Aside: I am really interesting in www.stopdyslexianow.com where you say that we should try to encourage children to make their own pictures when reading; it would be great if teachers knew to tell children this.

I can't get over how simple but effective this is - and yes, please do use my anecdotes if they could be of help to you. In fact it would be great to feel that a reference to my experience with you could possibly help others to find such a great way to solve their own similar problems.

In summary, I can now remember telephone numbers, financial numbers and page numbers at will . . .

Such a valuable skill!

A friend of someone at one of our workshops, was diagnosed with severe dyslexia in her early 20s while she was studying for a PhD in History. No one had ever picked up on her dyslexia because she had compensated for it beautifully, although she said she always felt "smart on the inside and dumb on the outside." The day after she was diagnosed, she realized that she was only pursuing a PhD to prove her intelligence, so she dropped out and became a film-maker. There she discovered that she could do something none of her colleagues could: she sees the film in her mind before production even begins, and can run it and forward AND backward and pause it and break it down and whatever else she needs to. She has no use for storyboards and index cards and can't understand why everyone else needs them. Her ability to visualize was key in overcoming her dyslexia without help.

Below are some of the amazing testimonials people have sent us, that make fascinating reading.

From our train-the-trainer program
"I had my first 'adult client' the other day. Highly dyslexic, apparently, plus messes up numbers when she's tired.

I asked her about the cat, and found that she always had 3 different views of it, and could move it around quite easily - but couldn't reduce it to just one view. This didn't seem to cause her problems in reading though - she didn't experience text-sickness.

I checked that she could spell CAT backwards, and saw that she had gone visual. Then I went straight onto the balloon exercise - no problem. I was starting to wonder if she did actually have a
problem (I think she'd resolved most of it over her life), so asked her for some words that she struggled with. She came up with words like "psychology", "sincerely vs sincerity", so I showed her how to find the tricky bits and make them jump out.

She was faultless! No problem spelling them backwards, forwards, whatever. The whole thing was over in 15 minutes.

She went away slightly stunned, under orders to practice at home any words she struggled with. She's reported back that she has been doing so, is thrilled with it, and has shown the method to her mother (a special needs teacher) who will try it out on her kids. I've asked to be able to chat with the mother, to try to find some more challenging cases!

I've started writing to some local schools, will let you know how I get on! Thank you…..Pen"

Some quotes from workshops:

"I can now see every word that is being said and I can spell them too"

"This is so easy, isn't it cheating?"

"What I love about this is that it works. It is nothing like the way I have been taught before"

"Being able to visualise is fun and is useful for so many other things too"

"Now I can visualise, I can go back to some of the other language lessons and learn more"

"I tried the initial phase on my daughter. She did fantastically well, spelling cat, dog, sheep, owl, and balloon and I don't know who was more surprised! Her confidence had a real boost. I then didn't do anymore because I intended to make up some cards with nouns on and of course, to read the book! Unfortunately school sent home some horrible history spellings (e.g. religious, infuriated, cathedral, Canterbury etc.). Pushed for time we decided to use your method in the book rather than the old one……..she learnt 8 spellings and achieved 7 in the test……I thought that only missing one from those we had learnt was pretty darn good! Many thanks……Clare" Clare's daughter has both dyslexia and dyspraxia and both of them are so delighted. She later commented in discussion that normally her daughter would have difficulty remembering anything she had learnt the previous evening. Now they drive to school the following morning and she reels off her words and spellings. And she's now using the technique to learn her German vocabulary given to her as homework by the school.

From a Primary School, where we taught all the teachers and learning assistants: "When you started, only a few of the teachers, used visualisation for spelling words. Around 30% knew exactly what you were talking about, but had never thought to question whether the children had the same skills. The rest of the teachers thought you were mad! Within 2 hours you had explained the technique and they could all do it. As you say, "don't believe me, go and try it!" They did and were amazed just how well it worked with their children and so quickly"

from one of Olive's 1-1 coaching sessions

"I met a delightful client recently, KT, aged 17, who had been diagnosed as dyslexic at around 12 years old. I dislike labels so I asked her what she would she like to be able to do better.

KT reported that she had poor comprehension skills, poor short term memory, couldn't spell and had to read sentences 4/5 times before she got the meaning and had any chance of remembering what she read. KT has recently read the first 5 pages of a book several times and still couldn't remember it.

When she was younger she had tried DAT and the "Toe by Toe", that are repetitive techniques. DAT had seems to help her balance and but neither of them had been very good for words. In exams KT has a scribe and a reader for difficult words.

Her dream was to be a primary school teacher, but she was painfully losing that dream as nobody would, in her teacher's words "want a teacher for their child who spelt so poorly"

I talked with her about her ART, she could draw an object in front of her and had done some lovely modern Art but found drawing/painting something from memory like a field of cows just impossible.

She has done quite well in Maths but mental arithmetic was a complete "no go area". She was studying English at advanced level.

Her balance improved when someone taught her not to look at he feet and to look up. It is the same when someone starts to drive a car, you don't look at the bonnet you need to look at the road ahead. In addition if you spend your time looking at your feet you are "in your feelings" no doubt running an internal dialogue about how poor your balance is and how difficult it is to walk.

In just 2 hours KT had mastered visual spelling, she could spell words like dinosaur, dyslexic and gorgeous forwards and backwards. She knew how to visualise stories, so that she would be able to remember them, do comprehension and remember lists of shopping and the like. She would also be able to use her visual memory if she wanted for Art. She also realised she could write on paper without looking at the paper - an invaluable skill when you have a lot of notes or homework to write down from a blackboard.

Whenever she successfully visualised a word she grinned and laughed and the whole session was great FUN. She is now looking forward to a career perhaps as a teacher, and possibly as a special needs co-ordinator - she really understands what a difference the visualisation skills in Seeing Spells Achieving can make.

She was grinning from ear to ear and just said "this is so easy, no longer hard work".

AND FINALLY
The following excerpt was taken from the :Economic and Social Research Council, Seminar Series -
Why leave school? Why stay on? The dilemma facing 16 year olds and its policy implications.
A program of research undertaken at the Centre for Longitudinal Studies for the Basic Skills Agency usefully helps us to see where the origins of poor educational attainment lie. At the heart of poor achievement at school is the failure to acquire the basic skills of literacy and numeracy. Early leavers are found at twice the level among adults with poor basic skills compared with those whose skills are average or good - 80 per cent compared with 40 per cent (Figure 3) (Ekinsmyth and Bynner, 1994; Bynner and Parsons, 1997).
The origins of basic skills difficulties lie in a range of factors . . . . . The first signs of the difficulty can be seen, however, in developmental tasks that are poorly mastered even before school is entered. Failure to acquire visual motor skills, as revealed by a copying-designs test, turns up as a strong predictor of adult literacy and numeracy difficulties, the effects of which are evident even when qualifications are taken into account (Bynner and Steedman, 1995, Parsons and Bynner, 1998).