Kids' zone

Hi! Great you found us. What do you want do?

• Find out about Dyslexia
• Meet some other kids who have Dyslexia
• Have some fun with games, puzzles and computer programming 
• Find out what is coming up
• Ask a question

Find out about Dyslexia

Dyslexia means “problem with words”.  It means that your brain finds it hard to learn to read, write and spell and may be do mathematics. It doesn’t mean that you are not intelligent because Dyslexia has nothing to do with how clever you are. You are born with it and other people in your family may have had the same problem.

Your brain is not broken, it just works differently. It finds it difficult to:

• recognise the sounds inside a word,
• put these sounds in the right order and then
• remember them.

You need to do all three to read, write and do arithmetic; so this makes these tasks more difficult for you.

Bad news: there is no magic pill or medicine to make your brain do these tasks more easily.

BUT the good news is that teachers have got some ways of teaching you to get these sounds sorted out in your head. Reading and writing then become much easier. Unfortunately, it takes a lot of work for you and this is unfair because you have to do this as well as all your school work. But it is worth it in the end and it shouldn’t stop you doing anything you want to do in life!

Good news because, if your brain has this problem with words, it often has room to do other magical things instead. You might be surprised to discover you have natural talents in: drawing/art; sport; making mechanical/engineering things; acting; music, designing buildings or writing computer programmes ... the list goes on and on - so don’t feel disheartened – get out there and find out what magical talents you have. Why not try out computer programming today online? 

Abhishek Bachchan  - A famous actor

Abhishek Bachchan suffers from this disorder, which affected his early years. He changed schools several times before joining a business programme at Boston University, then switched streams to pursue an acting career in Bollywood.  The disorder did not stop him from creating a place for himself in the film industry and becoming a successful star.  

Agatha Christie – A famous writer

She is the world's best-known mystery writer. Only Shakespeare sold more books!!! Her books have sold over a billion copies in the English language and another billion in over 45 foreign languages (as of 2003). She had a form of Dyslexia which meant that all her books had to be written down by another person! 

Pablo Picasso – A famous painter

Picasso is one of the most famous artists in the world, but he was so bad at school that he only managed to get into art school because his father was a teacher there!!! He had problems seeing how letters and numbers looked, but his unusual way of seeing the world meant his art was amazing.  

Thomas Edison – The inventor of the light bulb

Edison is considered to be one of the most prolific inventors in history. His most famous invention is the light bulb but he had 1,093 more amazing ideas!! All this and he was thrown out of school at 12 because he was thought to be stupid; in 1859, they didn’t know about Dyslexia. His famous quote is “Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration”.