Intervention in learning difficulties in reading and writing focuses on improving effective reading, either due to poor basic learning or initial difficulties, improving the quality of spelling, enriching vocabulary and achieving more correct and creative written expression.

It is aimed at pupils who have specific difficulties in their reading or writing that hinder them from doing well in academic areas.

This intervention will focus on the specific characteristics of each child in order to improve and correct possible difficulties in:

• Reading words wrongly or slowly.
• Understand the meaning of what you read.
• Spelling rules.
• Written expression.
• Correct grammar and punctuation.
• Syntactic structures.

Cognitive training, like any other component of treatment, tailored to the individual characteristics and specific difficulties of each child, should provide self-instructional strategies that will influence reading, writing, social relationships, memory, listening and task organisation.

In order to understand a text, we must activate the necessary knowledge to provide coherence, integrating text and knowledge. To do this, we must recognise words and access their meaning (lexical or phonological route), integrate the ideas linearly, and finally integrate all the ideas of the text. Finally, we must construct meaning and make sense of what we have read. For this we need the basic cognitive processes: perception, attention and memory.

Improving reading comprehension gives significant value to reading and motivation in the activity to achieve accuracy in reading words, speed or fluency in reading.

It is necessary in all areas of the curriculum, from understanding short statements to accessing information to longer texts.

Executive functions are the complex mental activities necessary to plan, organise, review, regulate and evaluate our behaviour in order to achieve the following goals

Problems in executive functioning affect children in different ways.

• Problems starting and/or finishing tasks
• Difficulty in prioritising tasks
• Difficulty in following instructions or a sequence of several steps
• Problem switching attention from one task to another
• Difficulty in organising their thoughts
• Not being able to manage their time
• Becoming easily frustrated and giving up instead of asking for help
• Start a task, get distracted and never finish it.
• Difficulty in making decisions

• Working memory
• Planning
• Reasoning
• Flexibility
• Inhibition
• Decision-making
• Time estimation
• Dual execution (multitasking)

Knowing how to study requires learning. Failure to study, to a large extent, is due to the fact that the student does not know how to study, nor has he/she been taught to do so, hence the importance of offering them techniques to get the most out of their study time. Good study techniques and motivation will facilitate the understanding and memorisation of the content presented in class.

A good study skills programme should include:

• Planning and organisation of the study
• Fast and comprehensive reading
• Techniques
  • underlined
  • outline
  • summary
• Memorisation
• Notes
• Review activities
• Facing exams

• Learning difficulties
• Reading and writing disorders: Dyslexia, Dysgraphia and Dysorthography.
• Reading comprehension disorders
• Attention Deficit with or without Hyperactivity Disorder: ADHD, ADHD
• Development of executive functions
• Skills re-education
• Low School Achievement:
  • Study techniques
  • Lack of motivation in studies
  • Examination anxiety
  • Lack of concentration and attention

If you have any doubts, or you need guidance in study techniques, memory, concentration and you need school support for your child, do not hesitate to contact us.

There are children who do not seem to listen when spoken to directly, who find it difficult to get going, who do not persist in the effort required for school tasks and who often forget or lose things and are very easily distracted, we classify them as absent-minded children or disasters, but on most occasions there is an attention deficit that justifies this behaviour, they may also present delays or difficulties in:

• Language acquisition.
• Reading and writing problems.
• Errors in mathematical operations.
• Difficulties in problem solving.
• Lack of effort or work habits.
• Disorganisation or lack of planning.

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurobiological neurodevelopmental disorder originating in childhood and affecting throughout life, characterised by the presence of three typical symptoms:

• Attention deficit.
• Impulsivity.
• Motor and/or vocal hyperactivity.

When is it identified as a disorder?

It will be identified as a disorder when these symptoms or the resulting behaviours are observed with much greater frequency and intensity than in children/adolescents of the same age and interfere with daily life in two or more contexts: at home, at school or in the general environment.

It should be borne in mind that not all children with this disorder manifest the same symptoms and with the same intensity (they may present as mild, moderate or severe).

In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), published by the American Psychiatric Association in its latest version, which was published in May 2013, three types of presentations of ADHD are differentiated:

• Combined presentation
• The predominantly inattentive presentation
• and lastly, Predominantly hyperactive/impulsive presentation

How do we work at anda CONMiGO?

Through cognitive training, like any other component of treatment, tailored to the individual characteristics and specific difficulties of each child to provide self-instructional strategies that will influence reading, writing, social relationships, memory, listening, planning and organising tasks.

Learning difficulties are those school problems that affect learning and development processes.

Work is carried out in several areas:

• Socio-affective: From the family environment, school and personal dimension, self-esteem and motivation.
• Behavioural: through social skills and behaviour modification.
• Cognitive: Through attention/concentration, memory, language, thinking, reasoning and perception.
• Reading and Writing: Improving quality, speed, reading and writing errors, reading comprehension.
• Calculus: Achieving an understanding of mathematical language, handling of operations (oral and written), problem solving, among others.

It is important to identify that between 7% and 10% of school failures result in school drop-out. This results when the student does not achieve the minimum academic objectives for his or her academic level.

How we work

Intervention to improve learning difficulties will focus on the specific characteristics of each child, improving and correcting possible difficulties in:

• Reading words wrongly or slowly.
• Writing spelling.
• Understand the meaning of what you read
• Spelling rules
• Written expression.
• Correct grammar and punctuation.
• Syntactic and grammatical structures.

Therapies focused on

• Difficulties in mathematical reasoning and dyscalculia
• Reading and writing disorders: Dyslexia, Dysgraphia and Dysorthography.
• Difficulty in reading comprehension
• Attention Deficit with or without Hyperactivity Disorder: ADHD, ADHD
• Development of executive functions
• Skills re-education
• Low School Achievement

Knowing how to study requires learning. Failure to study, to a large extent, is due to the fact that the student does not know how to study, nor has he/she been taught to do so, hence the importance of offering them techniques to get the most out of their study time. Good study techniques and motivation will facilitate the understanding and memorisation of the content presented in class.

Learning to study is not easy and often requires learning, just like everything else.

School failure, something that we have already discussed in other posts, is sometimes due to the fact that the student does not know how to structure a study, among other things, because no one has taught him/her; that is why the importance of study methods and techniques that can be useful for each child.

We must be aware of those variables that affect good school performance:

• Environment where we study:
  • Noise and external factors affecting distraction are important.
  • Place where we do the study: Here we will see the placement of the chair, table, the shelf where we have the information, temperature... and other details that we have already seen in the post of tips when doing homework.
• Planning and organisation of the study:
  • Everyone has their own personal method, but we must find it.
  • We will talk about study time, timetables, distribution of this time according to difficulty, planning of the tasks to be carried out...
• How to take notes in class and identify the teacher's main idea
• Written or group work
• Study method: we will find the most suitable method for each student.
  • Read quickly and carefully, identifying key words or ideas.
  • We will learn techniques such as:
    • Underline
    • Schemes
    • Concept maps
  • Memorisation
  • Concentration
  • Review
• How to cope successfully with the exam.

A good study skills programme should include:

• Planning and organisation of the study
• Fast and comprehensive reading
• Underlining technique
• Scheme technique
• Summary technique
• Memorisation and concentration
• Notes
• Review activities
• Facing exams
• Emotional management and motivation

Executive functions are the complex mental activities necessary to plan, organise, review, regularise and evaluate our behaviour in order to achieve.

There is also an impairment of executive functions in cases such as dyslexia, dyscalculia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or brain damage.

Some examples

Problems in executive functioning affect children in different ways.

• Problems starting and/or finishing tasks
• Difficulty in prioritising tasks
• Difficulty in following instructions or a sequence of several steps
• Problem switching attention from one task to another
• Difficulty in organising their thoughts
• Not being able to manage their time
• Becoming easily frustrated and giving up instead of asking for help
• Start a task, get distracted and never finish it.
• Difficulty in making decisions

What should we work on?

• Working memory
• Planning
• Reasoning
• Flexibility
• Inhibition
• Decision-making
• Time estimation
• Dual execution (multitasking)

Although there is a diversity of opinions as to what exactly they are, there is a consensus as to what skills they comprise. The main ones are:

• Cognitive flexibility: Ability to adapt our behaviour and thinking to novel, changing or unexpected situations.
• Inhibition: Ability to control impulsive or automatic responses and generate responses mediated by attention and reasoning.
• Monitoring: Ability to monitor the behaviour we carry out and ensure that it complies with the established action plan.
• Planning: Ability to think ahead and mentally anticipate the right way to execute a task or achieve a specific goal.
• Working memory: Ability to temporarily store and manipulate information in order to perform complex cognitive tasks.
• Decision-making: Ability to choose an option among different alternatives in an efficient and thoughtful manner.
• Problem solving: Ability to reach a logical conclusion when faced with an unknown question.

Can they be trained?

All cognitive skills can be trained to improve their performance.

CONMiGO has a battery of exercises designed to rehabilitate deficits in executive functions and other cognitive functions.

The brain and its neural connections and plasticity at an early age allow for this training.

If we exercise executive functions frequently, the brain connections of the structures involved in this capacity will be strengthened.

At anda CONMiGO, we assess executive and cognitive functions. We prepare and develop a personalised cognitive training programme with the aim of strengthening executive functions and those deemed necessary.