Supporting Dyslexia: A Parent's Perspective
No parent wants their child to feel excluded or left behind at school. Yet too often this is how students with learning differences are made to feel due to a lack of understanding or support. For Rachel and her son, Owen, this was a daily reality.
That all changed when Owen’s school provided him with the Read&Write, an assistive toolbar that provides support with literacy and study skills.
Read on to hear from Rachel and see the impact this support is having on her son's progress at school.
Summary
- Read&Write gives Owen tools to help him to read, write and engage with learning
- Owen is now better able to focus on understanding the curriculum content and feels less overwhelmed by assignments
Meet Rachel
Her son, Owen is 11 years old and has a diagnosis of dyslexia, dysgraphia and ADHD. This means he faces challenges when it comes to reading, writing, and maintaining focus on tasks. Despite this, Owen is a creative student who enjoys maths, science and art.
The challenges
In this video, Rachel shares some of the ways that Owen’s learning differences have affected his progress and self-esteem at school.
Finding support in assistive tools
Traditional reading and writing tools can be inaccessible to students with dyslexia and dysgraphia. For example, they may be overwhelmed by the volume or layout of words in a physical book, or find gripping a pen difficult for writing long passages of text. In these cases, students can benefit from the flexibility offered by assistive tools.
For the past two years, Owen has received a laptop and specialist software to assist him with literacy tasks. What made the biggest impact on Owen’s learning was receiving Read&Write, a toolbar that provides discreet support with literacy and study skills.
Introducing Read&Write
What was it like introducing Read&Write into Owen's learning support toolkit? In this video, Rachel explains how Owen adapted to a new way of learning.
Using Read&Write
Read&Write acts as a literacy partner for your student, providing tools which help them to understand texts and articulate their own ideas.
First impressions
Rachel describes her son's first impressions of Read&Write and how it boosted his confidence in the classroom.
"He was really surprised at all the things he could do in just one tool."
How Read&Write supports students
Read&Write provides text-to-speech and dictation functions. This means students can have text read aloud to them or have their speech transcribed into text. This enables students to engage with the curriculum and demonstrate their learning without being held back by their literacy skills.
In addition to these features, Read&Write has a suite of tools to help develop a student’s vocabulary, fluency and comprehension.
Helping everyone understand and be understood, with Read&Write.
- Customise the font size and background colour of webpage text
- Create vocabulary lists at the touch of a button
- Develop understanding of new words with audio-picture dictionaries
- Boost writing flow with word prediction
Read&Write helps students maintain focus and remove distractions.
The Simplify feature lets users declutter webpages and simplify text. Owen finds this useful when he is searching for relevant information online. With one click, Read&Write extracts text and images from a webpage into an editable document, removing adverts and other distractions. Students can customise the text size, font and colour to improve readability. They can also engage with this text using other Read&Write features, such as highlighting key terms, creating vocabulary lists, or saving it as an audio file.
The Screen Mask works as a line reader, helping students to focus on one section of text at a time and prevent overwhelm. Students can adjust the size, colour and transparency of the band.
"Assistive software has opened up possibilities for him. He’s better able now to demonstrate his knowledge and present his work in the way he would like."
Lasting impact
Read&Write has become an integral part of Owen's day-to-day learning. It provides him with a suite of tools to support his learning in any task or subject that requires a lot of reading or writing.
Unlocking potential
Before Read&Write, Owen struggled to stay motivated at school. But by giving him tools to help him understand and be understood, he's now realising his potential.
As Read&Write is compatible across different devices, Owen can use it for the work he does at school as well as his homework. This continuous support helps Owen to progress his learning without the need for constant supervision from an adult.
Owen is flourishing with this independence. "It's given him the power to take control over his learning," says Rachel. "All those tasks which he found so overwhelming and challenging to the point that he had really started to dislike learning - they were made so much easier by using Read&Write."
"It's transformative"
Being able to access learning and keep up with his friends has made a huge difference to Owen's school performance and confidence. Rachel talks about the lasting impact Read&Write has had on her son.
"It's given him the power to take control over his learning."
What makes Read&Write so useful is the range of features it offers. It helps students not just with reading and writing, but also with comprehension, vocabulary building, study skills and focus. Its features are customisable and suitable for all age groups.
“I was really fearful about how Owen would manage heading into high school next year and I just feel so much more confident now that he's got a tool like this that will be able to help him do the work he needs to do and really enhance his learning.”
Support literacy, focus and organisation with Read&Write
Suitable for students of all ages, Read&Write is an all-in-one tool designed to help students read, write and study with confidence.
Parents like Rachel are seeing improved engagement and outcomes in their child's learning.
Read&Write helps students to:
- Understand and engage with reading assignments
- Remove background distractions
- Build vocabulary and writing confidence