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We all learn in different ways. Helping your students to identify what works best for them is really important. Do they prefer visual aids, make links with existing learning or use movement and actions to help them remember things? Identifying their own personal preferences and effective practices will benefit lifelong learning and help your students to succeed.
Tip or Idea: Talk to your learners about different ways of learning. Discuss how you like to learn as an adult and encourage them to reflect on their own learning, what they enjoy and what they think helps them most. You might even like to demonstrate different approaches to a simple learning task and see how they respond.
Free resource to help you with this activity: Explore our Learning to Learn resource. Our Doing the Learning flashcards can help to scaffold conversations about different learning strategies. The Planning to Learn resources can be used as prompts and reminders for successful learning approaches in class.
SEND learners, particularly those with speech and language difficulties, can find comprehension more challenging for a range of reasons. Understanding of subject-specific vocabulary and inference can be difficult areas for some learners.
Tip or Idea: Start simple! Use single images or short sentences and talk about what is happening. Can your learner relate this to an experience they have had themselves?
All learners have times where they may become less engaged or motivated with their learning. This can be for a range of reasons but learners with additional needs may face even more challenges. It is important to get to know your learners well and learn what motivates and excites them. Try to incorporate this into your lesson planning and help them to progress and reach their full potential.
Dual coding, developed by Allan Pavio, is a teaching method that combines different types of stimuli to support students to learn and remember information. It is particularly beneficial for learners with special educational needs. An example might be combining words with pictures or audio with text.
Tip or Idea: Start with an image and ask students to explain in their own words what they mean or flip it around and provide students with a word and ask them to draw or create their own image.