Being in class can be a struggle for lots of students, but that doesn’t mean that there is anything ‘wrong’ with them, or that they are ‘special’, but could simply be that the teacher they had in Y3 simply didn’t get them; they couldn’t bring the best out of your child and as a result they have failed to understand the bus stop method for long division, or your child have always been really good at answering verbally in class, but struggle to get their ideas down on to paper to show the teacher. Don’t worry, many students in school have the same struggles, but it is those that ask for help early that find by the time they leave school they wonder what all the fuss was about.

Our plan is always to work within lower school to support your in classes throughout school. We have a number of interventions that we run that can support either maths or literacy skills and with some work at home these can be finished within 20 weeks, and you should begin to see a big difference in their lessons in school.

The main interventions we run are: -

  • IDL – a proven intervention that we have had great success in improving reading ages, speeds and comprehension skills. 20 weeks of 3 20 minutes sessions is all that is needed, and this can either be done with our help at school, or if you prefer can be done as extra homework.
  • 1-2-1 literacy – it may be that even after using IDL they still find it is a struggle to understand written text. We have a number of different strategies that we can use at this point that are skilfully delivered in a 1 hour session with our literacy specialist. This will last as long as is necessary until your child feels comfortable reading across other subjects within school.
  • Symphony maths – much like IDL, but this time to help boost their confidence and basic skills in using maths, both in lesson and in ‘real life’ (i.e. in a shop working out their change). Again, you can use this from home and the more that you do, the quicker they will see their skills improve.
  • In-class support – sometimes, even after all the help that they have had, and all the hard work and effort they have put in, some lessons are still difficult. It might be that at this point, in consultation with you and your child that support in class is considered.

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