TIPS for parents of dyslexic child

25 NOVEMBER 2011 - VASTO - ITALY

FOUNDATION PADRE ALBERTO MILENO ONLUS

TIPS PROJECT TIPS FOR PARENTS OF DYSLEXIC CHILD

First european meeting.

In Vasto Marina at Foundation Padre Alberto Mileno Onlus, on friday 25th of November 2011 took place the first meeting about the european project called “TIPS for parents of dyslexic child” – Lifelong Learning Program. e Foundation Padre Alberto Mileno Onlus, project’s team leader, welcomed all the european partners: Silie Halk Egitim Merkezi ve Aksam Sanat Okulu from Turkey, Bulgarian dyslexia association Rousse, Save the Children from Romania, Euro-Idea Fundacja from Poland, Cultural Center of European Iniziatives (ACCEI) from Spain and CO.RI.S.S. (Coop. Riunite Socio Sanitarie) from Calabria, Italy.

On saturday 26th the Foundation also hosted the first study-visit. In that occasion was introduced the Study Center for Dyslexia and SpLD of the Foundation and followed a round table with parents of dyslexic child in order to acquire important informations related to the project development and collected the first feedbacks about the parents’ needs.

DOMENICO PASSAFIUME talks about ebook content’s structure in order to create a unified multilanguage version.

Project objectives e purposes of this project are to help parents to support SpLD child in their individual process of growth, to provide information to families helping them to understand better the problems of their child and to promote interventions aimed to favourite the “taken in charge” of the family.

RESOURCES TO BE ACHIEVED An online e-book in the partner languages: it is the main product of this planning phase. It will be available online using the Web sites of partners, in order to encourage the

TIPS PARTNERSHIP all partner attended the first project meeting. They came from Turkey, Poland, Spain, Bulgaria and Romania.

widest possible dissemination. e content will be defined to be "dyslexia-friendly" so that parents, oen themselves dyslexic too, could more easily understand the problem.

In order to realise products satisfying the needs of the target, a pilot study will be carried out in the partner areas.

To the parents will be asked to provide a feedback completing an online questionnaire with the intent to update the outcomes of the project.

FRANCESCO NARDIZZI, Administrative manager of the Foundation Mileno, welcomes the partners.

Report 11.00 Coffee break 11.20 Bulgarian dyslexia associationRousse – BG Partner presentation Jasmina Jonkova

Foundation, talked about the main activities related to the project development.

PARTNERSHIP

Agenda •••

08.30 Meeting at the venue 08.45 Welcome and IT partner presentation - Francesco Nardizzi 09.00 Project overview and distribution of tasks - Alessandro D’Alessandro 09.10 Workpackage 2: Basis for the online course - Domenico Passafiume 09.30 Salvati Copiii – RO Partner presentation - Claudia Maciuca 09.40 Workpackage 3 – A guide for running workshop - Claudia Daniela Maciuca 10.00 ACCEI – ES Partner presentation - Lydia Castillo 10.10 Workpackage 4 – Website - Lydia Castillo 10.30 Euro-Idea – PL Partner presentation - Anna Cierpioł 10.40 Workpackage 5 – Pilot testing Julia Mach, Anna Cierpioł

11.30 Workpackage 6 Accreditation overview - Jasmina Jonkova

1. F ondazione Padre

11.50 SILIFKEHEM – TR Partner presentation - Serpil Kalkan

2. C O.RI.S.S.

12.00 Workpackage 7 Dissemination plan overview - Serpil Kalkan

3. B ulgarian dyslexia

12.20 CO.RI.S.S. – IT Partner presentation - Aurora Puccio 12.30 Workpackage 8 – uality management - Aurora Puccio 12.50 Conclusions 13.00 Launch at the Foundation Mileno 14.45 Meeting at the venue 15.00 A deeper look at the involved technologies: shared documents, e-book, websites - Alessandro D’Alessandro 16.00 Q&A and conclusions REPORT Mr. Francesco Nardizzi, Administrative Manager of the Foundation, started the works welcoming the partners.

Mr. Alessandro D’Alessandro, contact person for the project development, aer a quick presentation of the

HOSTING PARTNER

CONTACT PERSON

Fondazione Padre Alberto Mileno Onlus Viale Dlamazia 116 - Vasto Marina (Italy) www.fondazionemileno.it dislessia@fondazionemileno.it

Alessandro D’Alessandro alessandro@fondazionemileno.it

STAFF Francesco Nardizzi, Domenico Passafiume, Benito Michelizza, Anna Scafetta, Nicoletta Ciancaglini, Rosa Stola,Viviana Cocomazzi, Eliana Cruciani, Elda Corazzin.

Alberto Mileno Onlus Cooperative Riunite Socio Sanitarie

association - Rousse

4. E uro-Idea Fundacja Społeczno-Kulturalna

5. A CCEI - Cultural Center of European Initiatives

6. S ave the children -

ORGANIZATIA SALVATI COPIII - FILIALA DOLJ

7. S ilifke Halk Egitim Merkezi ve Aksam Sanat Okulu FONDAZIONE P. A. MILE NO

The Foundation, since 1965, aims at the integral growth of the guests with an educati onal rehabilitation, which has centered on the huma n person, because it can achiev e, to the fullest extent possible , of autonomy which allow s it to enter or return to fam ily life, social and in an adeq uate job.

Summary of activities He focused on the modalities for sharing documents and the collaborative tools to be used during the creation of the ebook. Furthermore he clarified in which way the partnership will be able to create the multilanguage version of the e-book in the respect of the coutry-specific aspects about dyslexia.

Mr. D’Alessandro put the attention on the differences between .epub and .pdf format and explained the respective different fields of application. e partners agreed in creating the e-book in .epub format only, leaving each partner free to develop the interactive pdf version (which can natively embed multimedia contents) as an option. en the partners made the choice about the official project’s logo and all of them agreed for the one showed on this page.

Finally, taking into account the limited number of mobilities available for the project development, the partnership decided that future study-visits could be also shared among the partnership with the use of conference calls, video streaming, instant messaging or video recordings.

Dr. Passafiume showed the contents’ structure of the e-book with the aim to unify different versions of the multilanguage document to be produced by each country. Each section and chapter was deeply discussed and an official template for the e-book development will be sent to all the partners soon.

Mrs. Claudia Maciuca (Romania - Save the Children), aer a presentation of her Institution with slides and printed materials, showed the main contents of the guide for those providing workshops, based on the TIPS e-book/course. e

overall purpose of the guide is to provide practical advice and detailed guidance on how to best organise a successful workshop, to improve quality in workshop management and to develop successful workshops in the future. e spanish partner, Mrs. Lydia Castillo from ACCEI (Cultural Center of European Iniziatives), aer a presentation of her Institution, briefly talked about their know-how on website development.

In this context Mr. D’Alessandro suggested that it could be realized a single website with a clear different project area but leaving the main contents dedicated to the parents of dyslexic child. e website should guarantee accessibility and should use a dyslexia-friendly layout and language.

together with the aims to promote citizens’ mobility between countries and to facilitate their lifelong learning.

Turkish Institution Silie Halk Egitim Merkezi ve Aksam Sanat Okulu, with Mrs. Serpil Kalkan, talked about dissemination.

Since earlier diagnose is important, she suggested to each partner to organise a meeting to inform especially the first grade teachers using the data received during the process. Local and regional mass media should collaborate to introduce website, ebook and best practices of the project .

Mrs. Aurora Puccio from CO.RI.S.S. talked about the quality management process designed to evaluate the project with respect to satisfaction of all interested parties, namely the parents taking the course, the teachers developing the course, and other interested parties. e main purpose of the evaluation process is to compare project objectives and project achievements.

Polish partner, Mrs. Anna Cierpioł, introduced her Institution (Euro-Idea Fundacja Społeczno-Kulturalna) to the attendees and gave some general information about the pilot study that will In the aernoon works started again with be held in the second year. a contribution of Mr. D’Alessandro who Aer a little break the bulgarian partner showed technology-related issues and Mrs. Sanja Dimitrova, introduced the suggested some free soware for e-book Bulgarian dyslexia association - Rousse development. and talked about the accreditation process Finally the partnership decided the referred to the European ualification Framework (EQF). e EQF is a common domain name for the official project’s website: www.dyslexiatips.eu European reference framework which links countries’ qualifications systems

www.dyslexiatips.eu

What is dyslexia?

DYSLEXIA LABS

Dyslexia is a difficulty in learning to read and write that is neurological in origin.

Study Center for Dyslexia and SpLD of the Foundation Padre Alberto Mileno Onlus (Vasto, Italy) helps the students improving their study skills.

e European Dyslexia Association estimates that between 5% and 12% of European citizens have dyslexia in some form.

Dyslexic learners come in all shapes and sizes! Like other students they have different interests, motivations, ambitions and strengths. What they have in common is an underlying, persistent difficulty with processing written language. Some may have problems with expressing themselves verbally, others may not. e cause of dyslexia is not known but there seems to be two factors that are supported by strong evidence. Firstly, dyslexia tends to run in families. is is not a straightforward relationship but there seems to be a strong inherited factor. is means that dyslexic learners are more likely to have dyslexic relatives than nondyslexic learners. In many instances this includes parents and siblings.

Secondly, dyslexic learners have difficulty identifying and discriminating individual sounds – phonological processing. ey have difficulty in matching sounds to

Study skills are those abilities required during study and subsequent examinations (including course work) to ensure effective and efficient ways of learning, retaining and demonstrating skills and knowledge.

written symbols – sound symbol correspondence.

Recent research shows that dyslexia can have more general drawbacks. ese show in different ways. Some dyslexics will have problems with working memory. ey will find it difficult to hold information long enough to process it.

For example, mental arithmetic and note taking both require efficient working memory. ey may have problems organising times and dates. is will cause problems with planning and preparing projects and assignments. ese are skills we take for granted but cause problems for dyslexic learners.

EXPERIENCES: ME AND MY DYSLEXIA

“I always hated school. It wasn’t so much the teachers, they were OK. It was the reading out loud that I couldn’t do. No matter how hard I tried the words never made sense.”

“It’s not that I can’t read. I’ve never been very good but managed to hide any problem I have. I find that I am good with words I have seen before but not very good with strange words.”

“Every child and adult with dyslexia has the right to access and receive appropriate support and opportu nity to achieve their full potential in education , training employmen t and life”.

European Dyslexia Association