About your facilitator...

I am a trained primary school teacher and upgraded my skills over the years to obtain both Bachelor and Masters Degrees in Education. My focus area in the Masters Degree was in Learning Support and Inclusive Education because I was then working in a learning support role with students with learning difficulties. In fact, I have worked with students with learning difficulties for almost seventeen years now.

I have developed a broad understanding of the nature of learning difficulties and an empathy towards the frustrations that dyslexic students experience. Strategies used in schools to help children with these difficulties simply address the symptoms and support the student through the compulsory years of schooling. All the strategies I know do support the students, but they require much repetition on the part of the student and still result in slow progress.

Then I discovered the Davis Dyslexia Correction® Program. What is different about the Davis Dyslexia Correction® Program is that it addresses the cause of the learning problems in the first instance. I have trained predominantly in the USA to be a Facilitator of this program during 2005 and 2006 and am now a Licensed Davis Facilitator.

If you would like to know what Dyslexia Queensland can do to help you or your child correct and control dyslexic symptoms contact me now.

Symptoms of Dyslexia

Memory and Cognition• Excellent long-term memory for experiences, locations and faces.
• Poor memory for sequences, facts and information that has not been experienced.
• Thinks primarily with images and feelings, not sounds or words (little internal dialogue).

Writing and Motor Skills• Trouble with writing or copying; pencil grip is unusual; handwriting varies or is illegible.
• Clumsy, unco-ordinated, poor at ball or team sports, difficulties with fine and/or gross motor skills and tasks, prone to motion sickness.
• Can be ambidextrous and often confuses left/right, over/under.

Behaviour, Health, Development, Personality• Extremely disorderly or compulsively orderly.
• Can be class clown, troublemaker or too quiet.
• Had unusually early or late developmental stages (talking, walking, crawling, tying shoelaces)
• Prone to ear infections, sensitive to foods, additives and chemical products.
• Can be an extra heavy or light sleeper, bedwetting beyond appropriate age.
• Unusually high or low tolerance for pain
• Strong sense of justice, emotionally sensitive, strives for perfection.
• Mistakes and symptoms increase dramatically with confusion, time pressure and emotional distress or poor health.

Vision, Reading and Spelling• Complains of dizziness, headaches or stomach aches while reading.
• Confused by letters, numbers, words, sequences or verbal explanations.
• Reading or writing shows repetition, adding words, transposing, omission, substitution, reversal of letters, numbers and/or words.
• Complains of feeling or seeing non-existent movement while reading, writing or copying.
• Seems to have difficulty with vision, yet eye exams don’t reveal a problem.
• Extremely keen sighted and observant, or lacks depth perception and peripheral vision.
• Reads and re-reads with little comprehension.
• Spells phonetically and inconsistently.

Maths and Time Management• Has difficulty telling time, learning sequence information or tasks or being on time.
• Computing math shows dependence on finger counting and other tricks; knows answers but can’t do it on paper.
• Can count, but has difficulty counting objects and dealing with money.
• Can do arithmetic, but fails word problems, cannot grasp algebra or higher level maths.

Hearing and Speech • Has extended hearing; hears things not said or apparent to others; easily distracted by sounds.
• Difficulty putting thoughts into words; speaks in halting phrases; leaves sentences incomplete; stutters under stress; mispronounces long words; or transposes phrases, words and syllables when speaking.