This New Year’s Day I celebrated with my family. The next day I received a message from Ms Marianthi Kotadaki, our School Advisor, that the Teaching English to Dyslexic Students course I had signed up for was starting.

It was a “short and intensive 4-week professional development course, addressed to teachers of English who wished to acquire the basic theoretical background, as well as methodological insights to the teaching of English to students with dyslexia. The course content was drawn from material developed in the framework of the European Erasmus+ DysTEFL2 project and the related e-learning course delivered by the university of Lancaster, Britain, and contained articles, websites, videos, scheencasts, weblinks, worksheets and other originally designed documents”, to quote Ms Kotadaki.

We began with the definition of Dyslexia, its identification and the challenges it presents to the EFL teacher. We moved on to teaching phonological awareness, vocabulary, grammar, reading and writing to dyslexic learners of English. The next stage was listening and speaking. We finished with ways to accommodate dyslexic learners of English during assessment, a very sensitive subject.

This course was quite realistic and hands-on. I deeply appreciated the chances we got to approach dyslexia more and to design activities that we can actually use in the classroom. I used to have fear regarding this subject, and now I definitely feel more into it. Knowing it is a difficult matter anyway, I feel more equipped with tested knowledge, and therefore more relaxed, to do something to help.

I can’t thank Ms Kotadaki enough. Teachers really need such a School Advisor.