Teach-Secondary-Issue-14.5

86% of educators state that the pandemic continues to negatively impact pupil achievement Source: Survey of approximately 9,000 teachers, middle leaders, SLT and headteachers by ParentPay Group If coloured overlays were a cure for dyslexia, we’d be stockpiling acetates instead of adapting teaching. It’s a comforting idea that a simple colour adjustment can clear up reading difficulties – but this glosses over the black-and- white truth that dyslexia is primarily an issue of auditory and memory processing, not visual perception. Clinging to the overlay myth risks distracting us from what pupils actually need. ARE OVERLAYS DAMAGING? Before the overlay defenders stage an intervention, let me be clear. Coloured overlays and pastel paper can genuinely help students who experience visual instability (also known as visual stress). This is not about acuity – indeed, some within this group may have 20/20 vision – but rather how the eyes behave. These pupils will often describe words that run like rivers across the page. It’s a valid and very real experience, and one best discussed with an optometrist. Moreover, pastel backgrounds on paper, screens, displays and, yes, overlays, often can help. At the very least, they’ll certainly do no harm. The problems arise when we describe suchmeasures as a ‘ dyslexia intervention ’. If you know, or suspect that a student has dyslexia, then overlays are unlikely to make a meaningful difference for them. What can cause harm is assuming their needs are being met by coloured paper, rather by addressing the core difficulties typically found within someone’s auditory processing and working memory. WHAT SHOULDWE DO INSTEAD? Small tweaks to teaching can be transformational for students with dyslexia, especially when they reduce pressure on working memory (which we use to briefly store information when processing it in order to perform a task). Think of it as a Post-It note – something that’s fragile, and not intended to store large volumes of information for prolonged periods. If our working memory capacity is reduced – as it often can be, due to dyslexia and other types of neurodivergence – then the more auditory information you’re asked to hold in your mind, the more vulnerable that information is going to be. As teachers, our challenge is to reduce this load. Students with dyslexia will often benefit from visual support for their verbally expressed ideas, concise and meaningful captions, and well- organised information that’s personally engaging (since we know that memory works best when information is made personal). They need bite-sized chunks, not information overload. Boring or dry information can be turned into actions or characters. Use visuals, sound and video clips as stand-ins for that mental Post-it that keeps flying away. Build in time to think, talk and review, and explicitly teach how to take meaningful and useful notes. SO – DO OVERLAYS REALLY WORK? It can be hard to shift your mindset. If you’ve always used overlays with dyslexic pupils, then you might have found that they do make a difference. I can promise you this, however – that if you direct your energy towards strategies aimed at supporting working memory, then you won’t just be helping your dyslexic learners. You’ll benefit every student in the room. LOUISE SELBY HASWORKED IN SEND FOR 25 YEARS, AND IS PRESENTLY A FREELANCE SPECIALIST TEACHER, ASSESSOR, TRAINER AND CONSULTANT, ASWELL AS AUTHOR OF THE BOOKS MORPH MASTERY AND ALL ABOUT DYSLEXIA An increasingly popular view in recent years has been that anti-racist activism and other progressive movements have had a chilling effect on freedom of speech in education settings. A new research project undertaken at the University of Birmingham, however, has examined the issue differently. As Karl Kitching, a professor of public education who co-led the project, explains, “Support for child and youth ‘free speech’ is in principle part of education policy in England’s schools, yet no study has directly enquired into how expression for young people is formed, enabled, and limited through the school system. Our study was designed to address this gap.” Based on extensive interviews with national and local policymakers, lesson observations and survey work (encompassing 3,156 Y10 students and 214 teachers), the study (see tiny.cc/ts145-LL1) found that young people in a racial or religious minority at their school were often inclined to not discuss their experiences of discrimination, or wider social and political views with their teachers. Black and Asian young people were also ‘2.5 times more likely’ to disagree that the histories of people sharing their racial or ethnic background were being taught accurately at their school. According to co-lead Reza Gholami, professor of sociology of education, “Our findings refute the idea that these issues are taught about in ideologically charged ways that prevent people from expressing their opinions..we found that schools that do not talk about these issues are less likely to have teachers who present several sides of an issue or listen to young people.” THE OVERLAYS MYTH CLOSE-UPON... 77 teachwire.net/secondary L E A R N I N G L A B