When homework is tricky

Sensory integration

﻿Homework can be really tricky thing, even at the best of times. let alone when our ears find it difficult to listen, or when we are really sensitive to sounds. Today we're going to look at strategies, to help with homework times. We as therapists have tried to think of the best way to continue to support children, young people and their families. We will be exploring topic areas that we regularly provide advice and support on across all ages and abilities. Each lesson will have ideas and activities that can be carried out at home or in school. This information is to be used alongside any specific strategies or resources which have been given by your child's school or therapist. If you have any questions or would like help tailoring this to your child's needs, then please contact your local therapy service. When we look at homework, there are lots of things that makes it tricky, but one of them can be how we listen to sounds and how our ears interpret the sounds that we hear. So let's get everything ready for today's lesson and then we can make a strong start. So pause the video to get all of these bits and pieces together. You're going to need some papers, some coloured felted pins, and some coloured paper as well. Once you've got all of this together, press play and then we will carry on with the lesson. So let's just remind ourselves what happens when our ears are over responsive. When our ears are over responsive, it means that there's too much noise and our ears are very sensitive to this. It can be that when people talk or when there's lots of talking around, that can be really hurting our ears even. And we may feel a little bit annoyed by it, when there's too many instructions that can make us feel, really annoyed or stressed sounds that are too loud, too scratchy too high frequency, or just a lot of noise that we can't figure out all of those things can make it really difficult for us to listen. When we have to go homework, there can be things that distract us and especially when our ears are sensitive to noise, we may prefer to be spoken to really quietly or work in a completely quiet environment and not have noises from the kitchen or have a radio in the background, we may prefer to be asked to do one thing at a time so rather than have a list of stuff just have one thing, you finish that and then you get asked to do the next thing. You may prefer not to have any word spoken to you when you do your homework, but work from a visual schedule or from a tick box or a to do list. All of those things may help to reduce the amount of sounds that you have to listen to when you do homework. So let's have a look now when your ears are under responsive and what that may look like. So you may be someone who struggles to follow instructions because all of the sounds gets a bit muddled up and you can't quite hear what what is being said, you may miss hear what things, what instructions, and that can lead to misunderstandings. Or you may be someone who will be looking for a lot more sound cues, to help your levels of alertness and to help keep you going. So when you do your homework, you may be someone who needs a lot of reminders to do things. You may be someone who struggle to listen to audiobooks, or when you have to watch a video. And these just sound, it may be really hard for you to remember what's being said. You may be someone when you do your homework, you like to have a lot of noise around you and especially listening to some live music may help you get going and get through doing all of your homework tasks. So let's carry on and then see what will work for you. And the way that we're going to do this is we're going to draw a picture. So ask your parent or carer to join in, and what they need to do is they need to find different music. It can be loud, it can be soft, it can be classical, it can be popular music, it can be heavy music, it can be slow music, fast music, so as your parent or carer to go and find lots of music, and it doesn't have to be music that you particularly enjoy. So once they've done that, you're going to then draw a picture while they play different music in the background. And what I want you to do is to think about and speak to your parent or carer, which of these music did you find helpful? Which did you enjoy? Which really bother you? And which ones do you never want to listen to again? So do this little exercise together because that helps to explore what background noise you can tolerate and what you actually enjoy and what helps you to focus when you're doing something else. So once you finish doing this, you can play press again, and then we will carry on with the lesson. But here's a few homework tips for you. When your ears are overwhelmed and too sensitive to noise, you may enjoy finding a quiet space to work, you may want to use some headphones or some ear muffs, when you do your homework, you may want to listen to some music without any words, you may need to take quite a few breaks just to move around and just to give your ears a bit of a break. You may be someone who really likes to use your noise metre. Noise metre is something that we've mentioned in a previous lesson, and that noise metre may help people around you to communicate what you can tolerate. Some homework tips now for when your ears tend to miss out on sounds, it may be helpful for you to sit in a space where you can hear your family in the background or you can hear a radio, you may want to play some music that has a faster rhythm, music without words tend to work best when we're doing homework because it doesn't interfere with our thinking, especially when we're doing stuff like grammar or English or History where there's a lot of words involved and a lot of language. So listening to music without words, is something that I would recommend. Taking short breaks by shaking your head from side to side, that really just helps to almost neutralise the sounds that you've been exposed to and the movement in our head helps to stimulate our sense of movement, which is also helpful in helping us to regulate and the word regulation means it helps us to calm down. So you may also benefit from just getting up and having a walk around, maybe go outside if it's a nice day, and then come back because that changing scenery may also help to reset your listening. When you're kind of looking at using an audio book you may find it helpful to also look at the pages while you're listening to the audiobook, because that may be helpful to use to have someone read something to you but you read it along the way visually, so you're using your visual things here. And in the same way when you watching videos, you may benefit from turning the subtitles on because sometimes reading while you're watching and while you're listening is really helpful to take in information. So I hope these tips will help you and give it a try. Share your work with Oak National. If you'd like to, please ask your parent or carer to share your work on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter, tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.

When homework is tricky

When homework is tricky

These resources will be removed by the end of the Spring Term 2026.

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