Learning Support for children with Special Educational Needs

Teaching Assistants/ classroom aides are often the members of the staff that are in the closest contact with the children who need the most support. However, very often they are unprepared for the challenge. As a TA/ classroom aide, you can have a huge impact on a child's life, but beware, unless you know the strategies to be effective, your help can actually damage the child's learning. In this course you will learn about effective learning support and lots and lots of concepts and key terms in the field of special needs, reading intervention, and language impairment. This course will prepare you intellectually for one of the most rewarding and impactful jobs you can get: being a Teaching Assistant / classroom aide.

NOTE 2025: I have updated this course, to include more specific techniques and strategies. The new content is a bit more 'technical' so if you are new to learning support, I encourage you to watch the original lectures first and to move to the NEW 2025 lectures later. Remember you will need time to process all the information and to put these strategies in place.

In this course you will learn about: 

- The role of the Teaching Assistant/ classroom aide.

- How to differentiate tasks.

- What is scaffolding in education and how to use it.

- How to support children who struggle to read.

- Identify and support language difficulties.

- How to use phonics to teach a child to read.

- How to support a child's reading comprehension.

- How to help learners with memory difficulties.

- How to support children with language impairment.

- How to get a Teaching Assistant job in a school.

- The most common cognitive and learning difficulties that you will find in your job as a Teaching Assistant/ classroom aide.