Can your unique learner improve their learning skills?
Yeah! 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. Readiness 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 can consider different explanations before selecting the most likely one. This kind of troubleshooting should occur when performing arithmetic, reading, and writing operations. However, these skills are first developed outside of the classroom.
You cannot achieve 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 single learner has some gaps in development, don’t despair. These gaps can be filled with activities that feel like a game.
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” strategies.
Start by stretching your child’s attention span by making him “hold” 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 of yours, 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 creative new dimension. Maybe you will enjoy cars driving to simulated parking lot in the simulated zoo.
If your child is reading a story, ask him to look at the pictures some more. 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 expand their imagination to “play longer” will help improve attention spans 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,” problem solving, and one more try can help keep his mind productively engaged. That may be trying one more time to find the lost sock or solving the problem of how to put the bicycle wheel back on the bicycle frame. It could be figuring out the best solution to the day’s riddle or finishing your homework independently.
We want children to enjoy using their minds and develop “try one more…” 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. They have to be able to navigate their physical body in, over, under, through, around and explore all physical spatial relationships.
Navigating the 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. They must learn the words to describe physical space and be able to separate from that space.
The ability to separate allows them to learn to observe objects, people, places, and things in the space around them. This, in turn, translates into the ability to visually judge the space without having to physically move around the room.
The development of spatial awareness can be very well achieved through games. Here are some examples of games kids love to play that also build 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 actually working on developing their readiness for learning.
The single learner who has difficulty sequencing, reasoning, and solving problems independently 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 relies 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 seamlessly 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 correctly, a student is ready to learn.
In many unique students, these systems do not work properly. This is a big reason for his academic struggle. It affects the ability to sit in a ready-to-learn position. It affects the student’s ability to see and hear. It diverts 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, dance, and juggling offer excellent opportunities for the movement and balance systems to stimulate and help facilitate brain function.
You can support the growth of your unique learner by integrating movement as part of the fuel needed to grow the brain. A more typical student may seem to respond well to practice, practice, practice. A single learner seems to respond better 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.