This will be a Face to Face workshop taking place in Tralee Education Support Centre.

*This is a locally organised course so unfortunately no sub cover is available.*

Dcode is an explicit, systematic and structured literacy programme developed by Mary Moran. Orton-Gillingham-trained in the early 1980s, Mary has spent more than 40 years tutoring people with dyslexia and struggling readers ranging in age from five to 45. She developed Dcode primarily to give parents a clear, practical way to support children who find reading difficult.

Today, Dcode is used in more than 1,000 primary and secondary schools across Ireland, 48 schools in Wales, and a number of international schools. The programme outlines the essential skills students need to become fluent readers and the steps required to become proficient spellers. It helps educators understand why some children struggle to read and, crucially, how to address those difficulties. Teachers gain practical tools to help students, especially those with severe dyslexia, move forward when progress has stalled.

Who this day is for?
This CPD day is for teachers across both primary and secondary level who encounter struggling readers in their classrooms. It is suitable for teachers in mainstream and special education (SET) settings, and for educators working in specialist schools and youth groups.

Throughout her career, Mary has worked with students who have often been traumatised by their inability to read. In 2022, she was awarded a place on the Social Entrepreneurs Ireland Impact Programme, and she has been a guest speaker at the Rotary Conference in Dublin. Mary is passionate about solving the literacy crisis and the social problems associated with it.

On the day:
Tralee Education Support Centre,
Thursday 12 November 2026, 9.00am – 3.00pm
Coffee break: 11.00 am - 11.10 am
Lunch: 1.00pm – 1.30pm (Lunch provided by the Education Support Centre)

Developed in Ireland for Irish classrooms, Dcode gives teachers a home-grown, practical alternative shaped by more than 40 years of direct teaching experience and the specific needs of learners and schools here.

Bio of Presenter: Mary Moran

Mary Moran has been working closely with struggling readers for almost four decades. She was trained in Orton Gillingham in the eighties and has been teaching both privately and on contract in schools since, using structured literacy.

She has developed her own unique structured literacy programme, i.e., the Dcode programme, which employs the approaches and methods she has been using successfully in her private practice as a dyslexia tutor.

Her method is based on viewing the brain as a computer and Dcode as the software that programmes this computer explicitly and systematically. The programme is published in eight books, and a supporting spelling book is currently under development, and scheduled to be published in September. They can be viewed and purchased from the website http://www.dcodedyslexia.com.

Mary has been delivering CPD seminars to teachers in schools in the North Leinster area over the last two years and has been training parents, with great success, to teach their own child to read. Her goal is to help as many parents, and teachers, of struggling readers as she can to teach these children to be fluent and accomplished readers.

Her social ethos, and the positive affect her programme can have on society, has been recognised by Social Entrepreneurs Ireland and she has been selected as one of their twelve finalists for the 2022-23 Impact Award.