Writing a Student Learning Statement

Preparing For A New Year At School

The holidays are coming to an end and you begin to notice that your child is becoming anxious, stressed, grumpy, not eating or losing sleep. What’s going on? Then it hits you that the commencement of the new school year is looming and your child is starting to stress, big time. New teachers, harder schoolwork, more of it, homework and increasing academic expectations. This can be a stressful time for all children, but particularly for a child with dyslexia.

This tip is a simple but incredibly effective strategy that can help to alleviate this starting-back-to-school anxiety. In fact it can completely change your child’s school year and their learning outcomes. If you do nothing else for your child – please do this.

Create a simple statement of your child’s abilities for every teacher that will come in contact with your child throughout the coming year.

Include:

My Child’s Learning Strengths.
My Child’s Learning Weaknesses.
How My Child Likes To Learn.

Even better get them to help you to write it. This document only needs to be one or two sheets of paper that the teacher can print out and refer to.

That’s it, plain and simple. Every year I email this to my children’s new teachers, both classroom and specialist subject teachers, and every year the teachers email me back their thanks. Now they know how to start the year off in a positive and proactive way and get the best from my child from day one. This is a simple, but powerful strategy and well worth the 20 minutes or so it will take you to write it.

Your child’s teacher is faced with 20-30 new students in every class as the new school year commences. If you were in their position wouldn’t you want to know how best to reach and teach them effectively?

Click here to download your very own learning statement template.

Best Wishes,

Liz Dunoon
Editor, Dyslexia Daily