About – Word Window

Word window is passionate about supporting people learning to read.

Our founder, Kate McKenzie, is a mum of two boys and was diagnosed with dyslexia aged 19 after a childhood struggling with reading. Having worked in education for over 18 years she has used her educational background, her personal struggles with dyslexia and her early experience as a parent helping her own son with home reading to produce a simple but effective device.

Wordy is a key member of the Word Window family

Wordy use to struggle with reading until he discovered Word Window … what was once daunting and confusing is now fun. Wordy uses Word Window to help him. It helps him to break down the words and makes them easier to read. When he uses the Word Window he feels like a super hero!

We hope that Wordy will help your children see that they too can make sense of the words on the page by using a Word Window. Wordy will also be interested to hear the positive stories as your children’s reading develops and improves as a result of Word Window. Wordy features in all of our children’s resources.

#wordwindowsuperhero

Being ethical is of high importance to Word Window. Our product is made in the UK, is 100% recyclable and 30p from every word window purchased will be donated to support raising literacy levels in the UK.

Our Why

1 in 5 children in England cannot read well by age 11. This has an early impact on the wider curricular especially if reading is not sufficient by the middle of primary school.

7.1 million Adults in the UK deemed to have very low literacy levels. IMPACT who cannot access the job market because of this.

1 in 5 Children left primary school in 2018 unable to read or write properly (DfE)

Around a quarter of all children left primary school last year [2021] unable to read well. These children are at a disadvantage because they are unable to access their secondary education properly, and this has lifelong consequences. (source)

Children who are the most engaged with reading and writing are three times more likely to have higher levels of mental wellbeing than children who are the least engage (Literacy Trust 2018)

£37bn Estimated yearly cost of functional illiteracy to the UK economy (World Literacy Foundation)

Children with reading difficulties are at greater risk of developing mental health problems later in life.

COVID-19 is set to have a disastrous impact on the literacy of the 4.6 million children living in poverty in the UK, who we know already start school with vocabularies up to 19 months behind their better-off peers and who are twice as likely to leave secondary school without good GCSEs in English and maths (source)