Homework is tough enough for kids these days but how much more so for children with learning disabilities? Put yourself in your child’s shoes, what we may think is so basic and so easy may be something their brain just cannot comprehend. Not because they don’t want to but rather because of its structure and the disorder’s damage to it.
We’ve faced many challenges when it comes to homework and quite frankly it’s frustrating beyond belief sometimes. Trust me, we just went through one tough week. We’ve tried lots of different techniques and some days they will work and other days it won’t work. Here are a few tips that we’ve come up with to help make the task of homework just a little easier for our Little Bug. (I have discussed these homework modifications with Little Bug’s teachers too just so I know we are on the same page.)
Breakdown work: If there are several pages of homework to be completed, make them into smaller bite-size amounts so your child doesn’t begin to stress out about how much needs to be done. Remove the staple from the assignment and only show your child one page at a time, or cut assignments into small sections.
Math
Visuals and concrete items: When tackling the subject of math remember how important visuals are.
Number lines: Terms such as before and after are difficult for Little Bug so we make sure he has a number line in front of him when he needs it.
Counters: Having concrete items he can count while adding or subtracting help tremendously.
Number Charts: Problems that require your child to fill in the missing number in a pattern, let’s say a pattern of six such as: Fin the missing number in this set: 6, 12, ___ , 24, 30, 36 can be difficult if your child cannot picture it in his head. In this case, we keep a 100 number chart close by for such occasions.
Clocks: When dealing with picture of clocks drawn on paper Little Bug just couldn’t grasp the concept of time and how to count it. He asked for a real clock and being able to hold it in his hands and point and skip count by fives really gave him the edge over telling time. It wasn’t long before he was telling time.
Story Problems: This is a tremendously difficult task as it requires the ability to distinguish pertinent information and the understanding of what isn’t important and can be discarded. We breakdown the problem first and discard or cross out the unimportant information which helps reduce the amount of information he now needs to use to solve the problem.
Science, Language Arts, Reading and Comprehension:
Highlighting: Highlighting key words to look for or even full paragraphs where the answer to a question can be found can give your child direction to the correct response rather than overwhelming them with pages and pages of information. Another option would be for say open book assignments would be to provide your child with the page number along with the paragraph in which to locate the appropriate response.
Reduce the number of choices: When given a multiple choice question reducing the number of possible answers even by one can greatly reduce the stress and improve your child’s probabilities in locating the correct response. For fill in the blank questions, on problems where Little Bug simply cannot supply an answer, I will provide him with two possible answers, one the correct one and the other an incorrect response.
Turn assignments into hands on activities: For social studies vocabulary words cutting the words and definitions apart and matching and then gluing them together on a page a piece of construction paper helped Little Bug, it again provided a visual for him. The same can be done for simple science assignments as well.
Writing: I highly recommend “Handwriting without Tears”. We worked on this last summer and took just a couple of pages at a time and completed the entire book within the summer. It will assist your child with formation of letters.
Visual Examples: To assist Little Bug in writing and capitalization, we provide him with again another visual. We have the alphabet in both upper and lower case on lined paper in front of him so if he gets stuck on how a letter is supposed to look he can simply glance over for the correct formation.
These are all very simple modifications and take no time at all to create but it can be a world of help to your child, reduce stress and ease the anxiety for both you and your child of the nightly homework routine. What tips do you use to ease homework stress?
© 2009, Nanette Gomez. All rights reserved.
{ 1 comment }
Wow, Amazing article. Thank you so much. We often deal with stress and homework and you offered some great tips and tricks that I had not thought of before.
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