able to write coherent essays. "I say 'take these four balls and juggle them,'" she explains. "Of course, they can't. So then I say OK, juggle that one (the Ideas ball)."

The point is to demonstrate to the youngsters that if they are going to be able to produce a well-structured, well-argued essay, they have to tackle one aspect at a time. Try to deal with everything at once and, for many dyslexic young people, it would be too much.

Break it down, juggle one ball at a time, and it becomes much more possible, says Marylyn. So she asks her pupils to think first about what they want to say (the ideas); then the logical order they want the points to be made in; then how they might arrange the points in paragraphs; and only then how they are going to write it. "That way they will manage a lot better than if they just launch into it," she says.

This idea of breaking learning down into manageable chunks is central to the teaching of children with dyslexia. The condition is caused by tiny differences in brain organisation which lead to language difficulties and problems in dealing with verbal codes or symbols.

A dyslexic person may struggle with reading (which involves turning written symbols into speech) or with spelling and writing (which involves turning spoken words into written symbols). They may also have short-term memory problems and difficulty in organising their time - and in some cases problems with handling mathematical symbols as well as words.

All of which means that for a dyslexic child - who may in all other ways be very bright and creative - trying to keep up in a normal classroom among children who don't have the same problems can be almost impossible.

Result: they lose confidence, become downhearted, and fall further behind their classmates.

That is exactly what happened with Adam Pottage. He's a bright little boy with an eager, happy face - but for some reason, says mum Bernadette, he just couldn't learn to read, and kept falling further behind his friends at school.

"He used to get very despondent, and it affected his confidence," says Bernadette from Heworth.

Things came to a head when he was seven. Bernadette was trying to read with him at home. "There was a little boy called Adam in the book - and he couldn't even recognise his own name," she says.

Bernadette contacted the Dyslexia Institute and took Adam for tests. He was diagnosed as having dyslexia, and began to attend special classes three hours a week at the institute's teaching centre in York. Bernadette says the change was amazing. "He felt so much better about himself. I remember one thing he said when he first came was 'I love going to see Mrs Parker his Dyslexia Institute teacher Jenny Parker because she understands me.'"

He has made huge strides in the last couple of years, Bernadette says. "He couldn't read or write at all when he first came. He enjoyed stories, but we always had to read to him. Now, his reading is average for his age group and he's reading really well. If he can just continue to be average through his school life, I shall be thrilled."

The problem for youngsters such as Adam in too many mainstream schools, Marylyn says, is that they simply can't be given the time and individual attention they need.

There is no cure for dyslexia but, with the right help, children can learn strategies for overcoming many of the difficulties it causes. "But it is not just more of the same that's given to a slow learner that is needed," she says. "Help has to be targeted at learners who are sometimes very able but have got a particular difficulty."

Children being taught at the institute follow an individual programme tailored to their own needs and which they can follow at their own pace. The teaching is highly structured and uses a multi-sensory approach to make it easier for what they have learned to "stick". That means, for example, using brightly-coloured plastic letters to familiarise themselves with the alphabet - letters they can pick up, hold and feel while a teacher repeats the name of the letter to them.

"One of the big problems is their short- term memory," says Marylyn says. "So they are seeing it, hearing it, feeling it, using all their senses to input that information into their long-term memory."

As children develop, they work on sequencing - putting the letters of the alphabet into the right order, for example - and then higher-order activities such as arranging ideas into a logical order. For that, "mind maps" often help, Marylyn says - big, spider-like "maps" in which ideas are jotted down on a piece of paper and linked together with lines. "It reduces the memory load, and enables them to see a sequence," says Marylyn.

The emphasis is on breaking down the learning tasks into manageable chunks so the children don't get overloaded.

In the past, says Marylyn, many dyslexic children were dismissed as "thick"'. Things are far better today and some schools cope much better. But even so, she says, there are still far too many children who are not achieving their potential because they are not getting the specific help they need.

The good news is that the Dyslexia Institute's teaching centre in York has just moved from its pokey basement in a building off Bootham to a custom-built centre attached to the Department of Psychology at York University. There are two bright classrooms, two assessment rooms where psychologists can work with children to assess the extent of their problems, and staff offices.

The centre has three teachers. "But now we can expand to suit demand," says Marylyn. Which means that in future, more youngsters like Adam can be helped to reach their potential. "By the time they get to 14, many children with the sorts of problems Adam had start throwing in the towel," says his mum Bernadette. "When he was younger, his future looked bleak. This has given him a future."

The new dyslexia teaching and assessment centre at the Henry Wellcome Building for Psychology at the University of York is an outpost of the Harrogate Dyslexia Institute. Telephone 01423 522111 for more information.

Dyslexic children generally need between one-and-a-half and three hours of special tuition a week, plus their regular classes at school. The Dyslexia Institute is a charity. It has to charge for classes, but has some bursary funds that less-well-off parents can apply for to help with the cost of tuition.

Visit the institute's website at www.dyslexia-inst.org.uk for more information about the condition.

Updated: 09:49 Monday, July 21, 2003