28th December 2018 9:00
By Blue Tutors
We receive a lot of requests to tutor students who have been diagnosed with special educational needs or disabilities. Parents are very keen to stress when their children have been diagnosed as ‘SEND’ students, and for obvious reasons; these students have genuinely difficulty in certain areas and might need different a tutoring approach with certain concepts and a tutor who can sympathise with their difficulties.
In the classroom SEND students can really struggle if the teacher doesn’t plan lessons appropriately, but no lesson is ever equally effective for every student, and inevitably students who learn differently often get left behind. This is why SEND students receive extra help, but from a tutoring point of view how should lessons be different?
There are conflicting opinions on tutoring students with learning difficulties, but a consistency within those opinions is that the tutor needs to adapt to ensure that the student can learn as effectively as possible. However, this is what a tutor should do for all students so what is the main difference? Well, it’s really helpful when a tutor knows exactly why a student may have difficulty understanding something so that the tutor can avoid that problem, and more importantly, plan lessons to avoid that problem. If a student has difficulty reading then introduce topics using visual aids. If a student has ADHD then the lesson should be more ‘quick fire’ to keep the student focussed.
There are many students with learning difficulties who aren’t diagnosed as being SEND students, which is a current frustration with the school system. In addition some students might not be considered as having learning difficulties when they actually do, but maybe they have already learnt coping mechanisms themselves, or be sufficiently good at school that no one ever thinks to test them. Ironically, this is more difficult for a tutor; with no pre-warning of the difficulties a student has, the tutor has to learn what will and won’t work in lessons by trial and error.
Ultimately we ask tutors to tutor according to Tutoring Standards’ Pedagogy, learning difficulty or not. That method requires the student to respond in the way that he/she wants. The skill for the tutor is then to recognise the method of response and way of learning and adjust and plan lessons accordingly.