Student A

Understanding of dyslexic primary students’ needs and our stakeholders are crucial

to the success of our aims to help them learn effectively.

A strength of our proposal is the understanding of the social and emotional needs of

the dyslexic primary students. We feel that it is necessary to address their needs to

be able to socialise, to feel good and not be embarrassed of themselves before we

worry about their studies. These needs must be met since dyslexia is incurable and

they need to learn to be mentally strong and confident from young. However, making

friends for the dyslexic child is difficult as his frustrations with his inability often

means that he fails to interact well with his peers and he becomes socially awkward.

Hence, our iSmart Empathy Game aims to evoke empathy as non-dyslexic students

playing with the dyslexic students can understand their learning difficulties and be

more tolerant when they are slow in class. Moreover, the child might get frustrated at

his inability to read and learn, causing his peers to assume that he is anti-

social.1Dyslexic children tend to be afraid of being judged by their peers and this low

self-esteem causes depression.2 Therefore, our Buddy Mentor Programme targets

this emotional aspect as these mentor peers who are also dyslexic can empathise

with them, and the dyslexic child will not feel judged. Being more confident, he would

be able to cope better with his academic studies especially with the support of his

classmates and peer mentor.

1
http://www.ldonline.org/article/19296/
2
https://www.understood.org/en/learning-thinking-differences/child-learning-
disabilities/dyslexia/dyslexia-and-anxiety-in-children
However, a limitation is that our proposal showed little concern to mitigate parental

fear which has caused some to conceal their children’s disability. This could be due

to fear of them being bullied since there has been an increase in Singapore schools’

bullying cases. In 2014, the Singapore Children’s Society and the Institute of Mental

Health surveyed more than 3,000 students aged 12 to 17, and reported that one in

nine adolescents had been victims of cyberbullying. 3 To address this parental fear,

we could have proposed a 3-step approach for parents and teachers. Firstly, we

could notify teachers and counsellors to work together to discuss ways to manage

this parental fear. Secondly, the teachers will contact parents of dyslexic children

individually. Counsellors and teachers can help to convince parents that with the

help of our proposed programmes, the iSmart Interactive Games and the Buddy

Mentor System, we help to bond both dyslexic and the non-dyslexic together through

our iSmart Empathy Game and our Real-Life Situation Quiz. Lastly, parents of these

dyslexic children can be invited to experience the proposed programmes first-hand

so that they will be reassured that the stigma on their dyslexic child will be reduced

as they make friends. Through this 3-step approach, we would have shown greater

concern regarding the parental fear that their dyslexic child will be bullied. This is

important as the success of our programmes is to ensure peer acceptance of

dyslexia students.

3
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/cnainsider/3-in-4-teens-singapore-cyberbullying-
bullied-online-survey-10001480