Having a child with learning difficulties can be challenging. You see them struggling in school, losing focus when completing tasks, or frequently forgetting to turn in assignments. You want to assist them but you just don’t know how. Help your child with learning challenges excel with the ideas detailed below.

Start early!

If you notice your child struggling with learning, attention, behaviors, or any combination thereof, speak to your child’s teacher as soon as you can. They should be able to share valuable advice on how your child is doing in school and any difficulties they are noticing. If your child’s teacher is seeing notable challenges, it may make sense for you to request a formal evaluation from your child’s school to gauge any learning disabilities, attentional challenges, or other diagnoses your child may have. If a diagnosis is made, an IEP will likely be created and your child may be entitled to special services at school, such as speech therapy, occupational therapy, special education tutoring, and other related services. Read more at Could My Child Have Dyslexia? – EBL Coaching.

Set routines at home

In addition to special services your child may receive at school, you can help them at home by setting routines. They should wake up at a certain time, do their homework at a specific time, and go to bed at a set time – ideally roughly the same time each day to establish consistency. If your child has weak organization or executive functioning skills, you may want to use checklists for tasks that need to be done at home. For instance, a morning checklist might include brushing their teeth, getting dressed, having breakfast, and packing their backpack. An afternoon checklist might include having a snack, completing their homework, putting their homework in the appropriate place to be turned in the next day (or submitting it online that night), and organizing their backpack for school the next day.

Create a study space

Your child should have a well-organized, well-lit study space for completing their homework each day. This space can be a desk in their room or even a table in a communal area if that is the only option. Just make sure the space is fully equipped with all supplies your child may need for competing their homework – pens, pencils, notebooks, scissors, markers, paper – anything they might need for all types of assignments should be there. This will help prevent them from getting up midway through homework time to find supplies, which could ultimately lead to distractions and diversions. Read more at Organizational Tools for Academic Success – EBL Coaching.

Read with your child

The more you read with your child, the more they will learn to enjoy reading and the better their reading skills will become. Encourage your child to select a book on a topic they are interested in, like dinosaurs or sports. If your child struggles with reading, you might start by reading aloud to them. Stop throughout the book as you read to ask questions and discuss the characters, plot, and setting. Try to encourage your child to form a visual picture of what they are hearing in the story. You can even ask prompting questions, like “What time of day do you think it is?”, “What season is it?”, “How tall do you think the characters are?”, and so on. Eventually, when your child is ready, perhaps alternate the reading, where you read a section, then your child reads a section, and go back and forth. Down the road encourage your child to read the whole book aloud to you, and discuss the story while they are reading and after they are finished.

Seek a tutor

If your child continues to struggle despite your help at home, you may want to consider a special education tutor. This tutor should not just be a “homework helper,” but a tutor who specializes in helping students with learning disabilities or ADHD. If your child has dyslexia or reading challenges, you might want to find a dyslexia tutor or an Orton Gillingham tutor, someone who can utilize the Orton Gillingham method for the tutoring, which is a research-based, multisensory approach, for helping students build stronger reading and writing skills.

Having a child with learning challenges can feel overwhelming at times. Yet with the right support and tools, you can help your child at home and guide them towards academic success. Read more at Orton Gillingham Tutors NYC – EBL Coaching.

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The post How Can I Help My Child with Learning Challenges at Home? appeared first on EBL Coaching.

Originally published on the PIX11 website
       

Tutoring services are seeing a sharp increase in demand as students try to bridge the achievement gap brought on by remote learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

While school is out, some families are using the summer months to help their children catch up.

EBL Coaching offers one-on-one sessions in New York and New Jersey.  

“We’ve absolutely seen a rise in the requests for tutoring, mainly because so many kids have these gaps in their learning from having missed so much school,” said Dr. Emily Levy, founder and director of EBL Coaching. “Many kids have missed those critical early foundations of their academic skills.”

EBL sessions, either in-person or virtual, are rooted in multi-sensory techniques.

“A multi-sensory approach means, rather than working out of a workbook, or listening to a teacher, we integrate the visual, the tactile and the auditory modalities simultaneously,” Levy said.

A recent study by Harvard found that in school districts that went remote, achievement growth was lower for all subgroups, but especially for students attending high-poverty schools. Falling behind can also have a devastating effect on a student’s mental health and well-being. 

“We found that so many kids, even before the pandemic, had low self-esteem then they had learning difficulties but now even more so,” Levy said. 

EBL offers tutoring in both reading and math. They specialize in the multi-sensory method, where all senses are engaged while learning. For instance, instead of writing letters out on paper, students can “sky-write” or write on colored sand.

“Kids enjoy the process because it’s so engaging and it really is highly effective; I would say the most effective way of building core academic skills,” Levy said.

While the multi-sensory approach was first developed for students with ADHD, dyslexia and other learning difficulties, Levy said all children can benefit from this form of instruction, particularly those who need an extra boost this summer before starting the next grade in September.

“I think many parents are now just realizing how much their child struggled, how much they missed, how much they’re struggling now,” Levy said.

The post Tutoring Services Help Kids in NY and NJ Catch up During Summer appeared first on EBL Coaching.