A huge surge in the number of people joining a Border dyslexia and learning support group shows the region is crying out for literacy resources, one of its founders has said.
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Sarah Allen, the administrator of the Albury-Wodonga Dyslexia Support Group Facebook page, said the group attracted about 100 members when it launched in August 2016.
But membership doubled after a Border Mail report on January 28, 2017 about the group, which was borne from a need to connect parents, teachers, support services and information.
The article said the group aimed to provide a forum to “build the bridges” of learning for parents and teachers of children with dyslexia and learning challenges.
Since then, Ms Allen said dozens of parents, teachers, speech pathologists and even adults with dyslexia had come out of the woodwork to join and learn more about the resources available.
On Friday Ms Allen, who is studying education, support and disability at Wodonga TAFE, was in Melbourne filming a workshop on spelling.
She said it was a practice run as part of a plan to record future educational workshops or presentations and make them available to parents and teachers in the region who would not otherwise be able to access these vital resources.
The workshop was organised by the Australian Council for Educational Research and presented by literacy and language specialist Lyn Stone.
Stone, the author of Spelling For Life and Language For Life, explored how children – and adults – could become more confident and successful once they learned the patterns and memory tricks associated with spelling.
Ms Allen wants to be able to tap into the wealth of experience and knowledge that does exist for learning disorders such as dyslexia and make that information more accessible to parents, teachers and other service providers in the Albury-Wodonga region.
It’s something Albury-Wodonga Dyslexia Support Group co-founder Wendy Dallinger said was often lacking in regional and rural areas.
She was keen to help establish a local support group after her own frustrating experience chasing down a diagnosis for her daughter.
- LITERACY: Weekender