Hello everyone,
I am so impressed with the amount of teachers using this time to upskill. I receive messages daily asking for course recommendations. I always say it depends on which area you are really interested in, or which area you feel you need support with the most.
I have done eight courses so far since school closed on the 12th of March- five of these with Lorraine Lynch. This is because her courses are on different topics to any courses I have done before, and she has a code which gives you the course at half price, meaning you can get a really high quality course for as little as 17.50. The code is IG50BEKIND. I think that is incredibly generous of her, taking account of the interest teachers have in CPD at the moment and responding to it with half price courses!
I think these courses are a great way for people to upskill without spending a fortune. The two hour courses don’t qualify for EPV days but her 10 hour ones do, but not until the summer.
I did the Understanding Dyspraxia course this week, and then signed up to the Managing Dyspraxia in the classroom too. Since I began working with children with ASD, I have become so passionate about hidden disabilities, which dyspraxia is, and how it can be so difficult for these children if they don’t have a diagnosis and have to struggle on through school without any support!
The Understanding Dyspraxia course gave a very high level overview of the diagnostic criteria for dyspraxia. The course covered the different aspects involved in dyspraxia, including organisation, classroom difficulties, communication difficulties, concentration, fine motor and gross motor difficulties. This course really broke down the diagnosis and explained it in such detail, there is a lot more to dyspraxia than I had realised. Seeing all the difficulties a child with dyspraxia could face prompted me to do the second course, ‘Managing Dyspraxia in the Classroom’
The ‘Managing Dyspraxia in the Classroom’ course was really practical and had lots of really good suggestions for supporting a child with dyspraxia and helping them reach their full potential in class. There is also a section on supporting a child with the transition from primary to secondary school which can be difficult for any child, but more so for a child with dyspraxia. A child with dyspraxia struggles with organisation, which is a huge part of life in secondary shcool, e.g. reading timetables, finding your class, organising books, etc. Lorraine gives lots of helpful suggestions, such as giving the child a map of the school over the summer holidays to familiarise them with the layout, making staff aware of needs, using a variety of teaching techniques, such as debates or audiobooks and focusing on motivation so the child doesn’t become demoralised.
Overall, I found both courses to be really informative, well laid out, clear and easy to follow, with manageable and intersting forum discussions. The courses are open to anyone with an interest in education, so these would be great courses for SNAs to do too, and secondary school teachers as well as primary.
I have a review here of Lorraine’s course on anxiety which I really enjoyed. http://www.muinteoirvalerie.com/lorraine-lynch-consulting-working-with-children-who-have-experienced-trauma/ and here is a link to Lorraine’s website where you can see a full list of all her courses.
https://www.lorrainelynchconsulting.ie/
Lorraine has a new course ‘Working with Children with Dyspraxia’ which is EPV day approved ands is now available. You can buy it now and complete it when the summer course period commences. It is ten hours online and ten hours of self guided reading. So it gives you the three EPV days. I might add it to my list, then I can consider myself a bit of an expert on dyspraxia!
I will leave you with another educational quote. I read these every morning to inspire me to keep learning!
“I maintained my edge by always being a student; you will always have something new to learn.” – Jackie Joyner Kersee