 How can we empower neurodivergent students with effective homework and study strategies? That's what we're going to explore in this week's episode of Pookie Ponders, so let's dive straight in. Some of you are going to be listening to this as those working with children in school, some of you are supporting at home. But the first thing for all of us to acknowledge, and I think this is really important, is that our neurodivergent learners are no less and have nothing less to offer than their neurotypical peers. Sometimes they might perform a little bit less well in school, in their academic endeavours, because there can be all these barriers that get in the way. But if we can find ways to kind of unleash that potential, we are often working with supporting, caring for children and young people here who are delightfully creative, innovative, think a little bit outside of the usual boxes and are often very, very capable. So it's really important that we try to find the right strategies to enable that kind of inner capability to shine through and not allow hurdles such as executive functioning, our abilities to plan, organise and execute tasks, to get in the way of our children enjoying their learning and demonstrating what they've learned. So we need to find ways to make sure that our children are supported in their study, but also that we're able to hear them. So we shouldn't be scared of things like using our assistive technologies, if that's going to help our children to be heard, turn to their technology, allow the children to use it. Sometimes there can be this idea that everything must be done in the same way always, when actually if a child is allowed to type instead of write, for example, we might find that suddenly that creativity is unleashed, that they are able to communicate and express their ideas, which they just couldn't when they had to overcome that hurdle of putting pen to paper. We also want to be flexible in terms of the ways which we allow our children to demonstrate their understanding. So we might be allowing visual presentations, for example, instead of always written reports. So we just want to embrace that neurodiversity right from the off to recognise that all of our learners are different, that our neurodivergent learners are not less, they are just different, but we might need to find different ways therefore for them to be able to engage with and express what they are learning. So what practical things can we do to enable our neurodivergent learners to actually get on well and do well with their homework and their independent study as well as in class? So first of all, we've got to have really clear instructions. No matter how good a student's study skills are and no matter how many different apps and tools and things and strategies that they're using to support them, if they don't know what they're supposed to be doing, they cannot do it well. This is true for all of us. Our role here, whether we are the parent, the carer, the teacher, or support staff, is to use simple and concise language. We need to say exactly what we mean and ideally no more. We need to repeat and confirm our instructions to ensure the child is understood. If we can, we should offer both written and verbal instructions for assignments so that children have got an opportunity to process them in a couple of different ways and at different speeds and we need to make sure that we allow extra time for our children to process and seek any clarification that they might need. So no suddenly calling out the homework at the end of the lesson as the children are packing up, that's not going to work for our neurodivergent learners. It might not work for many of our learners to be quite honest. Instead, we need to make sure that the task is really clearly communicated. The child's had a chance to process it and ask any questions they might have and they know what they need to do. The doing of it is a whole nother hurdle but at least if they know they've had clear instructions on what's expected and crucially what a good one looks like, what are we expecting from them to what level is this homework meant to be, how will they know when they're done? They stand a much better chance of success. Next thing to think about is the actual learning environment and this is something where we can collaborate with home and school. It's something children need both when they're learning at school but also at home and actually at home even if we've got a tiny, tiny space where we might be learning, we can actually adapt it a little bit more to our own needs than perhaps we're able to do at school when we might be in a class of 30. So thinking with a child about what environment is going to kind of nurture success for them, where will they study well is a really good first step because if we're in the wrong kind of space it's really difficult to get our heads down and learn. Those of you who are watching this on video will see my office in the background. My office is like my safe haven and one of the things that you might not know is that when I moved into the house that I'm currently living in it's been quite the project and it's been essentially a building site for just over a year now. When we first moved in the very first thing I did was create my safe haven this office here around me. This office felt good and safe and I was able to work here from very early on from a practical point of view. That was important because I needed to earn the money to pay for the renovations and one of the ways I do that is through webinars and so on. So I needed a good space to work in but also I needed to be able to effectively get on with my work, to do my deep thinking, to do the processing that's needed for me to come up with new ideas to share with you guys and in order to do that I need calm, I need colour ordered books that's just my thing it needs to feel good I'm really particular about how my space needs to be and when my space is how I need it to be I can work really really well and that's the thing those of us who are autistic will often find this and our ADHD friends as well that in the right space we can get into the zone and we can be more productive than many other people we've got that ability to hyper focus which is such a gift but we cannot hyper focus if there's something ticking in the background if the clutter is really distracting us if there's different things like a draft coming through the window that we're really aware of there can be all sorts of things that can send us off kilter really easily so that space that study space really really matters so ideally we should work with the student with the child to actually co-design that study space in an ideal world we do that for school as well as for home but actually for home is the one where perhaps we have a bit more freedom and parents and carers you can get on board here as well you don't need loads of space to make it just how your child needs it so get curious with them about what works for them don't you just do it for them this is about them getting curious for themselves if they can begin to think this is how I work well then these are skills and ideas that they can adapt and use again and again and again if you just do it for them it'll work for now but what happens when they need to go create a new study space or when they're going off and learning independently in other places in the future so do it with them not just for them there are some conversations that you can prompt so for example many children will benefit from a clutter free workspace many people generally will benefit from a clutter free workspace we can explore that with our child do they prefer that how do they like things to be organized what's optimal for them one thing here for parents carers and also staff at school just to note is that sometimes when we're trying to promote independence we will try and encourage our children for example to keep that space just as they need it for themselves if we want to optimize their ability to study and they've made it clear that they study best when that space is uncluttered then we might ask permission from them to help them with the organization of that space many of our neurodivergent learners will benefit from an uncluttered space they want things to be organized but the hurdle of doing the tidying of doing the organizing can sometimes be quite a big one we might do this with them we might support them with it or we might do it for them so that they can overcome that first hurdle and get on with the studying this is one of those pick your battles things of course we want to help our children to be organized and to manage their own space but maybe today the most important thing is that that history homework gets done many of our neurodivergent learners will benefit from things within that study space that can help them to focus so they might need sensory tools like noise cancelling headphones like i'm wearing now um or they might have fidgets they might be like me and lyra who like to have rubik's cube always to hand or might have other kind of fidgets and and sensory things that might help them and help them focus with their study one thing here is to think from the point of view of the child and let them express their needs and wants and wishes rather than to assume that they're just like you some children will need stimulation others will need calming so think here about what are the tools that might help to activate if they need that the fidgets and so on and then what are the things that might help to calm or to block out kind of sensory overwhelm if that's what's required here lighting can make a really big difference when it comes to our study spaces being able to light it in a way that feels okay not too harsh not too dim etc but the right level for the child if we can can make a big difference here and then in terms of getting that study space right it's not just about the physical space it's about the kind of mental space that we get into and here we can do things to support by like encouraging or if we're at home supporting the implementation of structured routines this is going to provide predictability and comfort and the more that we can predict the more that we understand what is happening the more comfortable and less anxious we tend to feel and the more able we are to get on with the tough stuff of the studying so this might look like at home supporting homework to happen at the same time each day for example that's the dream next thing to think about is how we can empower self-advocacy and study skills in our students and young people so we want our young people to be able to take ownership of their own learning journey so again this is about them having those skills for life rather than us doing it for them and also because everybody is different and this learning journey will be different from one child to the next and so we need to empower a child to recognize what works for them and to give them the skills and the tools and the space to be able to do it this is going to enhance their sense of control and agency so it's great for kind of self-esteem and motivation as well so in order to cultivate that self-advocacy and these effective study skills we're going to teach our students to communicate their preferences and requirements with their parents carers and teachers now this is a tough one because if we're going to teach our children to do this to communicate what they need to advocate for themselves we need in turn as the parent care of a teacher support staff to be able to follow through on supporting with that preference so we might explore with a child what are a range of different adjustments that could be made how might there needs to be met on different days but if we're going to do that and we're going to give them the skills to communicate what they might need we've got to be able to follow through otherwise this is an exercise in breaking down trust essentially where we've said these are the things you could do these are the ways I could support you but not today so just think about when we introduce these ideas and whether we can actually follow through on hearing them back so in order to help students learn what works for them so they know what to ask for and what skills and ideas to implement we can expose our students to a wide range of learning strategies they can then kind of learn what works for them so for example we might utilise things like mind maps or colour coded notes or just something as simple as highlighters to enhance kind of tactile high impact visual learning for those who respond really well to colour and well presented ideas as you can imagine from my colour coded bookshelves this is something that I like a lot my kind of colour coded learning we can also encourage things like mnemonic devices or reading aloud for those who respond really well to auditory input so kids who talk to themselves a lot and some of our neurodivergent learners will do or who like to repeat like really pleasing words or phrases and see how they feel in their mouths might find that auditory style of learning can work well for them we can even make like rhymes or raps or things like that to work with them Mock says hello my cats just joined us for those of you who are listening to the podcast I've rearranged my work station so that she can't get quite so in the way of all of my recordings but she's going to join us anyway she's decided okay we can create like a whole toolbox basically of different study strategies and you're going to have a whole ton of these that you can already add in from your own experience what works for you what you've seen work well for others but it's about creating that that toolbox of a child can pick and choose and have a go and see what works and we can we can think with them about what works well for them for their memory for their study how do they best consolidate all of these things it's not so much about the tool specifically it's about being curious with the child and empowering them to get curious about what works for them it's not about what works for their friend or their teacher or their parent although we can learn a lot from what works for others it's about them being curious about what works for me what could I try next what would I like to be doing that's going to make my learning feel better and of course we're going to very fully do more of what works and less of perhaps what doesn't if you're looking for ideas to add to the toolbox here I would recommend talking to support staff support staff are as ever a treasure trove of ideas here so talk to support staff whether your parent or care at home teacher in school your support stuff will have a ton of ideas they can share here then get curious with kids try things out and see what works for them it can also be helpful to kind of facilitate peer sharing so whilst what works for me might not work for you you hearing about what works for me might trigger some ideas for you of things that you could try so encouraging peers to share with each other what they like what works can be great and that can also be a great way of surfacing things like new apps and so on that children might be using to help them with their learning next we're going to think a little bit about goal setting task management and time allocation so actually setting goals and managing tasks can be transformative for our neurodivergent learners this is something that really gets in the way of their learning is that kind of task management and goal setting element of things it can be really really hard so we want to help our neurodivergent learners to navigate their workload effectively rather than become just entirely overwhelmed by it and falling at that first hurdle so one of the things we can do here is to support our students to be setting smart goals using that smart framework so our specific measurable achievable relevant and time bound goals that can work really well for kids who like structuring you might create a little sheet for them that enables them to write out their goals in this way and we can also use this this kind of framework to help our students to build really short term goals but also longer term academic goals as well so as an example my daughters Lyra and Ellie work at home now they don't go to school anymore and we are thinking about what happens next in their home study so Lyra is thinking about her long-term goals and right now she thinks that she would like to work in clinical psychology and become someone who works with animals as a form of therapy this is her long-term goal it might change but it's good to have a goal good to have something that she thinks that she's working towards she's just in year nine now equivalent and so she's worked backwards from that goal and she's gone okay well if I want to do that I'm going to want to do this kind of degree or further learning that might need these kinds of a levels that means right now I need to be working towards doing this particular set of GCSEs she's recognised that one of the GCSEs that she's going to need to do is maths and she's also recognised coming to the short term now that the year nine maths course that she's doing right now is incredibly dull as far as she's concerned but she also knows she needs to do it so she's set herself the short-term goal of getting through year nine maths as quickly as she can and in her bullet journal which she loves and she is writing out all of the little modules that she needs to do so she can tick them off one by one and feel that progress this process is something that's been quite difficult for us to come to it's involved a lot of brainstorming and planning but it's given her real ownership of her learning and where she is right now and she's now got a series of short-term goals that she can work towards that she feels much more in control of and motivated by so we can use things like bullet journaling which as I say Lyra loves and it's a very creative and artistic way of exploring things I would say it's not the fastest way or we can use things like digital planners or task management apps to help with that kind of organization but think about the the goal setting the task management and how we're going to allocate our time explore those things with your child work with them to see what works for them and share what works well for you as well when it comes to those tasks those goals breaking them down is going to be a really helpful thing for our neurodivergent learners so you know again looking at Lyra's example want to be a clinical psychologist great okay but you're 13 right now what does that mean right here right now okay we've broken it down some I want to get through year nine maths okay lovely what does that mean today today that might mean doing module three unit 2.1 on the fractions she needs to know the minutiae she needs to know exactly what she needs to do today for the next 10 minutes we can break big tasks down into manageable things that makes them less overwhelming and that we can make them as small as we need to with the student so that they feel that they can just take it one bite at a time my mother-in-law always says you're going to eat an elephant eat it one bite at a time which I have to say as an autistic person who takes things really literally the first time she used that expression I was just quite puzzled about why we were talking about eating elephants but I kind of get it now big things can be broken down into tiny tiny bite-sized pieces and then we're much more able to do them and it often leaves us with a to-do list we can tick off this is one of the things that Lyra's loving about the bullet journaling she's got great beautifully put together lists that she has the satisfaction of ticking off so we can be teaching our students to create and to prioritize those to-do lists and perhaps doing things like using a timer to structure their work periods and having short breaks and aiding their focus they might use something like the Pomodoro method where we might study for 20 minutes and then take a break for five next in terms of enabling our students to get their homework done well we might be thinking about self-regulation and coping strategies now this might not sound like it's a homework thing but actually any of us who have supported a neurodivergent child through homework will have seen that coping strategies are very much needed and self-regulation is not always great at these moments it can be really overwhelming engaging with our homework tasks really really challenging so we need these skills generally but we might also employ them specifically when we're doing our homework so how can we guide our neurodivergent children in managing their stress and maintaining their focus on their homework rather than becoming overwhelmed or distressed so we might think with them about things like using exercises that are going to enhance their emotional regulation as a precursor to a study session they might use their self-soothing techniques their grounding techniques deep breathing or mindfulness exercises in order to get to a place where they feel relatively regulated and ready to study other students might need to go do something really big and active in order to get to the point where they're ready to study they might need to go run off that energy work it out in a big way go smash the drums or jump around in the backyard it's about getting to the point where we're ready so thinking about using those skills that they use at other times rather than reactively to calm proactively to get ourselves to a point where we're at a really good starting point to have a good focus study session if we can so for those who need big movement to get going you might think with them about stretches or other quick bursts of physical activity and getting into a bit of a routine of doing this just before we study for others who need calming you might work with them and create a bit of a sensory calm kit things like stress balls or like soothing textures maybe their noise cancelling headphones and so on in there as well that they can access in order to get to that point of calm for studying the other thing here in terms of that self-regulation and that healthy coping while we're studying would be encouraging students to take breaks while they're studying you want to avoid that burnout and avoid that kind of sensory overload that can come if we're studying for too long as well so actively proactively encouraging the taking of breaks thinking how long how often and what am I going to do during that break can make a really big difference sometimes children need permission from the adults around them to take breaks they think that it's better to be working harder and for longer adults can be guilty of this too but actually we often work more effectively if we take regular breaks and we do something good with them something that's going to help us to feel a little bit better and keep us in the zone finally it's really important that we teach our young people to recognize their strengths one of the massive barriers when it comes to homework and independent study is like really crushingly low self-esteem sometimes these are young people who are used to not doing so well in their studies who are used to falling over those executive function hurdles and sometimes they don't feel like they can do these things they can feel like a bit of a failure which is really sad because they are so creative often and there's so much untapped potential that can be going on there so what can we do we need to help our students to understand that they've got so much to bring here that they might be different they might be looking at things from a different point of view from their peers but their point of view is valid and we want to hear it in fact the fact that their point of view is different is often a real strength in life creative thinkers out-of-the-box thinkers people who are you know innovative and bring no ideas are exactly the kind of people who become ultra-employable and really really important assets and part of the team so help our children to recognize those strengths and to celebrate them many of them they're going to be bringing this creativity and finding connections between things and structures that others just might not see so notice that when it happens and celebrate it help them to celebrate their successes and notice what they can do well as well as looking for ways to help them to to work on the challenges that they're facing the other thing here is if it's possible to do so rather than always thinking about how can we overcome the challenges so that they can learn more like their neurotypical peers actually striking that and reversing it and going what are their strengths what are the things that they really excel at what are the ways in which they learn really really well and can we lean into that sometimes as well so sometimes it can feel a little bit like an uphill struggle for our kids all the time because they're constantly having to overcome all these barriers all these hurdles to do things which feel really difficult for them but if we're able through the topic or the modality to tap into what naturally works well for them then they're able to really experience that success and that success is something they can build on and use to transition through to other subjects topics ways of doing things too because they've learned that I can rather than I can't so we're going to build that self-esteem we're going to build that confidence and we're going to find that that resilience that self-esteem that we've built is going to overspill and to other areas and it's going to help them to step outside their comfort zone and perhaps be prepared to try some new things okay so as we come to a conclusion here just remember that every strategy that we've explored and the others that you might introduce yourself is a step towards fostering this kind of holistic success for our neurodivergent children and young people when we work with our children on these skills we're going to equip them to flourish both academically but also beyond I truly hope that there were some helpful ideas in here for you if you liked what you heard today then please can you consider subscribing liking and sharing my work it means the world to me when people share what I do if you'd like to support further you can do so by heading over to Patreon where you can sign up for a pound a month to support my work and in return you get early access to everything and the chance to shape what I work on next if you want to support even further than that then you might consider inviting me as a keynote speaker at your next event or to your setting or to deliver a webinar for you I enjoy doing those too and I'm told I'm pretty good thank you so much for listening and for everything that you're doing for the children and young people in your care every day it really really matters this has been pookie ponders with me pookie nightsmith until next time stay curious stay compassionate and keep pondering over