Best Ways to Teach Slow Learners How to Read & Write

When we use the term “Slow Learner”, it is not limited to the ability to read and write. Labelling a child as a slow learner is deplorable as it affects their growth and self-esteem, not just in academic terms. Telling a child that they are not as good as others is completely demeaning and degrading.

Online classes for children can help in giving extra help to the children who require it and can ensure specialized teaching practices to allow them to learn and grow. Slow-paced learning does not mean they are incapable, they just need extra time and effort to understand any concept. Slow learners perform poorly academically and exhibit discrepancies in intellectual assessment test scores, but they have no learning disorders.

As there is advancement in the school and education system, there is a corresponding increase in online classes for preschoolers, which eventually becomes difficult for slow learners to keep pace with learning school subjects. Most of the time, people ignore slow learners as dull and lazy without understanding their problems.

Thus, slow learners’ learning capability primarily depends on the motivation they are receiving to sustain the commitment and efforts taken towards self-regulated learning. 

It is vital to identify slow learners and distinguish them from others to apply effective strategies to improve their learning pace and performance with the help of live phonics classes. 

Regarding analytical thinking capabilities, slow learners can lag behind them. Analysing and evaluating a situation to make informed decisions becomes difficult for slow learners. It becomes difficult for them to look after all the pros and cons of a specific problem before reaching the final conclusion for the same problem. They are not confident enough to seek help from others and cannot make decisions independently. 

You can use these characteristics to assist slow learners in live phonics classes. It becomes the teachers’ responsibility to help them improve their performance, uplift them, and bring them to their fullest potential without any insecurity. Here are the strategies you can adopt and follow to help slow learners live like normal students and perform efficiently academically. 

Availability of Remedial Classes 

Remedial classes offer students a comfortable learning environment where they can talk about their problems freely without the fear of getting judged. In the remedial classes, the problem of slow learners is addressed in a separate class at their own pace. This is the time when you can guide them properly to walk on the right track and closely analyze the students’ shortcomings. There are a few important factors that you can’t ignore while attending slow learners, first one is to not cram students with a lot of information and knowledge and make it difficult to follow the lectures. You can opt for various pedagogical methodologies, just like iSchooling, which aims to provide a quality education through live phonics classes. Such classes will help them develop intrinsic motivation, show interest in learning, and perform better.

Follow Distinctive Learning Exercises

If you want your students to get along with the difficult topics for them to comprehend, then you should prepare different learning exercises to help them. You should give them space to thoroughly know about the beginning, from the basics to the advance, if required. When they eventually comprehend the topics, it may instil confidence to look after all difficult topics and motivate them to accommodate the complexities of those topics and ease the process of understanding.

Peer Mentors

You can delegate the responsibility of helping students in the classroom to increase participation and assign them tasks to make learning more interactive and interesting. The presence of peers can make learning easier and more comforting as the choice of words can be easier, more functional, and instructional methodologies may vary. The same age factor will develop a feeling of belongingness and mutual understanding, as they might be working together and helping each other to break down the complex learning topics into simpler, manageable, and interesting parts to create an accessible pace of the learning process of the lagging behind students. Interaction is one of the slow learners’ most effective learning strategies to enhance their performance. The encouragement to study in groups will ensure consistent discussions, debates and interaction with new perspectives. The more a child or student interacts with others of their age, the more confident they will feel.

Appreciate their Achievements

Appreciation always works as fuel to the students as it ignites the feeling of performing better in improved ways. No matter how small the achievement is, all you need to do is acknowledge and motivate them. The lack of motivation takes away interest in learning among students. You can’t expect a fast adaptation of knowledge, so if they are not performing up to expectations, it is always an effective idea to reward and appreciate them. Remember, these small rewards can greatly impact their outlook toward learning. Motivation can do wonders for anyone, not specifically for slow learners. Acknowledging even the most minor victory and rewarding them will impart the feeling of crossing a new milestone. 

Make Use of Active Learning

Scores can go up and down, but active learning significantly impacts their overall academic growth and performance. Moreover, it improves knowledge retention among students. Active learning can add more to the learning potential of an individual & elevate their interest in learning more interesting concepts. It becomes easy to comprehend and understand complex concepts once they start relating them to real-life situations, they won’t forget them easily. 

Set smaller targets and realistic expectations 

You can’t impose your expectations on your students and children, as an educator or a parent, you should try to understand their strengths and what they can achieve in a time period. So always try to set the targets accordingly.

Be supportive

 Failures would be there, so you should always tell your child or student to learn from their past mistakes rather than being disappointed. One has to empathise with them and reciprocate the feeling of understanding and encouraging them to explore new concepts. They should be supported to understand and learn at their own pace without being judged until they succeed. 

 Encourage multiple intelligence

Participating in any co-curricular activity takes a lot of self-confidence and courage, so if your child wants to be a part of it, then you should support them. The feeling of being socially accepted plays a dynamic role in building the personality, participating in such activities will boost their confidence.

Encourage interaction and oral communication

Slow learners should be given enough opportunities to give voice to their thoughts. It is the responsibility of parents to ask their children about their day at school, more interaction should be there, and any discussions on TV shows, sports and music can be an effective way to keep the communication channel working.

Comprehension abilities should get enough attention from the parents and teachers to focus on strengthening the child’s reading and learning skills by providing short directions that can be repeated and followed repeatedly to maintain a healthy confidence level.

Activities for Slow Learners

If you want to assist slow learners in improving their performance, you can use these simple and can help them to sharpen their abilities.

  • Boost interactive learning and confidence among students by conducting group activities.
  • Organize games related to their learning topic to instil curiosity towards it.
  • Try to emphasise on open communication and different oral strategies and activities where students are motivated to express their ideas more actively.
  • Correct their mistakes and guide them properly to formulate their ideas into words.
  • Don’t put extra homework on the students, try to create exercises and homework with lower difficulty levels and gradually elevate the difficulty level for the students to get acquainted with the topics at a slower pace.

Conclusion

In short, this article has tried to cover the characteristics of slow learners and provided some effective tips to encourage them to actively participate in the learning process. iSchooling provides the best live online phonics classes, where we try to impart better reading and learning skills to all students, irrespective of any challenges. We believe the success of any learning program lies in the collective growth of all the students in the class. We try to help students excel in their academic endeavours and change their outlook on learning. The success of teachers lies in the collective growth of all the students in class. Hope this article will help you to help your students.

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