Empowering Learning’sTM approach is unique.
Empowering Learning supports those with neurodivergent thinking and learning strengths who may have various diagnoses. We look past any diagnosis to help people use their fabulous creative skills to transform any limiting symptoms. The visual sense is the fastest system we have for learning and is the natural way young children learn – using their visual recall and imagination. See some < 5-mins videos of success stories.
Empowering LearningTM is focused on what people can do rather than what they can’t do. Empowering LearningTM enables people to get into the best emotional state for learning, reducing fear and anxiety. Families are engaged whenever possible. Teachers can elicit how students learn visually, incorporating a whole multi-sensory learning experience. The philosophy is a coaching person-centred approach.
Empowering LearningTM has a worldwide network of Practitioners, expert in how people learn visually and the effects of mental imagery on learning differences and neurodiversity.
To learn more about Empowering Learning skills yourself, we have a variety of routes for you:
Much of the Empowering Learning material is now available digitally from our learning platform www.visualkids.co.uk. (hosted on Learndesk). You can select a suitable date/time for the FREE live online sessions. When you register, you receive a confirmation email, a Zoom link, and reminders before the call. Olive’s lived experiences guarantee that some of this material you have never heard of before from professionals.
You can start with free classes to explore your lived experience with visual thinking and learning, Explore Scaffolding Easy literacy for the Tinys, subscribe to the neurodivergent toolkit that is regularly growing to include all our latest insights and look back on the journey we have taken to become an Empowering Learning Practitioner. So lets start with our free coaching just for you:
- Are you ready to try out a different strategy for Dyslexia? Join one of my online sessions to explore your own experiences and that of your child/student with literacy. This class includes discussion about scaffolding for easy literacy, from 3-4 year olds.
- Are you ready to explore your own mental imagery; those pictures you may or may not have in your head? Some people have fabulous pictures, some people don’t believe they think in pictures and some have confusion leading to ADHD symptoms. Even for those who feel they are not as creative as they used to be. Come and explore with us.
- Are you ready to try out a different strategy for ADHD? Join one of Olive’s free online sessions to explore your own experiences and that of your children/students.
- Neurodivergent strengths and highly sensitivity. First it is vital to understand neurodivergent strengths. So many neurodivergent students and parents are highly sensitive; these simple skills can really benefit everyone.
- Visual skills for maths and numeracy; so many people are frankly terrified by maths. Once you learn how to visualising numbers everything is much easier. How to better use your visual skills for all aspects of basic maths and numeracy.
- Clearing Energy when exhausted – For those who are lacking energy, especially when challenged by Dyslexia and ADHD, and would like some skills to improve their energy banks. To get you started there is a very useful audio to download at EnergeticNLP in 10 mins a day. And to listen to a gentle healing story download the Recover Your Energy talking book.
- Study guides for each topic are now available to download at www.visualkids.co.uk (including the latest material and many other video links).
In 2022 Empowering Learning developed Scaffolding for Easy Literacy, to enable very young children (3-4 years olds) to use their creative visual strengths to easily develop skills to visualise words before progressing to phonics for word decoding. Video and resources here.
When you want to learn more or start teaching others, we have collected all of our experiences in the last 25 years with neurodivergent students into the groundbreaking Neurodivergent Toolkit. When you go to www.neurodivergenttoolkit.co.uk you will see a short video covering many of the distressing symptoms of Dyslexia and you can scroll down to a list of the modules including the new topics such as understanding diverse visual thinking, ADHD, high sensitivities and so much more. This programme is excellent to back up coaching or when you want a number of people to develop the same skills and teach throughout an organisation; a school, a university or even a business. Individuals can learn at their own speed, pick out the topics they want to focus on and even rewind and repeat a module. Those who take this programme, can join the free webinars above to improve their own personal experience of visual learning and join the WhatsApp on-line community to ask questions and join activities. After accreditation you can join the international group of Empowering Learning Practitioners.
The Empowering Learning Jumpstarting literacy and numeracy program was our initial programe, designed for in-person training in all aspects of literacy and numeracy. For content details of the Jumpstarting |Literacy and Numeracy programme for Practitioners click here.
- Empowering Learning Practitioners offer group workshops and one-to-one coaching either in person or online worldwide. Start by contacting Olive Hickmott, the creator of Empowering Learning, for a free 30-min discussion of your challenges and priorities. Click here to arrange an online coaching session with Olive or another Empowering Learning Practitioner. For coaching, purchasing a literacy and numeracy study guide is advisable. We can offer primary schools a Neurodivergent School Coach to work with teachers, students, learning assistants and parents; giving them skills to help these creative visual learners.
- Contact olive@empoweringlearning.co.uk
- On Olive’s YouTube channel you will find several short videos that will get you started. There are some examples below.
- Follow posts on the blog www.olivehickmott.co.uk for our latest blogs.
The videos below give you some quick skills to improve spelling and reading, especially for young children, where literacy can be more of a game. They are all posted on Youtube; here are the links:
Is you child struggling to get started with phonics? Developing the visual scaffolding for easy literacy is a simple way to get started and will accelerate phonics. Alternatively a child may need help to move on from phonics, to word recognition? Neurodivergent kids can enjoy recognising object words. Here is how.
Does your child hate reading? Watch this 10-minute video and get some new ideas about how to make progress with a reluctant reader. On Youtube
There is so much changing that children, that especially neurodivergent children can feel very confused and emotional. Some children are coping well, whilst others seem to be climbing up the wall. Try this short video on youtube to get 3 essential tips.
Primary Maths Part 1: Anyone Terrified of Maths? A short video to explain the essential skill of visualising numbers, if you want to be good at maths. This is a fabulous skill to learn to supercharge a child’s primary maths skills. Take a look at this and others on the Youtube channel.
Primary Maths Part 2: Moving on to fractions and percentages: Building on basic visualising numbers we can now put your numbers to work
Primary Maths Part 3: Words and numbers together: Visualising numbers is fun and now you can explore words and numbers together, angles, telling the time and even algebra. This is a great way to improve your maths and especially mental arithmetic. This will also include some advice on additional resources for visually learning
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