This month’s ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide To’ is all about dyslexia in support of Dyslexia Awareness Week and Dyslexia Awareness Month.
Dyslexia is the world’s most common condition, with 10% of the global population experiencing effects. Dyslexia Week is an annual event to raise awareness of dyslexia.
The British Dyslexia Association has created a space here, for people to share their stories to enrich the dyslexic community by helping others feel validated, accepted and understood.
As part of our ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide To’ we’re looking at how ROMBi is supporting children and adults with dyslexia.
Educationalist and psychoanalyst, Penny Georgiou talks about dyslexia and ROMBi
ROMBi was especially designed for developing perceptual organisation. Educationalist and psychoanalyst, Penny Georgiou, commissioned the design of ROMBi in response to her work with university students who found difficulties in organising their studies, including research, writing essays, dissertations, and preparing for examinations.
Penny explains “Our perception is the most basic frame through which our intelligence is structured, organised and contoured. As a ray of light is bent through a prism, the organisational structures of our perception bend (shape) our intelligence into what becomes our experience.
There can be many reasons underlying for learning difficulties and/or disabilities associated with perception. Each learner has their own unique experiences and perspectives.
An aspect that is often missed is the role of structure (perceptual frame) in facilitating more coherent organisation, testing this out, seeing what kind of progress is made and reviewing future prospects accordingly.
Another aspect that is often missed when difficulties arise is how crucial our physical experience is for our intellectual and emotional development, the physical experience of our bodies in space and time, in movement, experiencing textures, surfaces, contours and proximities of objects, within the context of viable structures.
Experience in supporting learners to develop their organisational structures has shown us that one of the most accessible and effective ways of doing so is through structured handplay, with surprising results.
One common learning difficulty is associated with reading, where there may be issues with speed, accuracy and comprehension of meaning. This may be associated with apparent issues with phonics, or visual processing, or other discrete processing obstacles.
In our work with learners, we have been using structured handplay via ROMBi to deliver structural information that the mind uses to organise perceptual information in more relevant and complex ways.
The experience of the puzzle’s structures experienced through the hands allows the mind to build a viable structure (perceptual frame) to stabilise eye movements, for example. An individual’s eye may not be able to stay still enough, and the letters can appear to be moving. This is a frequent symptom associated with visual processing issues.
Some of the results that ROMBi users have reported gives us some important information about what may be happening in the organisation of perception.
When we say, organisation of perception this is another way of saying, ‘structuring of intelligence’.
For more information
Support the British Dyslexia Association in their mission to raise awareness of the realities of living with dyslexia. Download a range of resources from their website here today!
#SucceedWithDyslexia #Dyslexia #DyslexiaAwareness #lnvisibleDyslexia #MyDyslexiaStory #DyslexiaAwarenessWeek #DyslexiaAwarenessMonth
