How can we help dyspraxic learners?
Every teacher is a teacher of SEN and all teaching and support staff should be trained and have awareness of quality teaching for students with SEN. That’s the ideal but the reality is that teachers will encounter children with needs they know very little about and training is very much ‘on the job’ supplemented by studying you do in your own time.
This blog is intended to help colleagues learn more about dyspraxia because in all likelihood you may have at least one dyspraxic child in your class – it can affect
This is really useful thank you
thank you.i sm desperate.my son is battling and being a problem in his school. 16yrs old.
i myself seem to be an adult grown up with Dyspraxia.i was in a hard of hearing school and recieved loving tutoring
I am 16 years old and I have I suffer with dyslexia and dyscalculia Since I was small, I have exams coming and my problem is that I struggle to remember anything I learn or understand what I learn and no one at my school seems to understand that , they tell me make notes do this do that and I am there like , this is all well and good but I will never remember this when it comes to the exam and I am so stressed that I can’t remember anything thing that it is stressing me out about everything that when I come to do revision I just cry and cry and no one cares no one wants to help me. I don’t know what to do any more
Hi Lilly, sorry to hear this. Why don’t you send a quick email to the British Dyslexia Association and see if they can recommend anything for you. Best wishes.
take it steady, you will be taking things in but because you are stressing you can.t believe you are. Revise for an hour then have a break. After the break Re read the last half and then read a bit more and break. my son (also 16) tells me often that it isn.t easy but I learnt to take a step back and trust him that he was resting but mostly studying and we did get through it. He’s resitting his maths because he wants a better grade but honestly we are still ok, you are not alone
any more advice will be helpfull.the teschers of his current school are not prepared to assist.the promoter of the school originally said that there was help for pupils with ‘challenges’ ….but not this type.i have now been offered help by a ‘life coach’ i cannot reslly afford but will try anything for my son
Hi there,
I am a dyspraxic adult in her late 40s as well aa higly sensitive oerson and empath. I have learnt&diagnised with them all recently which explains all my life time failures in everything.
I desperately want to study again but i feel extremely emberrassed to be in group setting as i am distinctively behind everyone for any single new teaching. As i am also very intelligent people think i pretend not understanding or making them annoyed. No one naturally can see or undersyand the link between my the short of my memory which effects everything.
My question is who i could see about that? I mean how could i learn learning to be able to study and have degree (in psychology)
I would be utterly grateful for any guidence, suggestions and anything i can’t think of right
now whoever is reading these lines right now.
Hi – sorry if you already know this, but the Dyspraxic Association would be the best place to start for advice and support.
Strokes. Speak in short sentences hold a pen
A very good read.
Dyspraxia is much more understood now than compared to when I was at school.
Being a Dyspraxic child grown into a Dyspraxic adult I have learned how to manage the things i “struggle” with.
But the heartbreaking thing is watching my 8-year-old daughter go through the exact same issues I did.
Funny enough she has just been moved on to using a laptop in year 3. That was the same school year as I got put on to using one! (They were a lot different then)
It is a struggle suffering from Dyspraxia, but teachers now days are making a brilliant effort in making sure these children are getting the best experience they can from school.
My 8 year old son is dyspraxic but also autistic, with substantial social communication difficulties as well as overwhelming sensory processing problems. He is nevertheless of mainstream academic ability and is supported 1 to 1 in mainstream. I was alarmed to read your recommendation above that a dyspraxic child should never be renoved from the classroom, as this happened 6 months ago as his sensory overload was so bad he regularly attacked people in the classroom. I have already been worrying about how isolating this is, and now im even more worried. What do you advise?
This was advice for a child with dyspraxia, but as your son also has Autism it follows that the additional challenges he faces will mean that the advice can’t be applied the same way. If he is regularly attacking other students or teacher, it would be hard for him to remain in the classroom since schools have a duty of care to safeguard all children and protect them from violence. So I think the only way around this is to work on his behavioural/emotional difficulties while he is out and then when he re-enters the classroom there is no violence hopefully.
I taught abroad for over 12 years without difficulty. It was only when I decided to do my PGCE at age 63 that I was diagnosed with dyspraxia. Prior to that I was a banker, accountant and lawyer throughout my working career and while I was often told by my colleagues that I was scattered brained, I got the job done and so no one (not even myself) made an issue of it . My condition relates to having very bad short term memory and poor planning and organisational skills. I had no issue with motor or physical skills and I was an avid sports person in my youth. The “support” I received during my PGCE year related to my teaching and not to my dyspraxia particularly as it related to in-class room activities. In addition, I was overloaded with having to prepare teaching plans and ended up on one occasion teaching the wrong curriculum to a particular year group! Bottom line is that I did not get my 2nd placement and I have since moved on from teaching with no regrets for having tried.