Can your unique student improve their learning skills?
Yes! In fact, it’s easier and more fun than you think. You can enhance your child’s readiness for learning in ways that feel like play.
Let’s start with a better understanding of learning readiness. It’s not about how fast they can finish a timed math test, or how well they write it. Preparation for learning occurs after foundational developmental skills are in place.
Students who are ready to learn know how to take in and make sense of the information around them. They know how to recognize patterns. They may consider different explanations before selecting the most likely one. This type of problem solving should occur when performing arithmetic, reading, and writing operations. However, these skills are first developed outside the classroom.
You can’t accomplish this with more math worksheets or print practice. How can you help your unique learner improve their readiness for learning? The answer may surprise you.
Readiness for learning only happens when the building blocks of development fall into place. If your unique student has some developmental gaps, don’t despair. These gaps can be filled with activities that feel like play.
Here are three ways to use the game to improve your unique learner’s readiness for learning.
try one more time
The first area to focus on is improving your child’s ability to practice “try one more time” strategies.
Start by expanding your child’s attention span by making him “hold on” a little longer. Play with that toy some more, work on that difficult puzzle just a little longer, read some more, and encourage them to “stay” on the task you gave them just a little longer.
Make this goal your own, designed to help your child, a secret. Without talking about it, start modeling this behavior yourself and when you play together.
If you’re playing a game with toy cars, take the game a little further by adding a new, creative dimension. Maybe you will enjoy the cars driving to a simulated parking lot in the simulated zoo.
If your child is reading a story, have him look at the pictures a little longer. Ask your child to describe all the things that are red in the picture or all the things that make a sound.
Invent a new way to play with the backyard bowling game and teach your child to expand their imagination.
Teaching your child to stretch his imagination to “play longer” will help improve attention span for academic activities.
Look for opportunities for your child to “think some more” or “try one more time.” Encourage and support her effort. Help your child enjoy feeling her mind successfully wrap around a problem.
Teaching your child to “hang in there,” solve problems, and take one more try can help keep their minds productively engaged. That may be trying one more time to find the missing sock or solving the problem of how to put the bike wheel back into the bike frame. It could be discovering the best solution to the riddle of the day or finishing your homework independently.
We want children to enjoy using their minds and develop “try one more time…” strategies. They will need them at school and for the rest of their lives.
Improve spatial awareness
Being ready to read, write, and do arithmetic requires good spatial awareness. If spatial awareness is not innate and automatic for the child, academics will be challenging.
This means that children must understand three-dimensional space. You have to be able to navigate your physical body within, above, below, through, around and explore all physical spatial relationships.
Navigating through space seems simple to us because with just a quick glance, we can easily see how to navigate to the bathroom in a busy and unfamiliar restaurant. The visual sense of space develops after physically experiencing it. We may not remember learning this skill, but we surely did.
Our children also need to learn this skill. You must learn the words to describe physical space and be able to separate yourself from that space.
The ability to separate allows them to learn to observe the objects, people, places and things that are in the space around them. This, in turn, translates into the ability to visually judge space without having to physically move around the room.
The development of spatial awareness can be achieved very well through games. Here are some examples of games that children love to play that also develop spatial awareness:
• Simon says
• Hide and Seek
• Red light, green light
• Chutes and Ladders (board game)
• Obstacle courses
• Treasure hunt
Your child will never know that you are really working to develop their readiness to learn.
The single learner who struggles with independent sequencing, reasoning, and problem solving literally needs physical movement (often more beneficial than additional homework) to facilitate effective thinking.
Balance and Movement
The ability to physically experience the world around us is based on the sensory system that perceives movement in relation to the space around us. This sensory system is the vestibular system. The vestibular system provides our brain with a strong need to maintain balance.
Our need for balance notifies the muscular and joint system. This system has its own set of receptors, called proprioceptors. The proprioceptive system allows the body to respond smoothly to different changes in the center of gravity.
Most physical activities require the integration of the vestibular system with the proprioceptive system.
When these systems work together properly, a student is ready to learn.
In many unique students, these systems do not work properly. This is a big reason for your academic struggle. It affects the ability to sit in a position ready to learn. It affects the student’s ability to see and hear. It distracts your focus on a subconscious level as your brain pays attention to information from the vestibular system that the student might fall out of the chair. These are just three of the hundreds of ways these systems affect readiness for learning.
Movement, exercise, sports, martial arts, yoga, dancing, and juggling offer excellent opportunities for the movement and balance systems to stimulate and help facilitate brain function.
You can support your unique learner’s growth by integrating movement as part of the fuel needed to grow the brain. A more typical student may appear to respond well to practice, practice, practice. A unique learner seems to respond best to practice, move, practice, move.
The more you play “strategically” with your unique learner, the more improvements you will see in their readiness for learning.
