Swim Star Erin Makes Dyslexia School Proud

A sporty pupil at Maple Hayes Dyslexia School in Staffordshire has been proudly showing off her shiny medals she swam and trained so hard for.

Erin Rose Johnson, who attends the Lichfield school, recently qualified for the Independent School League National Competition (The ISA) where she picked up one gold, two silver and a bronze medal for her incredible efforts.

The talented swimmer from Tamworth, who is in Year 9, trains up to 11 hours a week, swimming four mornings before school and then five evenings a week to become the best she can be at the sport.

 Erin Rose joined the school which specialises in teaching children with dyslexia through its unique morphological approach, at Year 5 having been a ‘school refuser’ meaning she became too anxious to attend classes at her previous school due to her reading difficulties.

 Her mum Katherine said it had been hard for her to study with dyslexia and her confidence had suffered greatly before joining Maple Hayes.

 “Erin Rose found accessing all areas of her curriculum hard because she wanted to be good at her school work, and couldn’t cope with not being able to do it. Maple Hayes showed her how to access her work. They presented her work at an age appropriate level and in a way she could process and engage in,” she said.

 Since joining the school, Erin Rose has thrived and her confidence has ‘skyrocketed’ which has in turn helped her swimming.

 Katherine added: “Erin Rose is completely dedicated and disciplined in her sport, and is going from strength-to-strength in all that she does.

 “Outside of school she has also been a medalist at county and regional level, and has also qualified and competed at national level for open water swimming. She is also working on maintaining her rankings with British Swimming and to be able to compete nationally,” she added.

 Dr Daryl Brown, headteacher of the school said: “We have been thrilled to watch Erin Rose grow as a person in both her education, sporting abilities and of course confidence in the years she has been with us, and we always love to hear about her swimming medals and achievements.

 “Over the years we have had so many success stories, and we are looking forward to seeing where Erin Rose’s takes her, perhaps even to becoming one of our first Olympic competitors, who knows? We want our pupils to know that anything is possible and dyslexia isn’t a barrier to achievement,” he added.

 Maple Hayes teaches a system called the ‘morphological approach’, which uses a series of icons to make a visual link between meaning and spelling instead of pupils being taught using phonics.

For more details about the school, visit this link