Princess Beatrice recalls her schooldays and having dyslexia
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Princess Beatrice – the elder Princess of York – recently narrated the book, ‘Xtraordinary People’, to empower those with dyslexia. The project is personal – Beatrice was identified as having dyslexia at the age of seven. The children’s book was written by the founder of global charity Made By Dyslexia, of which Beatrice is an ambassador.
Last year her Royal Highness took part in a promotional video for the charity to further highlight the struggles faced by people living with dyslexia and to provide a space for others to come forward.
“The reason why I am so passionate about dyslexia is because of being a dyslexic person myself,” she disclosed at the start of the video.
“I feel like we really have a responsibility to change the narrative around what we are delivering to young people in the classroom.”
She went on to explain how “lucky” she was to go to a school that could provide support and resources for her when she most needed it.
“But I would describe the actual day-to-day learning side of things [as] very challenging.”
The princess recalled how the different books associated with reading levels made her doubt her abilities when she compared herself to her friends.
What is dyslexia?
Dyslexia is a common learning difficulty that can cause problems with reading, writing and spelling.
“It’s a specific learning difficulty, which means it causes problems with certain abilities used for learning, such as reading and writing,” explains the NHS.
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It’s estimated up to one in every 10 people in the UK has some degree of dyslexia.
According to the NHS, signs of dyslexia usually become apparent when a child starts school and begins to focus more on learning how to read and write.
A person with dyslexia may:
- Read and write very slowly
- Confuse the order of letters in words
- Put letters the wrong way round (such as writing “b” instead of “d”)
- Have poor or inconsistent spelling
- Understand information when told verbally, but have difficulty with information that’s written down
- Find it hard to carry out a sequence of directions
- Struggle with planning and organisation.
“But people with dyslexia often have good skills in other areas, such as creative thinking and problem solving,” notes the NHS.
How to manage dyslexia
Although spelling is likely to be something that a dyslexic person always finds challenging, there are strategies that parents and teachers can put in place to support learning.
According to the British Dyslexia Association (BDA), there are some simple activities you can do with your child to help strengthen their spelling.
One helpful tip is to help your child to understand words are made up of syllables and each syllable has a vowel sound, advises the BDA.
“Say a word and ask how many syllables there are. Help your child to spell each syllable at a time.”
Other helpful spelling tips include:
- Write words in different coloured pens to make a rainbow or in shaving foam, flour or sand over and over again to help your child remember them
- Look with your child at the bits in the words which they find difficult – use colours to highlight just the tricky bit
- Look for the prefixes and suffixes in words, e.g. -tion, -ness and learn these chunks. Explore with your child how many words have the same chunks at the beginning or the end of words
- Use flashcards or play matching games to let your child see the words lots of times – the more times they see the word, the better they will be able to read and spell it
- Use cut out or magnetic letters to build words together, then mix up the letters and rebuild the word together
- Use mnemonics – silly sentences where the first letter of each word makes up the word to be spelled
- Find smaller words in the bigger word, for example ‘there is a hen in when’
- Go over the rules of spelling together, e.g. a ‘q’ is always followed by a ‘u’. Ask your child’s teacher for the rules they teach in class.
According to the BDA, a specialist tutor, qualified to teach children or students with dyslexia can also be a great support to your child’s education.
“A tutor is able to give individual attention and can set the pace of learning to suit your child,” explains the health body.
“They can focus on the subjects that your child finds particularly difficult and will be able to identify your child’s learning style, and therefore work to their strengths.”
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