Parents
Samantha McFarlane
Neurodiversity, dyslexia and inclusive classrooms.
Exploring how the concept of neurodiversity promotes learner centred practices and removes barriers for dyslexic learners in the classroom.
- Universal Design for Learning
- learner centred practice
- Neurodiversity
- Dyslexia
Positioning dyslexia within the neurodiversity space, Sam will explore how Universal Design for Learning fosters learner centred experiences, which can truly build inclusive classrooms. This short session will explore current thinking in neurodiversity, how this links to Universal Design for Learning, and ultimately supports dyslexic learners in the classroom.
Room:
Claire Harvey
Gaining Reading Accuracy and Fluency: Why is it so tricky and what can we do to help
This talk will briefly touch on why reading can be problematic for dyslexic learners, the potentially damaging impact of weak reading accuracy and fluency, methods of assessment for reading skills and the types of errors commonly seen.
We know that many learners with dyslexia struggle to acquire accurate and fluent reading skills, leaving many with long-term difficulties. This talk will briefly touch on why reading can be problematic for dyslexic learners, the potentially damaging impact of weak reading accuracy and fluency, methods of assessment for reading skills and the types of errors commonly seen. But most importantly, this talk will provide attendees with a range of teaching methods, practical strategies and activities that could significantly improve reading accuracy and fluency.
Room:
Sam Sims
Overcoming Barriers to Create Better Opportunities & Brighter Futures
Room:
Catherine Parfitt
Don’t stop me now! Achieving with Dyslexia in College & Uni
This session will offer some top tips in planning, preparing and studying for college and university with dyslexia and neurodiversity.
- Follow your dream
- Be prepared
- Get the right support
- Use your tech
- Show them what you've got!
Making the impossible, possible: Achieving and succeeding with dyslexia and neurodiversity in further and higher education is possible.
The session will explore important considerations to be made when planning for college and university courses. It will look at what students can do to prepare themselves for college and university and how to get the right support from the start.
The session will demonstrate some strategies and techniques for study success, including how to use technology and dyslexic thinking to achieve your goals.
Room:
Judy Hornigold
Dyscalculia and Maths Mastery
An exploration of how adopting a maths mastery approach can support learners with Dyscalculia.
- Suitable for all Key Stages
- Practical Strategies to take away
- Understanding of Maths Mastery
This talk will explore the principles underpinning the Maths Mastery approach to teaching maths and how this can be beneficial to learners with Dyscalculia. The talk will cover the five core competencies of metacognition, visualisation, generalisation, number sense and communication. It will also gives examples of how to use manipulatives and how to develop reasoning through the use of the bar model.
Room:
Beccie Hawes
Executive what? Helping your child with task organisation, maintenance and completion skills.
This session focuses upon supporting your child to develop the crucial organisation skills for learning.
- Does your child find it difficult to begin, maintain, complete and finish tasks? This talk will help you to help them.
- We will explore working memory. What is it? How does it develop? How can you effectively support it?
- We will explore lots of practical strategies that can support at home and in school.
Does your child find it difficult to begin, maintain and complete tasks? Does it feel like you are always having to remind them of everything? Does their learning appear inconsistent? Perhaps here today and gone tomorrow?
This session will explore Executive Functioning , including working memory. We will share a plethora of practical strategies that can help in all of these areas so that your child can learn effectively.
Room:
Katrina Cochrane
The Basics of Dyslexia
Top tips from a dyslexia specialist - understand your child’s needs better.
- What is dyslexia?
- What dyslexia is not.
- Strategies and resources to help
- Effective signposting
For many parents starting their dyslexia journey , it can be a very daunting and overwhelming process. Katrina , who has been a dyslexia specialist for 25 years aims to share her knowledge and top tips to help navigate your way through .
Room:
Dr Helen Ross
Dyslexia diagnosis, reports and support- a parents’ guide
This course will give parents an overview of what to expect from a dyslexia report
- • Understand how to commission a dyslexia assessment
- • Understand what a dyslexia assessment explores and why
- • Know how to make sense of dyslexia assessment report
- • Know how to engage with school
In this talk, Dr Ross will take you through the dyslexia assessment process, relate different tests undertaken to different areas of dyslexia and their manifestations in daily life. She will then guide you through a sample assessment report and discuss how to interpret it, with focus on standardised scores and the concept of a ‘spikey profile’, and its connection to a specific learning difficulty. The recommendations section of the sample report will be discussed and contextualised within the policy framework surrounding special educational needs in an English context (reference will be made to contexts within the United Kingdom), drawing on the Equality Act 2020, the Children and Families Act 2014 and the Special Educational Needs and Disability Code of Practice: 0-25 Years.
Specific Learning Outcomes are as follows:
• Understand how to commission a dyslexia assessment
• Understand what a dyslexia assessment explores and why
• Know how to make sense of dyslexia assessment report
• Know how to engage with school so that reasonable recommendations within a report can be implemented in school.
Room:
Toni Horn
Empowering Parents and Guardians to Support Dyslexia at Home
This talk teaches parents practical strategies to support dyslexic children, improving learning, emotional well-being, and confidence.
- Parent & Guardian Support for Learning and Wellbeing
- Gain essential knowledge to support your dyslexic child effectively
- Learn to identify early signs of dyslexia in children
- Foster your child's emotional well-being and resilience
- Navigate the challenges of dyslexia with confidence
Toni's talk is to equip parents with the knowledge and practical strategies needed to support their dyslexic children. This empowering session delves into the world of dyslexia, providing a deep understanding of the condition and helping parents recognise its early signs. Participants will gain invaluable insights into effective strategies and tools that can be implemented in everyday life to enhance their child's learning experience. Moreover, the training focuses on fostering emotional well-being and equipping parents with techniques to bolster their child's self-esteem and confidence.
Room:
Jo Rees
Survival to Thrival with Dyslexia: A parents Guide
A parents guide to flipping your child's dyslexic reality from surviving to thriving.
- Practical strategies you can implement the moment you get home
- Learn how to support your childs Dyslexia at the home
- Empower parents to how to speak to school!
- Gain control of your child's educational journey and future
- Flip dyslexia on its head no longer surviving but thriving
Survival to thrival with Dyslexia: A parents guide.
Your child’s literacy skill appears to be holding them back. You’ve got a feeling that they’re dyslexic, but school don’t see the issue and you can’t afford a dyslexia diagnosis. It’s terrifying. You feel helpless. It breaks your heart, sending them to school every day knowing they are following the exam based curriculum that sees them falling even further behind. Their confidence is shattered and you are exhausted!
You feel powerless, worrying endlessly at how your child is ever going to make it. Wonder what will become of them what they will be, or whether they will even get through school in one piece.
I get it.
I’ve been there.
However there is always hope and always 'another way' if you’re prepared to look for it.
Drawing on my personal and professional experience and knowledge I’m going to share with you how I navigated and continue to navigate the education system to ensure that Dyslexia doesn’t hold my children back.
Be prepared to leave with armfuls of practical strategies, ideas and a fired up belly because I intend to empower you to flip your child’s current dyslexic reality from survival to thrival!
Room:
Jo Rees
Survival to Thrival with Dyslexia: A parents Guide
A parents' guide to flipping your child's dyslexic reality from surviving to thriving.
- Practical strategies you can implement the moment you get home
- Learn how to support your child's Dyslexia at the home
- Empower parents on how to speak to school!
- Gain control of your child's educational journey and future
- Flip dyslexia on its head, no longer surviving but thriving
Your child’s literacy skill appears to be holding them back. You’ve got a feeling that they’re dyslexic, but school don’t see the issue and you can’t afford a dyslexia diagnosis. It’s terrifying. You feel helpless. It breaks your heart, sending them to school every day knowing they are following the exam based curriculum that sees them falling even further behind. Their confidence is shattered and you are exhausted!
You feel powerless, worrying endlessly at how your child is ever going to make it. Wonder what will become of them what they will be, or whether they will even get through school in one piece.
I get it.
I’ve been there.
However there is always hope and always 'another way' if you’re prepared to look for it.
Drawing on my personal and professional experience and knowledge I’m going to share with you how I navigated and continue to navigate the education system to ensure that Dyslexia doesn’t hold my children back.
Be prepared to leave with armfuls of practical strategies, ideas and a fired up belly because I intend to empower you to flip your child’s current dyslexic reality from survival to thrival!
Room:
Dr Susie Nyman
Multi-sensory techniques you can try at home.
This is based on Susie's BBC Bitsize article 'Five multisensory activities you can do with your child at home.'
- Multi-sensory techniques that work.
- Affordable multi-sensory techniques we can all try.
- Multi-sensory is magnificent for dyslexic students.
Room:
Myles Pilling
Encouraging your child to achieve using assistive technology
Doing things differently can be daunting for your child. In this session we demonstrate how to make that change.
- Practical hints and tips on using assistive technology
- Empowering your child to become an independent learner
- Enabling parents to help their child(ren) to use assistive technology
- Different apps that can make a difference
- Inspiring confidence; boost your own skills!
This session will help you to help your child with practical assistive technology suggestions some free and some not. Hopefully by the end of the session you will feel more confident in helping your child in the home setting.
Room:
Richard Whitehead
Test Anxiety With Dyslexia. Causes and solutions.
Many conscientious dyslexic learners suffer from test anxiety. Discover the most common cause and how it can be comprehensively addressed.
- Dyslexics as bright, creative but struggling picture-thinkers
- Imagination, not memory, as the primary dyslexic learning tool
- Traditional note-taking vs. creative, visual methods
- The difference between memorisation and mastery
- Using dyslexic creativity to drill down to meaning
Many conscientious dyslexic learners suffer from test anxiety. Sometimes, the emotional force is so strong that it produces physical symptoms such as stomach ache, headaches or diarrhoea. A major test can evoke anxiety days before it occurs.
Anxiety can have a variety of origins. For bright but struggling dyslexic learners, the most frequent cause is a mismatch between how an individual naturally learns, and how they have been taught to learn. This causes a vicious circle: studying hard for a test, trying hard to remember the material, but forgetting nearly all of it in the test environment. As a tragic result, these bright but struggling learners stop trusting their own minds.
Yet the vicious circle can be broken. When a person acquires study techniques that match how they naturally think and learn, being tested become easier, and success becomes predictable. The resulting self-trust builds emotional resilience.
This presentation will showcase a simple range of techniques, based around the pioneering "Gift of Dyslexia" Davis methods, that have proven effective at combating test anxiety.
Room:
Samantha Garner
Anxiety & Safety Behaviours - everything you need to know
Anxiety - why, what's it for, what does it do, how do we deal with it?
- Learning the underlying factors.
- Understanding how anxiety affects us physically.
- Why neurodiverse people are at a higher statistical risk.
- Recognising maladaptive safety behaviours.
- Proven support techniques and interventions.
Research shows that having Dyslexia, or being neurodiverse, puts someone at a statistical higher risk of suffering from an anxiety disorder. In an attempt to manage/reduce anxiety levels, people often develop maladaptive safety behaviours. Unfortunately, these safety behaviours don’t often work and can become more complex and entrenched. Join Sam Garner to understand anxiety, the underlying factors and the common types of safety behaviour. Then learn about the types of intervention/support that can help anxiety become more manageable, either used by individuals, families or in the school/workplace.
Room:
Caroline Bateman, Achieve Now
STOP dyslexic underperforming in exams
Prepare to be amazed by how technology can help dyslexic learners attain higher grades, improving exam results and future outcomes.
- Many dyslexics are bright, yet they underperform at school.
- Technology can drastically raise attainment levels for dyslexic students
- Prepare to be amazed by what is possible.
- Get equipped to help your child achieve.
- Don’t delay – early adoption is critical for success.
Widely available technology can drastically raise attainment levels for students who struggle with literacy. Most homes and schools already own potentially life-transforming technologies but are not using them to their full advantage. As a result, dyslexic students continue to struggle needlessly.
Prepare to be amazed by how technology can help all learners attain higher grades throughout school and beyond. Improving exam results and future outcomes.
Learn how to break down barriers to excellence making the curriculum fully accessible.
Do not wait until formal exams are imminent. The sooner strategies are in place the better. Learn how to set primary students up for exam success in later life.
The best resource a dyslexic child can have is a well-informed parent.
Room:
Paloma Forde
Dyslexia - Let's Get the BEST support for your child.
A session for ANY parent wanting to navigate the education system & get the BEST support for their child.
- Your child deserves the BEST and RIGHT education.
- Parents need to learn how to navigate the SEN system.
- Join Paloma for an informative and engaging live session!
- Learn tips on how to get the best support!
- Ensuring you get the RIGHT support for your child.
Join Paloma Forde for a session where she will offer her top tips on navigating the education system in order to ensure that your child is receiving the BEST and RIGHT support.
Paloma has worked across all key stages and has a wealth of knowledge with her 26 years in eduation.
This session is in it's third year due it's popularity among parents. Paloma will arm you with advice and support that will have you leaving feeling much more confident that you can get the right support for your child in their educational setting.
This session has designed to allow for Q and A (as there are always many questions that parents want answered)
Room:
Sue Smits
Solutions for Handwriting Difficulties
Learn how to identify and rectify the root cause of handwriting problems, ensuring that every child can achieve legible handwriting.
- Supporting parents with practical tips
- Informative for handwriting tutors
- Sharing good practice with teaching staff
- Knowledge and advice for practitioners
- Educational for Occupational Therapists
For many years schools have been under the impression that it was necessary and indeed better to teach the pre-cursive and a continuous cursive style using an entry/lead-in stroke from the beginning of Reception and in Key Stage 1.
Research provided evidence that this was the best method for teaching children to write, especially children with educational learning challenges. However, the research was flawed and the researchers had been involved in p-hacking. Find out why the government have phased out the entry/lead-in stroke.
Learn why handwriting is such a challenge for children in the Early Years and why writing by hand is still a challenge for older children.
Understand the complexity of writing as a skill and how all other development combines to support handwriting.
Discover how to identify which tasks need to be integrated for successful handwriting and how to implement simple strategies for emergent writing.
Room:
Zoe Littlewood
Dyslexia and Family: Navigating the Journey Together
Introduction into me and my journey, understanding dyslexia, navigating its effects on family dynamics and offering practical advice for parents.
- Personal Journey - Growing up with Dyslexia
- Understanding Dyslexia
- Navigating Dyslexia as a Family
- Advice for Parents
- Q&A and Interactive Discussion
Embark on a heartfelt journey diving into the impact of dyslexia on individuals and families in this seminar.
Beginning with my personal story, including insights into growing up as a dyslexic child with a dyslexic parent.
The session will also cover understanding dyslexia, navigating its effects on family dynamics, and offering practical advice for parents. As well as finishing off with a interactive Q&A session.
Join me on this empowering journey to help others embrace dyslexia, celebrate individual strengths, and foster family cohesion.
Room:
John Hicks MNCPS Accred
Exploring parental resilience and positive child outcomes.
John will be exploring how an improvement in our resilience as parents can have a positive impact on our children.
- Exploring the term 'Resilience' and what that means.
- Exploring how improved parental resilience can generate great outcomes.
- Tips for building our parental resilience.
Being a parent of a child with dyslexia means that we experience a wide range of thoughts, emotions and ultimately behaviour that will affect our children.
In this talk John will discuss the topic of resilience and how by improving our resilience as parents will impact positively on our children as they in turn face difficult situations.
Room:
Marcia Brissett-Bailey
Advocacy: talking about the next generation with dyslexia
Empowering young people to find their voice and navigating the education system.
- Young people and Self-advocacy
- Talking about the next generation and dyslexia
- Dyslexic young people, grow to be dyslexic adults
- Dyslexia inside and outside the classroom
- Preparing for adulthood
This session will be about hearing our young people's voices negativing the education system.
It will touch on SEND Law, SEN support for context, and what educational health care plan?
We will explore the importance of advocacy as parents and self-advocacy by hearing the views, wishes, and feelings of children and young.
Young people with dyslexia grow up to be adults with dyslexia - what tools do young people need to navigate the education system?
Two young people with dyslexia will share their lived experiences from secondary education to college.
Where is the voice in the conversation of our young - and how do we learn to listen effectively and build safe learning environments for children to thrive and reach their potential and bring their whole selves and discover their strength to learning?
Empowering the next generation is necessary by any means so that they can find their voice and feel confident as well as empowered to be able to find their voice and navigate the education system, workplace, and society.
Room:
Register to visit
View speakers
View timetable
View features
Exhibit