Learning at Home - Support for Children with Additional Needs (SEN)
All children find some pieces of learning difficult at some times. Some children find learning difficult more frequently, these difficulties can be for a range of reasons, in school we often talk about these children having additional, or special educational needs ( SEN) .
Where to start?
Please contact us at school and we will point you in the right direction.
Some children can find it harder to access learning at home. This can be because the support levels available at home are not the same as the children have access to in school or because the lack of familiarity and routine can prevent these children accessing what they already know.
The section below details how we work with your children; it may help you.
We have provided some strating point videos containing staff your children know that may help them access what they already know and what they need to learn next. You may need to watch these videos regularly!
Be encouraging.
Praise your child when they are trying their best, and focus your praise 'It was really good when you..'
If its not going well..stop and maybe try a different way or at a different time.
In school we support individuals in the following ways, you can try some or all of these at home
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Shortening instructions
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Going through the task with the child first so that they know how to do it
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Providing examples for the child to follow
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Breaking the task into shorter tasks for example drawing boxes for children to write one sound at time, counting on our fingers the number of sounds in a word, counting on our fingers the number of words in a sentence .
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Providing practical materials to help the child objects to count, phonics mats, or just the sounds written down) , tricky word mats for the children to find the tricky word
In school we always start from what the child already knows
Ask your child some questions and make the challenge of showing you fun –
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How far can you keep counting? Children love counting ‘all the way to the end’
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Take an object you have got lots of (raisins, pennies, lego bricks) and ask the children to count them … they may need to touch the objects to help them count carefully.
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Your daily reading with your child gives you a very good idea of the sounds and words they can already read.
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Use the phonics mats (available in the downloads of our Home Learning Support Page) - start on mat 1 and with the lower case letters – and ask the children to say the sound and then find something in the room that starts with the sound.
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Ask them to write their name, or maybe a simple sentence about a book or TV programme or something you have done together- look at mistakes they make. Things to look out for are
letter shapes,
how they hold their pencil,
finger spaces,
capital letters,
‘sound talking’ words,
writing tricky words like the, to, was, me, they, are, have
Once you know what your child can do then each piece of learning you do with them should include what they can already do and only add one new letter or word or number or skill.