Stop explaining dyslexia. Let your staff experience it for themselves.
For schools
Your staff already care about every student. This session helps them finally understand the ones they can't quite reach.
You know the students. The ones who are clearly bright, but can't seem to get it onto paper. The ones whose behaviour tells you something is wrong, but you can't put your finger on what. The ones who are trying, really trying, and still falling behind.
Most of your staff want to help those students. They just don't know how. Not because they don't care, but because they've never felt what those students feel every single day.
That's what this workshop changes.
What's really happening in your classrooms?
In any given classroom, approximately 1 in 5 students has dyslexia. Many more have other processing differences that affect how they access learning. The research is clear: when the learning environment isn't designed with these students in mind, behaviour becomes the communication.
Disengagement. Avoidance. Frustration. What looks like defiance is often overload. What looks like laziness is often a student who has used every ounce of energy just trying to decode the words on the page, with nothing left for the actual thinking.
The problem isn't the student. It's the mismatch between how learning is designed and how their brain actually works.
Staff who see the behaviour but not the barrier behind it
A different kind of professional development:
This isn't a lecture about dyslexia theory. Your staff won't sit in rows and listen. They'll experience what your students experience, and that changes everything.
The Dyslexia for a Day simulation puts your teachers inside the cognitive load their students carry every day. Reading tasks that won't decode. Writing tasks that fall apart. Instructions that disappear before they can be followed. The frustration is real, and so is the insight it creates.
Then comes the part that makes it stick.
The Action Lab takes that experience and turns it into action.
Your staff bring a real classroom task, one they already use, and we look at it together through a new lens.
Where is the reading load? Where is the writing load? Where is the processing demand? And what small shifts would remove the barrier without lowering the standard?
They leave with something they can use the very next day.
How the session works
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The reframe: We start with why this matters, grounded in the research on cognitive load, behaviour as communication, and the strengths dyslexic thinkers bring.
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The simulation: Five experiential activities that put staff inside the learning experience of a student with dyslexia. Reading, writing, spelling, listening, processing under pressure.
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The reflection: Guided discussion that connects the experience to real students, real classrooms, and real moments staff have already seen but perhaps misread.
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The Action Lab: Staff analyse a classroom task they use and redesign it to reduce barriers. Practical, immediate, and owned by the teacher who'll use it.
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Three shifts to start tomorrow: Every staff member leaves with three concrete changes they can make immediately, without extra resources or planning time.
"It is the best PD I have undertaken relating to students with learning difficulties in my class." - Teacher, Ashburton College
Who this is for:
This workshop is designed for whole-staff PLD days and works across primary, intermediate, and secondary settings. It's equally powerful for teachers, teacher aides, and support staff.
The more of your team who experience it together, the greater the shift in your school's culture around learning differences.
If you're an LSC or SENCO who has been trying to explain dyslexia to colleagues for years, this session does that work for you, in a way that no amount of telling ever could.
Providing wrap around support:
Every school PLD includes a parent workshop, hosted on your site a few weeks later. Schools can direct it to the families who need it most — no extra cost, no extra planning.
Parents leave with the same understanding your staff have just gained, and a set of practical strategies to support their child at home. When school and home are working from the same playbook, the impact on a child's confidence and progress compounds quickly, disruption decreases, learning gets easier, and your staff spend less time filling the gap between classroom and home.
Bright students who can't show what they know
Ready to give your staff the insight that changes how they see their students?
PLD that doesn't translate into real classroom change
Kids falling through the gaps despite your best efforts