Building a brighter future for kids with dyslexia

Imogen McTainsh, year 7, using the Cellfield Intervention.

A Tauranga building business is helping to lay the foundation for success for adolescents with dyslexia by sponsoring students suffering from the learning disorder at Tauranga Intermediate School.

Ten per cent of the population is affected by dyslexia – which is characterised by difficulty in reading, spelling, writing and eye-tracking.

People with dyslexia can skip words, lines and in some cases whole paragraphs.

Golden Homes has been sponsoring 32 students each year for the last five years to attend a revolutionary education programme - called The Cellfield Intervention Programme - that works on neuroplasticity; re-wiring the brain by targeting the auditory, visual and motor pathways simultaneously. Tauranga Intermediate is the only school in New Zealand running this programme.

Golden Homes CEO, Shane Helms, says the family-run company was keen to support the course as a means of helping kids with dyslexia reach their full potential.

'Dyslexia is simply a language processing difficulty and has nothing to do with intelligence. Once students have completed Cellfield Intervention, it makes a huge impact on their whole lives - their confidence increases, their behaviour improves, they can understand the world around them better, and they are less likely to be bullied,” says Shane.

Cellfield clinician, Judith Kramer, says the impact this programme has had on her students is 'completely life-changing”.

'Cellfield is a unique reading intervention designed to clear bottlenecks and create new connections in the brain, which enhance the sensory functions that are critical for reading and comprehension. On average it improves reading skills by one to two years in the 10 x one-hour sessions,” says Judith.

'We are so lucky to have this sponsorship as the cost is out of reach for many parents. Dyslexia is a huge problem, if we had Government funding we could install the programme throughout New Zealand.

'We are so grateful to Golden Homes - I see such a difference in children's confidence, attitude and of course reading ability. The first change is the ability to decode unfamiliar words more automatically, they become more fluent, their reading rate increases. Once that happens, their comprehension continues to improve as long as they keep reading for 10–15 minutes per day. This is important to continue to strengthen the neural pathways stimulated by Cellfield.”

Tauranga Intermediate student, Nami Gowan, wanted to referee a primary school basketball team. However, his dyslexia meant he had issues with reading school's names, kid's names, helping with the score bench and reading instructions during the referee course.

Once Nami finished the Cellfield Intervention Programme, he became so confident with his reading that he then attended a course to become a primary school's rippa rugby referee too - and required no help with his reading during the course!

More info about Cellfield here: https://cellfield.nz/


You may also like....

1 comment

great if it works for you

Posted on 27-08-2019 22:07 | By Tracy Jane

just be aware CellField is incredibly expensive and if it doesn't work for you the first time, you can go back and pay the same amount again. Except there is still no guarantee of it working the next time either. so....what do you do?


Leave a Comment


You must be logged in to make a comment.