Express LD Launch Workshop

I've mentioned it before here and here but just in case you missed it, one of the things I do with my time is act as Project Manager for a volunteer-run charity project called Express LD. We are devoted to helping young people with dyslexia and other learning difficulties achieve their full potential by providing support and practical study tools. We do this by running workshops for students that involve revision and study activities that make learning not only more interesting but effective.
I say this with complete confidence as we finally ran our first ever workshop in December at Telford College and it was awesome. It was incredible to see all the ideas we'd been working on for months and months finally come together and the learning techniques we used worked better than I could possibly of imagined. One of our volunteers Alex was demonstrating Spiral Learning by using a smoothie menu (just a fake one I made for this purpose) and despite literally never having seen it before he learnt the specs for 3 smoothies in under 5 minutes right in front of the whole group. I bet he could even tell me them now. It was incredible! I'd read about it obviously and knew that it must work to some extent but having not actually seen it done before it was amazing. The students, teachers, myself and even the volunteers themselves were all so impressed and on my part at least; relieved - how awful would it of been if after months of designing the workshops the techniques we taught didn't actually work!?


We also did a mass group activity of World Mapping which was really effective. So much in fact I will 100% be using it myself in my upcoming final exams. I say 'we', I should probably point out that I sat at the back snapping pictures and frantically attempting to make notes the whole time grinning like a Cheshire cat!

Before going to Telford College I did explain to them that the workshop was a trial for us and we'd appreciate any feedback they could give us, it was lovely of Sam and Julie over at Telford to let us do this and they were so helpful before, during and after. The nicest part of it was actually we were helping each other out, they were just as keen to learn and improve their learning support techniques as much as we were, and after such a successful workshop they have kindly invited us back this year to do a series of workshops! Now that's a successful trial run!