Diverse Learning

Encourage your child to tell people when they haven't understood what has been said. This may sound obvious, but children with learning difficulties tend to be used to not understanding a lot of what is said to them. They may accept this is normal and either not think to answer questions or be too shy/ embarrassed to let others know they haven’t understood what  has been said.

• Talk with your child about the importance of asking questions to work out exactly what the other person means such as:

• “ What does “ respect” mean?”

• “ How does that fit into what we've been talking about?”

• “ Why did you say that?”

   

When your child  does ask questions, reward them by letting them know that they have done the right thing (eg “That’s a good question….”) using this strategy will encourage your child to be an active learner.

Talk with your child about general knowledge topics  (such as dinosaurs,  recipes,   planets and space, Minecraft etc.)  This will help your child to learn lots of new kinds of words and how to use them. Make sure that your child gets lots of opportunities to talk about the new things they are learning. The more times they talk about new ideas the more likely they are to remember them. 

Do not let your child use the words “ it”, “ them”, “ he”, “ she” “ that”,  “ there”   or “ thing”  without first describing what they refer to -  that is,  encourage your child to use the exact word to describe what they are talking about. even if your child cannot think of the exact name of an object,  ask them to describe it to you (eg. “ The  silver thing that you  cook on” or “ The woman... like a Dr,  who helps your teeth” etc.)