Search our website

Can't find what your looking for? get in touch

Close

A guide to putting your SEN learners at the heart of the pandemic recovery

02/08/21

Many students with additional needs or SEN depend on stability and routine to thrive. As a result these learners have struggled the most with being thrown into a world of uncertainty.

Get the latest news to your inbox

Like other children many SEN students had to quickly adapt to learning from home during the lockdowns. Whilst teachers did an incredible job to engage their pupils the combination of a huge change to routine and learning new ways of studying created additional stress and affected many SEN learners’ communication mobility and progression.

It important we recognise the additional support required for these students to catch up and to put them at the heart of the recovery from Covid-19.

Literacy Support

The impact of the pandemic on children’s literacy was highlighted with recent reports showing 200,000 year six students now face the reality of starting secondary school with low literacy ability – an increase of 30,000 students over the past year alone. Our multi-sensory and award-winning software IDL Literacy is proven to dramatically increase literacy ability after just a few hours of use and can be used for those with lower level ability or as a full class resource. The programme complements the learning style of dyslexic students improving their reading and spelling as well as confidence in the classroom. To support multi-sensory and phonics teaching IDL Literacy incorporates sight sound touch and voice. It is structured in a way to help with sequencing and overlearning to enable students with dyslexia to gradually build their knowledge and retain the information.

Maths Support

As we may expect many teachers have reported that prolonged periods away from school have also negatively impacted mathematical performance. At IDL we have developed a multi-sensory cloud based IDL Numeracy programme to support students with dyscalculia and lower-level maths ability. With many dyscalculic students being creative having a love of words and a strong practical ability they will be suited to a multi-sensory approach that uses contextualisation to real life scenarios. Taking this into consideration IDL Numeracy is an interactive and fully graded course mapped to schools’ curriculums that improves the ability of low-attaining learners in mathematics and reduces anxiety.\r\n

Accompanying IDL Numeracy are our new Animated Maths Tutorials which are designed to promote independence and help your students in a visual and creative way with the theory behind the maths problems and principles covered in IDL Numeracy lessons. For a preview of these fantastic resources click to watch the video below.

Identifying Dyscalculia

To help identify and diagnose dyscalculia our new IDL Dyscalculia Screener is completely free of charge to all schools. It is a quick simple to use online test that highlights any dyscalculic tendencies or number SEN perfect for screening students aged up to 11 years. The test can be used to screen an entire year group or for individual students who are showing signs of maths anxiety or particular maths difficulties.

Downloadable Worksheets

We have a variety of fun downloadable worksheets for your students including some brand new Olympic activities to help them get into the sporting spirit. To view and download our free worksheets please click here.

IDLS are a charity owned organisation with a sole focus on lifting barriers to learning for children who struggle the most. Our range of award-winning software is proven to help SEN students to revise learn and catch up. Our software can be used both in the classroom and at home providing your SEN learners with invaluable literacy numeracy and IT skills – taking away any additional stress if they can’t come into the classroom.

To find out more about any of our products and to request a free trial please click here.