SEN focus

Pam Jones has recently been asked to write an article for the HIAS team in RS where she discusses the work she has been doing to develop SEND provision in RS. She reflects on the project to explore what high-quality SEND provision involves alongside another school. Both schools engaged in lesson observations, reading and research, and an expert session with Carson Elday, a Senior Teacher in a special school and Outreach Lead.

When Chris suggested that Crookhorn College could be involved with a SEND project, I jumped at the chance. The sheer number of students coming to Crookhorn College with an education, health and care plan (EHCP) or on the SEND register meant that as a teacher I was having to adapt lessons more than ever before. Currently around 38% of the school is on the SEND register, nearly half of this percentage concentrated in Year 7 and 8. Also within these two-year groups there are approximately 32 EHCPs or EHCPs pending. We teach in mixed ability groups, and it can be a bit overwhelming to teach groups that are so mixed, with the widest varieties of needs and strengths that I have ever experienced within my many years of teaching. It also felt like a good way for to me to further progress my thinking around SEND provision, after being previously part of a school project on SEND.

I felt that we had been doing a good job of offering strategies such as dual coding in glossaries, differentiated scaffolds for assessments, sentence starters, and giving lots of support and encouragement in lessons. However, in 2023 the new cohort of Year 7 needed much more. Dealing with the variety of literacy needs, processing issues, low confidence, lack of social skills and organisation was full on, even with the presence of a teaching assistant (TA) with some classes (which I know is an immense privilege, as support is not always available). As a part of the project, I was able to take part in observing Laura Ord at The Blue Coat School in Basingstoke (previously named Aldworth School).

I was inspired by the amount of thinking the students displayed whilst watching Laura teach and the depth of the discussion that took place. I reflected on my own classes and felt that I could include more structured discussion in learning to allow students to work their thinking through, using mini whiteboards (MWBs) to allow students to frame their thoughts first, so that everyone felt able to share. Whilst I felt that my Key Stage 3 classes had a lower starting point than some of the students I observed, I felt I could aspire to develop this high level of verbal investigation into key concepts. I also attended a presentation led by Carson Elday, who has so much experience teaching SEND students. I loved the ideas that he gave us, especially with more interactive learning and more hands-on tasks, using the senses to help bring concepts to life, such as artefacts (which we have but do not use as often as we should), smell (for example the smells around a festival to hook the students in), as well as more creative tasks, using play doh and art to help SEND students explore concepts.

I undertook the key reading that Chris had shared with us and found the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) report Special educational needs in mainstream schools the most helpful document. It clearly outlines strategies that could be used to support students, such as including more modelling and also reinforcing positive behaviours. Now in lesson, every do now task is a retrieval task that students get rewarded for having a go at completing (on MWBs), as opposed to getting rewarded for getting the answer right, I want to encourage all students to engage and try tasks. This seems to be working quite well.

One impact on the practice of the department was the development of more supported glossaries. Within the Year 7 and 8 programmes of study we were already getting students to record subject specific language in the back of their books, including a section for dual coding. However, for students missing lessons due to nurture (interventions) it meant they were missing key words or were in lesson and not able to keep up with doing this basic task. We now offer printed glossaries, one which has support and the other with just the key words on, both have spaces for dual coding to take place. Next year after our trial, these will be made into a booklet that students can use over the two years and will help us refer back to previous key words used, to embed them into the long-term memory. We are also using MWBs more to aid discussions. Some of the SEND students struggled with think/pair/share as they struggled to keep their ideas in mind during the think part before sharing with others. Now everyone has constant access to a MWB to record ideas down to give them the confidence to share.

It might seem like a little thing, but it has made a huge difference to students to be able to share more. We are also incorporating our medium, hot and spicy format to scaffold tasks and set challenge across more lessons, so that it is not just in assessments but in the different resources students can access. This is something that we need to develop further, as well as extending our use of tasks sheet to help students follow the flow of the lesson. These are currently being trialled as bookmark style stickers to be placed in books, for some SEND students, who can use them to tick off once they have completed a task or literacy check. Overall, I learnt that supporting SEND means allowing students to access and understand concepts in a supported way that allows for challenge. Students are keen to move from medium, to hot, to spicy and have even asked for a super spicy version! It is now up to the department to rise to that challenge!