This year, during the tour, we launched the My Way! Awards. In partnership with uDraw, our My Way! campaign is raising awareness of the fact that one in five children have learning challenges. That means around six children in each of your classes finds it hard to learn and often difficult to read. Through My Way! we are busting apart any myths that these children are less intelligent. We are showing that we each learn in a different way, and celebrating how each child can succeed… their way.

Do you find reading hard?

It was the reaction of children that gave us the idea for our My Way! campaign. We saw this in the first of our school reading tours that Henry Winkler and I have been doing over the past four years. Henry is world famous as The Fonz from a programme called Happy Days but he is also known as the author of the successful Hank Zipzer novels about a boy with dyslexia. Henry reads from his books and speaks to the children about how tough he found school. We take an assembly and Henry asks if anyone is finding school tough? He puts up his own hand and says: “I did.” He makes it okay. He tells the kids how he found maths hard, reading hard, spelling hard but how he was great at lunch! And yet, he tells them, despite his learning challenges, he managed to find his own way to succeed to become a famous actor, director, producer and author.

We met thousands of school children in schools and theatres on this year’s reading tour but, for those of you we don’t get to meet in person, First News will carry on running weekly My Way! reports in the paper and on-line.

The My Way! Awards

On Tuesday 21 June, Henry and I launched the My Way! Awards at Downing Street with some kids who have had their My Way! reports published in First News before. The awards say: “Thanks for helping me to learn My Way!” and give children who need a bit of extra support an opportunity to thank somebody who they feel has really been there for them. Any child in the UK can nominate someone to receive a My Way! award which we will send to your schools to be presented in assemblies or straight to you if they are for someone out of school. The hope is the awards will raise awareness of learning challenges and will help get these children the understanding that they need. And, through My Way!, we will continue to tell the stories of many successful people, both famous and those in every day lives, who struggled at school – people like Jamie Oliver, like Richard Branson, like our previous Prime Minister, Gordon Brown who, himself, is dyslexic… and Henry!

The First News My Way! Reading tour and awards are in partnership with uDraw GameTablet for more information see www.worldofudraw.com