In 2020, life in a classroom changed fundamentally. With the rise of coronavirus our students and their dyslexic learners have increasingly had to adapt to learning not only in the classroom but also from home. In this article I am going to share with you 3 tips for effective learning from home that dyslexic learners can use to help boost their attainment.

Your new classroom at home.  

With classroom sizes often exceeding 30 pupils within primary and secondary education, so often this noisy environment can play to the weaknesses of our dyslexic learners. Challenges with fatigue and attention deficit could mean that distractions around a dyslexic learner could be a real challenge, thus being forced to study from home might bring about some advantages. 

These advantages could be as follows:

·       Within the home there could be less distractions around the pupil, thus promoting better focus and concentration,

·       The amount of time it takes to study perhaps is not so crucial compared to that of the school environment thus resulting in less pressure.  Studying from home will inherently be more flexible when studying.

·       Studying from home could mean that a pupil can find methods of studying that work to their strengths and perhaps some of those ways of studying could be considered unconventional but prove to be effective especially when taking a multi-sensory approach to learning.

·       The pupil might find a more comfortable way of studying at home versus that of sitting at a desk in the classroom. For example, at home a student could easily stand up and walk around whilst listening to a lesson being delivered on a web call whereas they would not be able to do that so easily within the classroom.   The action of getting up and walking around would be deemed as inappropriate in a classroom environment whilst the teacher is speaking, but on a video call this maybe inconsequential in terms of the teacher but may improve engagement, as sitting for too long could be very uncomfortable for the pupil.

Three tips for effective learning from home.

Tip One. Be creative when you are studying use your multi sensory superpowers to absorb information.

It is well known that using more senses within the learning process brings about a higher level of memory and recall, in fact this is encouraged within the classroom.  Every pupil, dyslexic or not will use their own peculiar mix of sight, sound, touch, and smell to help them with their learning and as such it is not possible for teachers within a classroom to modify their teaching to accommodate this on an individual level for each pupil.  However, at home, the pupil could find different ways of connecting with educational content using their own process.

For example, in the classroom, handwriting in a relatively small notebook might prove to be uncomfortable and un-engaging whereas at home mind mapping notes on a large A3 pad with lots of coloured pens may not only unlock engagement or make learning enjoyable but because more senses are involved in the learning, the content is more likely to be remembered.  Learning in 2D on an MS Teams call does not inspire so we must encourage the pupil to find a way of engaging that does.

Use whatever technology that you have to hand to help you to learn more effectively.

With blended learning, the school may well be providing access to the Microsoft 365 suite of apps such as MS Word, One Note, PowerPoint etc.

Within the latest version of MS Office, there are tools that can help dyslexic learners to play to their strengths.

Both MS Word and One Note have a text to speech function whereby one can get text read out.  For example, I encourage the use of wireless headphones and text to speech once a lengthy essay has been written.  It means that the pupil can move about whilst audibly proofreading their text.  So often if there are grammatic or spelling mistakes one is more likely to hear the mistakes as the PC reads them out.

I find myself increasingly using the dictation feature in MS Word.  It is a part of the package so why not?  It enables me to walk about whilst dictating articles for this blog.  This same process can be used with course work etc.  If using handwriting or typing is a challenge then this could be a good alternative mechanism for demonstrating learning in coursework.

Increasingly, web calling software such as MS Teams and Zoom allow for the recording of online lessons.  The pupil can attend lessons and then record it ready for review later.  Note that if you use this method of learning it is effective to use time stamps to draw your attention to important parts of the recording rather than listen to the whole recording again.  If you wanted to really do this effectively then software such as Glean from Sonocent is ideal for this purpose allowing the pupil to record a lesson online and mark up the recording for future reference with those important bits.

Make sure you have the most effective resources to hand to maximise your learning outcomes.

When learning from home it is important that the pupil is comfortable and focused with distractions reduced.  So often though we can take the basic resources for granted and opt to miss them out.

For example, keeping hydrated is incredibly important for concentration as well as making sure there are adequate snacks available so that the pupil does not get hungry.  Is it warm enough?  Is the chair comfortable enough?  Is there an adequate amount of space available to study on?

Does the pupil have enough paper and pens and other learning resources that can help?  Sometimes it is useful to have an item or items close by to fiddle with (I love fiddling with magnets when working or studying) so that there is enough movement to take the issue of movement (fidgeting) away and help the pupil to focus on study.

Final words.

These are just three tips that I hope will be useful for you to consider as you support a child who is engaging in ‘blended learning’, learning partly in school as well as partly from home.

What tips would you recommend?  What has worked for your child?  I would love you to share your thoughts in the comments section below.