VIEWS & OPINION Lifting the load of visual stress Comment by SAL McKEOWN, journalist and editor
If you have children who seem unable to concentrate on their reading, who rub their eyes and look at the ceiling or out of the window, they may be experiencing visual stress. Letters seem to shimmer or dance on the page, making it hard to decode words or work out the meaning of a text. Crossbow Education is now over 30 years old and is a key provider of products to combat visual stress. Founder Bob Hext was a specialist teacher for
children with dyslexia in a secondary school before he discovered the impact of coloured overlays on children’s reading. He realised that if he combined the overlay principle with underlining, he could create a reading ruler to help struggling readers track from one line to the next. Crossbow reading rulers and tinted overlays are now found in about 50% of UK schools and colleges.
The advantages of overlays that change the background colour of a page are well documented but many people are still unaware of the benefits of tinted exercise books. These can make a huge difference to a child’s presentation of their written work, and even to their spelling. They are also invaluable for maths: ‘If you are trying to add up and the numbers are moving about on the page because you’ve got visual stress, digits can end up in the wrong column,’ said Bob, ‘so we sell books with
tinted squared paper as well.’
Bob and Anne Hext worked with dyscalculia expert Steve Chinn, founder and former principal of Mark College, Somerset. They tested several designs with different sized margins, headers and footers and researched the optimum square size. These had to be big enough for children with dyscalculia to write legible numbers but compact enough that they could see the whole calculation. Now Crossbow’s visually optimised maths books are available in ten colours.
Anne Hext has created a new font called Aravis with desktop and web licences. There are many dyslexia friendly fonts available such as Arial, Verdana, Comic Sans and Sassoon but they have limitations for those with visual stress. Often fonts are designed to be consistent so certain strokes and shapes appear in several letters, for example the curve of the letter c also forming part of the letter q. ‘Every letter in Aravis is unique,’ said Anne. ‘I haven’t even restricted it to sans serif. I have got a few serifs where I felt that they suited my purpose. I have made a font that slides into the background so that people are reading the words without experiencing distortions and headaches.’
It is proving popular with dyslexia experts. Pamela Hanigan and Rachel Gelder from Lancashire Dyslexia Information Guidance and Support said: ‘We use Aravis exclusively now in our diagnostic reports and recommend it to schools we work with. Many are now using it and have commented on its positive effect. It really is fabulous and so much ‘easier on the eye’, even for those without a visual processing difficulty.’
For further information please visit:
https://www.crossboweducation.com/
Boosting school success with after-school tutoring:
a teacher’s tale Comment by JENNY NEW, Mrs New Tutors
Imagine this: after spending 15 years in the classroom, I decided to shift gears and become an online tutor. As a primary school teacher, nurturing progress and achievement has always been the at the heart of my teaching ethos and I’ll be honest, when we shifted to online teaching, I had genuine concerns that it might throw a spanner in the works when it came to helping my students reach their full potential. So before diving into tutoring, I had to ask myself, “Does after-school tutoring really make a difference in how children do in school?”
Now during my teaching career, there were many times when parents would ask me about the benefits of a tutor
outside of school and I had to be honest and admit that I couldn’t help but notice that when students received extra support outside of school, particularly in English and mathematics, their academic performance flourished exponentially. Yet, I wondered if this was merely coincidence or backed by empirical evidence.
As it turns out, my experiences were not isolated incidents; research by Lynch et al. (2022) revealed that a striking 81% of schools witnessed an enhancement in student’s ‘in school’ achievement due to tutoring programs. Remarkably, this was more notable in primary schools (where
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www.education-today.co.uk
my teaching expertise primarily lies) as children made significant strides, often achieving up to six months’ worth of progress! This is the type of progress that classroom teachers dream of.
So perhaps that is all to be expected but I wanted to base my tutoring business around small groups, which is a bit controversial as most parents think of a ‘tutor’ as being on a one-to-one basis. However, I love the small groups and you know why? It works like magic. This is backed up by research from Lord et al. (2022) who found that the progress made in small-group sessions in English actually trumped one-on-one sessions. And it makes perfect sense, if you think about situations at work when you have thrived—collaborative learning sparks creativity and fosters exceptional work, even in children.
Moreover, there’s a clear correlation between the frequency of tutoring sessions and academic ‘in school’ improvement. It’s akin to the old adage: practice makes perfect, even if that practice comes after school time with a tutor, who is not the class teacher. Exeter University’s research highlighted the pivotal role of experienced teachers as tutors, further solidifying the importance of expertise in facilitating progress and confirms that parents must make careful choices when choosing professionals to work with their children. This really gave me a boost, as although it seems like common sense, there are a lot of ‘non-teacher’ tutors out there.
Having my circumstantial insights, backed up by actual research has left me feeling invigorated, knowing that my efforts bolster children’s academic success beyond my online lessons and into their own classrooms makes a real difference. Armed with all this information, I’m confident that the step I made from teacher to tutor was the right one.
May 2024
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