Dyslexic children missing out
The literacy gap for children with dyslexia is widening and New Zealand is about 10 years behind where it should be, a visiting expert says.
Australia’s Dyslexia Association president Jodi Clements says there are too many children with dyslexia ‘‘unidentified and ignored’’ and lacking critical literacy knowledge.
Teachers did not know how to identify dyslexia in children, she said.
‘‘The knowledge is lacking here, just like Australia.’’
Clements is in Palmerston North this week holding a training workshop on multisensory structured language, known as MSL. This is where visual and auditory learning styles, as well as movement, are key to learning language.
The workshop was designed to give teachers the skills, methods and resources to identify and teach children who have dyslexia.
Clements said the approach was becoming the preferred one in Australia, instead of the ‘‘mish-mash of different methods and programmes’’ being taught to children.
‘‘I’ve been told by a lot of [teachers] that New Zealand is about 10 years behind Australia.
‘‘If we don’t get MSL into systems or structured learning into systems, then the gap will be wider.’’
New Zealand could learn from the past education mistakes from Australia and America, she said.
‘‘There needs to be an overhaul and there needs to be compulsory training.’’
About 35 teachers from Queenstown to Auckland are attending the five-day course, and will go on to complete a further 12 or 18 months of study.
Although Clements had been holding the courses for the past 11 years, it was only the her second time teaching them in New Zealand.
A public presentation is being held at Palmerston North Boys’ High School’s Speirs Centre, tonight at 7pm.