Supporting students with DLD in the classroom
Teachers have a hugely important role to play in supporting children and young people with DLD to learn and achieve their potential. See below to learn more about DLD and how you can help.
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What is DLD?
What is DLD?
DLD stands for Developmental Language Disorder. Having DLD means you have significant, ongoing difficulties with using and/or understanding language.
How many children have DLD?
How many children have DLD?
7% of children are estimated to have DLD. That's 2 in every class of 30. Being aware of DLD and how to support it is every teacher's responsibility.
What causes DLD?
What causes DLD?
We don't really know what causes some people to have DLD. It isn't caused by another condition like hearing loss, autism or brain injury, and it is NOT caused by parents not talking to their children.
To find out more about DLD and how you can support students with DLD:
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download our teacher leaflet
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ask your local speech and language therapy/pathology service to run a training
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celebrate word-learning as an explicit part of your teaching- the 'Word Aware' approach can help with this
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join or visit NAPLIC, the national organisation for professionals working with children with language difficulty
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read these TES articles:
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Please also see our article in The Link Magazine- on DLD, labels in education, and working in partnership with parents.