The Near North District School Board’s literacy team has been chosen as one of the recipients of the Dyslexia Canada Educational Excellence Awards.
The awards celebrate exceptional dedication within school communities in supporting students with dyslexia. According to Dyslexia Canada’s website, the award recognizes the contributions of a variety of school staff who showcase, “remarkable commitment and innovation in ensuring equitable education for students with dyslexia.” Award criteria includes commitment to dyslexia support, impact and results, collaborative approach and sustainability and scalability.
The NNDSB literacy team includes K-12 Student Achievement and Well-Being Principal Stephen Krause, Lorianne Haslehurst, Amy Bartlett Gibson, Genive Di Bernardo, Lisa Rogers, Michael Watson and Rebekah Felsman. The team will be presented with a Literacy Leader Award at the International Dyslexia Association (IDA) Ontario Literacy and Learning Conference in Toronto on Saturday April 27th.
“It is an honour to receive this acknowledgement from Dyslexia Canada, who continues to be at the forefront of supporting and leading literacy learning and work across the country,” said K-12 Student Achievement and Well-Being Principal Stephen Krause. “I am so very proud of the members of our literacy team and the collaboration they engage in alongside educators across our system every day. However, this award is also a recognition of our district and all who work in it, especially our K-12 educators as they dive deeper into their learning and work in school teams to make continual shifts in the literacy programming and delivery of instruction to meet the needs of all students most effectively.”
Superintendent of Teaching and Learning Melanie Gray said she was immensely proud of the work of the literacy team and was gratified to see them receive recognition by Dyslexia Canada.
“The work of this team is making news across the country, and I am happy to see them acknowledged for all the work they do to support their colleagues in furthering the board’s goal of student achievement and well-being,” said Gray.
94 per cent of schools have received direct support from literacy team members. The team has offered guidance and support for 8,977 Acadience reading screening assessments that have been administered by educators. Among the initiatives of the literacy team to support their work is the creation and curation of an internal K-12 literacy site (which has been used by almost 600 different NNDSB educators), a literacy lending library to support educators, system professional development sessions, book clubs and engagement in literacy professional development to support the work across the district.
Founded in 2016, Dyslexia Canada is a charity whose goal is ensuring children in Canada with dyslexia receive a fair and equitable education. The organization partners with professional organizations, experts, and advocates to engage and educate the public and establish legislation specific supporting children with dyslexia.
Dyslexia is a learning disorder that involves difficulty reading due to problems identifying speech sounds and learning how they relate to letters and words (decoding). Also called a reading disability, dyslexia is a result of individual differences in areas of the brain that process language. According to Dyslexia Canada’s website, 10-20% of people are affected by dyslexia.
Symptoms
According to the Mayo Clinic, signs of dyslexia can be difficult to recognize before your child enters school, but some early clues may indicate a problem.
Before school
- Late talking
- Learning new words slowly
- Problems forming words correctly, such as reversing sounds in words or confusing words that sound alike
- Problems remembering or naming letters, numbers and colors
- Difficulty learning nursery rhymes or playing rhyming games
School age
Once your child is in school, dyslexia symptoms may become more apparent, including:
- Reading well below the expected level for age
- Problems processing and understanding what is heard
- Difficulty finding the right word or forming answers to questions
- Problems remembering the sequence of things
- Difficulty seeing (and occasionally hearing) similarities and differences in letters and words
- Inability to sound out the pronunciation of an unfamiliar word
- Difficulty spelling
- Spending an unusually long time completing tasks that involve reading or writing
- Avoiding activities that involve reading
Teens and adults
Dyslexia signs in teens and adults are a lot like those in children. Some common dyslexia symptoms in teens and adults include:
- Difficulty reading, including reading aloud
- Slow and labor-intensive reading and writing
- Problems spelling
- Avoiding activities that involve reading
- Mispronouncing names or words, or problems retrieving words
- Spending an unusually long time completing tasks that involve reading or writing
- Difficulty summarizing a story
- Trouble learning a foreign language
- Difficulty doing math word problems
