These workshops boost confidence and performance for children by teaching them how to “learn for fun”
Dekko Workshops (also known as “Dekko Comics Workshops”) are about utilising any child’s or student’s strengths, and whatever they enjoy, into a tool they can apply for themselves to any school difficulty or exam situation. This workshop can be especially helpful for tackling learning difficulties and/or disengagement in the classroom, while also being a confidence booster for those who might find schoolwork difficult.
These workshops help with:
. Confidence, resilience and optimism
. Learning skills and application of these skills
. Happier and more positive school experiences
. Learning how to use what you love to overcome learning obstacles
. Strengthening and building positive relationships with learning
. Support for any learning difficulty
. Inclusion of all pupils, rather than just singling out the ones who struggle
How do they work?
The workshops involve a talk for the first 20 minutes explaining the methodology. Rossie Stone (the creator behind the workshops) shares his story of growing up in school struggling with dyslexia and low self-esteem, and how he used the technique covered in this workshop to boost his confidence, overcome his struggles and boost his own personal grades at last!
Then the attendees are shown how they can simply turn any educational information into their own entertainment. If you book a PERSONAL VISIT workshop, the workshop coordinator (usually Rossie Stone) will oversee a 40-60 minute session (unless a longer one is asked for) in which the attendees are shown the technique and get to put it into practice themselves. Rossie will give personal feedback and encouragement on everyone’s work, having as much individual time as possible to make sure everyone is understanding how to utilise this technique best for themselves. When performing the exercise part, children are given the option to work in teams or work alone - and they are allowed to use any form of entertainment that inspires them, be it art or music or anything else.
There are two forms in which this workshop can be performed, to ensure that we can reach anyone who needs us:
1. Online via Skype or Zoom (to anywhere in the world). This includes the talk, the demonstration, and the Q&A. Particularly good for international workshops or for those who don’t have the additional budget to accommodate travel expenses.
2. Personal Visit to your school or organisation, where Rossie performs the full workshop live in front of you and interacts with attendees giving feedback while they do the workshop. Best suited for those based in the UK (as we are based there), but we have delivered these workshops in Finland as well. International visits are certainly on the table.
Want to book a Dekko Workshop?
We go wherever we’re invited and perform these workshops for anyone who wants them.
Click the button below to book your Dekko Workshop.
WHAT IS A DEKKO WORKSHOP?
(More on what these workshops are, where they come from, how they work and how they can help)
Are you a parent in need of help and motivation for your child in school? Do you long for them to start enjoying their subjects as well as performing better in them? Or are you a teacher looking for better ways to stimulate your classroom and find more all-encompassing teaching tools for both struggling and non-struggling learners alike?
Everyone has at least one subject they find difficult, and because they find it hard they find it boring.
What if there was a talk and a workshop that could not only inspire a whole school’s worth of pupils in one assembly, but also equip them with simple methods of turning their own work — be it homework or studying for exams — into something so naturally stimulating they may even choose to do it in their spare time? Through results and reception, Dekko Workshops are proving that such a thing is more than possible…
Dekko Workshop in Barrhead (photo from Barrhead News)
These workshops have been performed for nearly 60 schools across the UK, including an international one in Finland! They were invited specially for the Borders Book Festival twice in a row, as well as doing several sessions for the Highland Council and for multiple social enterprises and charities like Dyslexia Scotland and the National Autistic Society. We have even been featured on BBC News, Radio Scotland, BBC Radio 4 and STV, as well as other news outlets.
The years we spend at school are arguably the most important. We develop a lot of our core skills and our relationship with learning around that time, but also a lot of our self image, self-esteem, and aspirations in life. So it’s no surprise that you might seek help for your child’s confidence, or help with study skills, or better study techniques for revision and exams. Such things are particularly important in this early stretch of life, so it’s important to find the right learning support and inspiration for our children during this time — whatever age they are in school.
So with that being said, it’s important for pupils at school to learn not just WHAT to learn, but also HOW to learn, and HOW to adapt to whatever the subject or situation. This is what parents and schools both wish and strive for when it comes to their pupils. Where do we start? First we must understand the issue at hand…
For example, if your child has a problem with reading or learning, it may not be KS2 literacy’s fault. That child could simply be struggling with the skill of reading and interpreting through words for one reason or another — and because they find it difficult to access they don’t get connected to what’s interesting about the subject. Thus they associate the subject with boredom and (often) negativity, which can spread to their personal view of school, if this difficulty manifests itself in too many areas.
But what if there was a way to make homework fun as well as helpful for children of all ages? What if there was a technique that could effectively make Maths and English far more accessible regardless of dyslexia, autism, ADHD, dyspraxia or dyscalculia? What if regardless whether your child was as young as 6 or as old as 17, they could learn a self-help mindset and technique that not only helps them perform better in ANY subject but also significantly boosts their confidence at the same time?
Sounds too good to be true, perhaps? But that’s exactly what Dekko Workshops have been doing for the last two years to overwhelmingly positive responses from pupils, parents, and teachers alike — and how they do it is simple yet effective. No one size of teaching fits all, (which is part of the issue with the school system for many as it focuses primarily on teaching through words and writing), yet it may be impractical to find the specific way to learn for each individual pupil and provide them with a resource for it.
So what the workshops do is teach children how they can use what they enjoy doing in their spare time, and utilise that as a way of turning schoolwork into entertainment. Whether that means learning their times tables through a game of penalty shoot-outs at home or making an amusing comic story that teaches nouns and verbs through slapstick humour, the workshops teach the children to look into themselves, find what makes them happy and confident, and utilise that as the SOLUTION instead of the distraction or difficulty.
In other words: they teach children how to teach themselves, in a way that is naturally motivating to engage with the information, no matter what it is.
HOW THEY WORK:
The pupils/attendees are shown how they can incorporate whatever they find entertaining into whatever homework and schoolwork they are tackling, and are then given the chance to try this out. I show them examples and give them feedback, showing and encouraging them as to how they can achieve this. There is no bad idea in these workshops — the only way to get them wrong is if you are BORED with what you’re doing. If you’re not interested in how you’re turning your education into entertainment, it’s not going to help you (or anyone else) engage with or remember that information.
WHO AM I and WHO ARE WE?
My name is Rossie Stone, and I am the creator and host of Dekko Workshops (also known as “Dekko Comics Workshops”). Like the Dekko Comics series I make, these workshops are based on the same experience in my life. I am dyslexic and struggled throughout school both with school subjects but also (towards the later years especially) with my self-esteem. School was a place that I associated with difficulty and disappointment in myself, and how hard I worked didn’t seem to make a difference. I continued to receive low grades.
It wasn’t until (at the age of 17) I embraced the fact that I could read and engage with information through other means other than the conventional worksheets and textbooks, that things changed. I knew I could read and remember information through comics and general entertainment (even though this would not have been considered proper reading or learning). I found that by turning my revision notes into comic strips it not only became more accessible, but genuinely more fun! Furthermore, I turned my English exam notes into amusing posters with funny pictures around the house that were relevant to the lesson in a creative zany way, and sang my Shakespeare Quotes to my favourite Dire Straits songs.
This whole new scope of reading and accessing information didn’t just turn the ENJOYMENT of school and studies upside down for me. I managed to score my very first academic Grade A in an exam that wasn’t Art related! This was a huge moment for me, and made me realise that this method not only helped me remember information — but also UNDERSTAND it too. The power of natural motivation.
(Since 2017 I have done three TEDx Talks on the subject of fully utilising entertainment as an effective engagement and communication force. See the one below if you are interested, which also goes into more detail about my personal experience and story from school).
Thus the seed for my Dekko Comics series was born, and my revision technique has now become an engaging reality to help others who struggled like me. Dekko Workshops take that one step further, where I can teach children of all ages and learning types how they can invent their own resources. But it’s not just theory. I SHOW them the how as well, and provide them with guidance and feedback as they perform the workshop before my eyes as a group or classroom. I allow them to pick a piece of information and then turn it into pure entertainment for themselves. There is a technique to getting them to understand and grasp this, but once they get their head round the basics they click from there — and the results are extraordinary!
An example of a COMIC that one boy made at one of our autism-support workshops, teaching how water is made. Pupils aren’t just encouraged to do comics, but whatever they feel comfortable with. We get songs, raps, posters, performances, board games, sports references and all sorts at these workshops; and all of them are awesome!
So whether it’s support for dyslexia, alternative study skills, or just equipping students with the insight to grow their confidence in engaging with learning — Dekko Workshops is the unique, simple, yet highly effective solution you’ve been looking for!
If you are interested in booking a Dekko Comics Workshop, please click the button below and choose one of the following options. They can be delivered online over Skype or by a personal session — whatever is most convenient for where you are in the world. Everyone deserves to know about and benefit from the message in these workshops.
TESTIMONIES & REVIEWS
“We had the most amazing evening, it was a privilege to meet him and hear him speak. What an inspiration.”
“What you are doing is so valuable & can impact many people.”
“Your confidence and clarity in explaining processing words was helpful for me as a parent of a child who has similar issues. And yes this isn’t rocket science but sometimes it helps to have someone tell you that it’s ok to use such a seemingly frivolous technique to be effective. So thank you.”
“Harry came to your talk at the wider world event late last year in Edinburgh. Your talk had such a profound effect on him. Everything you said, he was nodding along to in recognition and I can’t tell you how much this helped him seeing a young adult speaking his ‘language’ ... A few days later I heard a friend of his saying he felt sorry for Harry having dyslexia. Harry replied that being dyslexic was a great thing and that actually he felt sorry for those who weren’t.”
“Rossie ran some workshops for pupils further extending the idea of the comics to show pupils how art, colour, stories can be merged with things that interest them to help their memories and learning. It was amazing to see quiet, withdrawn reluctant learners engaging with the comics and then coming up with brilliant ideas to help them learning material. Teachers reported they had never seen these pupils so engrossed. One pupil said it was such a confidence boost to see the ideas used in the comics and for the first time confide in someone how they find writing revision notes in different shades of blue helped them in exams.”
“I just wanted to pass on my thanks after meeting you today at the Albany Centre. I tutor adult learners but my own son is dyslexic and I could have put him in your shoes today. I think your experience is what school and structured learning is like for him. Your passion shines through and you are an inspiration to young people and adult learners alike. I relayed my experience to my contacts in both my local primary (Lorne St Primary) and secondary (Bellahouston Academy). I’ve ordered a set to try out with my son, so thanks again.”
“Deepest gratitude for all that you have done to help us raise awareness about learning and attention issues, inspire kids and improve outcomes.”
“He’s clearly a lovely and talented guy doing great work, which needs to be better known for the benefit of kids, parents and teachers. Many thanks again for passing this on.”