Special Education Hub

We support education professionals working with students of all ages, in mainstream and special education settings, who may need additional learning support. Together, we can help your students mature, learn more effectively and reach their potential.

Supporting dyslexic students in a classroom

What causes dyslexia and how can you screen and assess for it? You’ve got questions and we’ve got the answers.

"Dyslexia does not refer to any reading problem."

The main reason for dyslexia is a reduced phonological awareness – poorer ability to identify, differentiate and manipulate sounds and to learn how sounds correspond to letters.

Build your understanding and ability to proactively screen and support your at-risk students.

Dyslexia Booklet A practical guide to supporting dyslexic students in a classroom.

Dyslexia Toolkit We’ve also created a toolkit designed to help you screen, identify, intervene and monitor the progress of your students.

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Stewart D'Silva Consultant Psychologist, SEL and Special Education Email: stewart.dsilva@pearson.com Mobile: +61 478 307 132

My name is Stewart D’Silva and I am a registered psychologist across Australia and New Zealand. I have completed study in the areas of counselling, health, cognitive and educational psychology.

My passion for special education and working with special educators came out of completing my Masters and Postgraduate Diploma in Psychology, in New Zealand. During this time, I spent three years with primary, secondary and tertiary institutions to complete educational assessments and counselling. Working collaboratively with the learner, their family and educators highlighted the importance of the special education and teaching staff feeling confident and competent in their ability to understand and accommodate learning differences. It made a world of difference to be able to screen and assess learners in school and use that data to inform the appropriate evidence-based intervention programmes and whether a more comprehensive evaluation with a clinician was really needed. Momentum in the right direction – but only for a few learners at a time. What if I had the opportunity to directly support the special educators to learn about screening, assessing and proactively best supporting their learners?

In moving to Melbourne in at the start of 2019, that very opportunity was offered by Pearson Clinical. I now look after the special education portfolio of tools at Pearson Clinical. These are screeners, assessments and intervention systems for special educators to use to identify and support your struggling learners. I work with educators to build comprehensive assessments suites and learn more about educational frameworks they can use. I also have the pleasure of running webinars and accreditation workshops that provide professional learning for special educators across the areas of understanding statistics, administration, scoring and interpretation of our special education tools and collecting data to guide special education decision making in schools across Australia and New Zealand.

I hope you find the special education assessments, interventions, resources, webinars, workshops and blogs on these pages useful. If you would like to get accredited to use our User Level B assessments, build an assessment suite or discuss whether our webinars and workshops are right for you, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.