You can’t decode phonemes while they move around - but you can make the problem go away

Ex SEN teacher Bob Hext is Managing Director of Crossbow Education Ltd, which he started in 1993 to publish the literacy games he was developing to help his dyslexic students with their reading and spelling. In 2005, Bob and his wife Anne designed and patented the Eye Level Reading Ruler to support children with Visual Stress. In 2006, The Eye Level Reading Ruler was runner up SEN product of the year at the BESA Educational Resources Awards. Since then Bob and Anne have worked with leading academics in the field to widen their range of Visual Stress support products, which now include A4 overlays, tinted exercise books and pads, as well as computer-related products. Bob started teaching in 1973, and has wide experience in many environments, as a class teacher, Head of Department, and SEN teacher. Bob is an experienced training provider and has spoken on various aspects of Dyslexia teaching at Conferences and CPD events over the years, including Education North in April 2011, and will be presenting the seminar “Reading Writing and Colour” at Special Needs London on Saturday 15th Sept 2011.

Crossbow are a trusted “first stop” for many SENCOs looking for “dyslexia-friendly” teaching materials for literacy, from decodable phonic readers to spelling games and handwriting resources. Their visual stress support products are now used in 60% of the schools in the UK, and are also sold in the USA through their North Carolina subsidiary, Crossbow Education Corp. Crossbow were short listed for the Supplier of the Year award at the BESA Educational Resources Awards 2011.

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Phonemes The government is quite right to support the teaching of systematic synthetic phonics in schools, and the forthcoming matched funding initiative for KS1 Phonics materials will be a welcome boost for many schools who need to invest in phonics resources at this level. It will also be a bonanza for the publishers who have got their programmes selected for the catalogue of approved resources to be released by ESPO later this year. However, for many of the people who really count – the children being taught, and especially those who are struggling with reading and who are therefore most at risk from educational failure – this “solution” misses the mark completely: like the nightmare scenario of a top exam candidate, it’s the right answer to the wrong question.

For many of these children, a high percentage of whom are among the dyslexic 10% of the population, the question to ask is not “Why can’t they blend the phonemes?”, but “Why can’t they see them?”. The answer is because they suffer from Visual Stress, which causes the image of the printed text on white paper to blur or appear to move around on the page. According to research from Essex University, Visual Stress may be the result of “cortical hyperexcitablity”: specific cells in the Visual Cortex over-reacting to particular wavelengths of the colour spectrum which are specific for each individual. Filtering out the wavelengths causing the problem enables the brain to “see” the words clearly.

Watch out for the poor readers who keep skipping lines or words, who have to track with their finger, who complain of headaches while they are reading or always seem to be rubbing their eyes: no amount of synthetic phonics, no matter how systematic, will make life easier for them, or get them reading more quickly. What is most likely to help these children is a simple coloured overlay or reading ruler of the correct colour to filter out the problem wavelengths. It won’t get you hundreds of pounds of matched funding for the KS1 budget – but it could change the life of a child in your class, because it will make the Visual Stress go away.