What the Davis Method Looks Like in Practice | WHO KNEW Film

Ron Davis, the founder of the Davis Methods, knew from a young age what his life's work would be. In his last book, 'Dummy: The Autobiography of a "retard"', he describes creating clay models as his own way out of a world of chaos and confusion, into what he called the "real people" world. Long before there was a name for any of it, he was already reaching for that way out through clay in his hands.

Decades later, that same creative instinct became the foundation of the Davis Methods used by facilitators around the world today. Clay word modelling is not a classroom exercise borrowed from somewhere else. It is sourced in Ron's own path out of confusion, refined into something that could be taught and passed on to others. His first real breakthrough came when he shaped the letters of the alphabet in clay. On the classroom wall and on the page, the letters had always seemed to move. Made in three dimensions, held in his own hands, they finally stopped. That was the discovery underneath everything the Davis Methods would become, that a letter or word stops disorienting in a dyslexic person's mind once it exists as something real and touchable.

What you actually see in WHO KNEW

WHO KNEW: Dyslexia is a Way of Thinking is not a lecture about dyslexia, and there are no actors in it. Everyone on screen is a real student, a real teacher, or a real parent. A young boy works through an exercise using a dyslexic visualisation of a piece of cake. A teenage girl masters the meaning and spelling of the word "between". A kindergarten teacher leads her whole class through calming self-regulation tools for focus, right there in the classroom.

The film moves between these moments and the people who lived them, so viewers see the Davis Methods applied both one-to-one and in a full classroom setting, rather than simply described. For anyone who has wondered what a Davis session actually looks like, or what a child in the middle of clay modelling is really learning, this film is the closest way to see it firsthand without being in a program or classroom yourself.

How to join a screening

I'll be co-hosting online screenings of WHO KNEW next week, on Tuesday 15 September at 7pm and Sunday 20 September at 4pm. Each event includes the film, a short introduction to Davis Dyslexia solutions, including the Davis Parent Power - Dyslexia course, and a Q&A session to follow.

Book your place here.

Ngā mihi nui,

Rachel