How to get an A* in English: Dr Susie Nyman confirmed for the BDA Good Practice in Dyslexia and Literacy Conference.
On the 6th February 2020, the British Dyslexia Association is holding the Good Practice in Dyslexia and Literacy Conference in London. Friend of the blog, Dr Susie Nyman is one of the speakers. This article provides a snapshot of her talk on how to get an A* in literacy.
This article is brought to you by Oaka Books Ltd
In just three weeks’ time Dr Susie Nyman from The Sixth Form College, Farnborough will discuss using multi-sensory teaching techniques to enable students to reach their full potential, sharing her own experiences as a teacher and parent, to highlight this engaging, imaginative and interactive talk.
Last year, she was approached by the British Dyslexia Association to give a presentation at their ‘Good Practice in Dyslexia and Literacy’ conference in London. She chose the title ‘How to Get an A* in English’ because it is based on the individual multi-sensory techniques and strategies she developed with her own family, boys from The Oratory School and students in her classes at The Sixth Form College, Farnborough.
Susie’s own personal journey influencing what she talks about now.
Dr Susie Nyman
Her 25 years in teaching has been a reflection of how the education system has changed. Starting school at the age of two over fifty years ago and following the Charlotte Mason curriculum in her PNEU school at the time was revolutionary and provided an amazing insight into how children learn. The curriculum involved multi-sensory teaching, and she can still remember individual Science lessons involving going for nature walks, making bread, and dissecting a hare! English lessons involved daily rote learning of spellings, creative writing, and reading as well as comprehension exercises. What she found was that spellings could be rote learned, or if she struggled to remember the word she would break it down into different syllables and look for trends and patterns in similar words.
For mathematics, she remembers finding the problems in mathematical notation easier. She would wiz through these pages in her workbook rapidly, but sometimes got stumped with word problems involving a narrative of some sort with substantial information presented as text rather than mathematical notation. However, she had an epiphany one day when her father was helping her, as he suggested trying to visualise what the question was asking and to explain back to him what she thought the question was asking. Fast forward a few years and Susie started teaching A Level Biology at The Sixth Form College, Farnborough. She discovered that the students in her classes found difficulty accessing the examination questions, and so she would decode the scientific terminology from the Greek or Latin roots as well as try to get them to visualise what the examiner was asking.
Providing a ‘hook’ for remembering.
In order to remember some of the difficult concepts, she would make models out of Plasticine, pipe cleaners or paper and the students would then have a ‘hook’ to remember the subject content better. Could this style of teaching be used across a range of different subjects’ maybe? In 2013 Susie was invited to join Curriculum Support at The Oratory School working individually with boys with dyslexia. Her very first student was a boy who was studying A Level English. He was very good at answering questions orally, but had difficulty sorting, sequencing and remembering information as well as writing his answers down. This was going to be the dawn of a new era for multi-sensory teaching! Together they used various different resources to extract key information ranging from books, revision guides, online resources and videos.
Dr Susie Nyman has commissioned this learning resource with Oaka Books. Oaka Books provide topic packs that are multi-sensory and visual, ideal for dyslexic learners in KS3.
Working alongside the English specialists she developed individualised resources to enable the boy to identify key characters in the plays and made annotated giant mind maps of information. Some of the most amazing lessons were when they would try something new such as making revision cards in Google slides, linking the characters together with paper chains as well as creating story boards by listing the main events in the story and annotating them. Finally, they would play a snakes and ladders game with key questions about the characters in the story which was always great fun. However, in order for a dyslexic student to achieve an A* in English fundamental groundwork and individual multi-sensory strategies could possibly be developed much earlier in a dyslexic child’s education. Strategies for reading such as using the Lindamood Bell approach of ‘Visualising and Verbalising’ is extremely useful in addition to creating bespoke resources such as key rings with key words, connectives or sentence starters.
If teachers can tap into the way that each child learns…
Scaffolding is of paramount importance to dyslexic students. Providing them with a framework of how to answer questions and construct essays enables them to flourish in their examinations. However, if the teacher can tap into how that child learns and find a way to access the information that is individual to them thus playing to their strengths is vitally important. Maybe it could be useful for the child to draw a picture first before they construct their essay? Reflecting back on visualisation techniques; if they can see and unlock the story in their head, they can provide a much richer tapestry of depth and thoroughly enjoy creative writing. Furthermore, mind maps are great for categorising important information and can help with paragraph and sentence construction. Ultimately, if a student is happy and finds a way that works for them such as simply talking through the content first orally, then why not just play to their strengths and run with it? This could be the way they unlock their potential and have a chance of achieving their A* in English!