Winner of the 2024 Teach Secondary Award for SEND resources
The updated, straight-talking and accessible guide is ideal for teachers, teaching assistants, SENCOs, senior leadership and even home schooling parents who want to know more about supporting students with Learning Differences.
Highlighting some of the more commonly encountered Specific Learning Differences (SpLD's), expert Diana Hudson concisely describes the signs of those that are most commonly encountered in the classroom. Covering: dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, autism spectrum condition, ADHD, OCD and featuring brand new chapters on Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA), Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) and tics and Tourette Syndrome, this book covers all the information you need, whilst reminding us that all neurodivergent children are individuals and have different qualities.
Diana provides an overview of each identity and evaluates how you may need to adapt your levels of support in the classroom - as well as practical suggestions for modifying teaching materials and methods to make learning enjoyable, effective and accessible for all students. There are also dedicated chapters on helping students with SpLD's to improve their organisation and develop effective revision skills and exam techniques.
About the Author :
Diana Hudson has taught science in secondary schools for over 35 years. Combining her enthusiasm for teaching science to children who think differently and her training in teaching students with Specific Learning Differences, she has become both a Head of Biology and a SENCO at different times in her career. She has written articles for journals including the SEN magazine and Education in Chemistry and is the author of Specific Learning Difficulties, What Teachers Need to Know, published in 2015 and Exploring Science with Dyslexic Children and Teens published in 2021 by Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Review :
This book is a resource that embraces neurodiversity, supports students and emboldens teaching staff, school administrators and parents to strive for the best for their neurodivergent child. This guidance is key to making schools more equal and diverse places where all children can thrive. Every school should get a copy.
A go to guide - readers can swiftly hone in to gain understanding and find practical advice. Diana has curated the information here to be an effective toolkit for supporting a range of Specific Learning Differences.
This book should be an essential handbook is for every teacher. Every learning difference is clearly explained with lots of practical advice about how students can be best supported. Helpful illustrations to accompany the text with interesting quotes from those with lived experience. I love the clarity of this book.
We have moved beyond seeing neurodivergent students as having specific learning difficulties; it's much more helpful to recognise specific learning differences. Diana Hudson explains a range of conditions and how they can be manifested. Just as importantly, she gives practical and realistic advice that all teachers and schools can implement. This book provides essential reading for beginning teachers as well as those with years of experience.
Anyone like me who trained as a classroom teacher, will know how little information there is about SEN on training courses. Yet, 3 out of 4 children in each classroom will have a specific learning difficulty. This book is a must for anyone who wants to know how to identify and support those children more effectively. Diana Hudson has a wealth of experience in special needs and conveys this with passion in a book that is accessible to both teachers , teaching assistants and parents.
Di Hudson's second edition to her first book Specific Learning Difficulties - What teachers need to know has been neatly updated with a more contemporary title 'Specific Learning Differences' which is pitched at embracing neurodiversity in the classroom.
As a society we have come a long way in our understanding of brain function and neurodivergent thinking since her first book was published nine years ago: recent scientific advances and understanding about brain differences have gathered pace so this update feels not only fresh but bang on cue. This is a handy, short, well-paced and highly accessible book to dip in out of, that is sympathetic both to the teacher as well as the child.
Keeping abreast of all the different types of emerging neurodivergent thinking can feel bewildering to anyone who is not a Special Educational Needs specialist and yet that is what the modern, often time short classroom teacher is increasingly called upon to be.
This book offers such well-considered advice on the range of divergence that is child, indeed adolescent, focused and aims to celebrate their specific strengths alongside offering sensible strategies for what can help day to day in the classroom. It contains important new sections on PDA, SPD and Tics and Tourette syndrome (if you don't know what these mean, the glossary provides a useful definition of terms), a quick check list for helping initially to identify a struggling neurodivergent child, useful tips about the whole school context as well as coping with stressful exam situations.
As a teacher and parent of a neurodivergent child, I found this guide wonderfully reassuring and supportive. It is clear that Di Hudson is on a mission to help bridge the learning in the classroom with an environment that supports holistically whether at school, at home or indeed in the workplace. Although pitched for classroom practitioners, this is surely a must read for anyone who wants to be an enlightened and supportive employer, colleague, parent or teacher, as it's all about how best we can embrace the young person in our midst to build their confidence and personal toolkit to help them make the most of their talents and thinking differences. Given that approximately 7% of us will fall into this category and is not something we 'can grow out of', and intelligent employers increasingly value neurodivergent thinkers on their teams for their originality, perspective and balance, it is vital that we get the support right at the beginning in the classroom where it can make such a difference to the 'confidence, self-esteem and success of the child'.
