Cognition & Learning

Target audience

Teachers, teaching assistants, SENCOs, Inclusion Managers, subject leaders, leaders of teaching and learning

Overview

This course is extremely practical, yet routed in much theory and research conducted over decades. Memory strategies and training have been key components of multi-sensory language programmes for dyslexic pupils for many years (Hickey, 1977; Combley, 2001; Kelly et al., 2011). They have formed a significant part of post-graduate training programmes for specific learning difficulty, as memory has been understood to be a key factor of the difficulties for children’s cognitive development and subsequent attainment (Combley, 2001; Kelly et al., 2011; Henry, 2012). Those who have worked individually with children in this way will be acutely aware of the difference such training can make to children’s ability to retain digits or objects in short-term memory, and their ability to hold letters, words or sentences in their heads for spelling and writing. This is born out by the repeated success of such teaching strategies in enabling children to read and write to the level of their peers, where they have previously been unresponsive to mainstream classroom strategies. Specialist practitioners will have assessed and re-assessed pupils and seen the increase in working memory following strategy application. Many of the strategies advocated are aimed at helping children to reduce working memory overload, whilst others are aimed at helping them to use their working memory capacity more effectively. A key feature of good specialist teaching and, as it emerges, all teaching, is the application of meta-cognition in the development of these strategies (EEF, 2015). It is important that children are aware of why they are learning these strategies, and how the application of such strategies can help them to learn more effectively.

Earlier theorists suggested that working memory had a limited capacity or ceiling to it in every person. Yet this would seem to contradict the views of educationalists, such as Kelly et al. (2011), who assert that, ‘Working memory skills can be developed in learners with dyslexia through teaching strategies to facilitate the holding of information in working memory.’ She goes on to cite a number of strategies, including meta-cognition, multi-sensory techniques, verbal rehearsal, chunking, and use of pattern, as effective ways of training the memory. The practical work carried out for decades by educationalists, and centuries by parents and grand-parents (in games such as ‘I went to market …’) now appears to be substantiated by psychology and neuroscience, where electronic memory training programs are demonstrating almost indisputable evidence that the memory can, indeed, be trained and developed.

‘For a long time, psychologists thought that we were stuck with our working memory size and couldn’t change it. However, exciting cutting-edge research suggests that we can train our brain and improve working memory. In response to this, there has been a surge of brain training products in the last five to ten years and some of these have found their way into schools.’ (Packiam Alloway, 2015).

Further to this, it seems possible that in the case of adaptive WM training programs, they may be increasing both the neural plasticity of the WM and spontaneously developing the learner’s use of strategy in some areas, without explicit strategy teaching.
‘Adaptive working memory training programs do not explicitly teach meta-cognitive techniques, but they may promote the development or enhancement of strategies spontaneously employed to complete working memory tasks. Introspective reports from children in our own training studies support the notion that, even in the absence of direct strategy instruction, repeated practice on working memory tasks promotes the development of idiosyncratic strategies.’ (Dunning et al., 2014).

Current research is now focusing on establishing how much of WM development is transferrable to academic progress and attainment (Pearson publish an abundance of research on this), and how strategies from working memory theory can be applied to literacy and numeracy teaching. For example, Tocci (2014) examines the application of rehearsal, pace and chunking in a reading intervention called ‘Rip It Up Reading’, echoing the techniques of many years of multi-sensory teaching for specific learning difficulty.

Course presenters

• Jayne Worrall
• Zena Martin

Target audience

Primarily aimed at Foundation Stage and KS1 teachers and teaching assistants, though KS2 colleagues have also found it a useful insight into potential strategies for pupils still struggling with phonics, reading and spelling.

SENCOs

Literacy subject leaders

Overview

In 2010, OFSTED produced a report titled, ‘Reading by Six: How the best schools do it’. This document highlighted that ‘The best primary schools in England teach virtually every child to read, regardless of the social and economic circumstances of their neighbourhoods, the ethnicity of their pupils, the language spoken at home and most special educational needs or disabilities.’ Of particular interest is the recommendation that any phonics programme in school should ‘use a multi-sensory approach so that children learn variously from simultaneous visual, auditory and kinaesthetic activities which are designed to secure essential phonic knowledge and skills’. It is also clear to point out that, ‘Multi-sensory activities should be interesting and engaging but firmly focused on intensifying the learning associated with its phonic goal. They should avoid taking children down a circuitous route only tenuously linked to the goal. This means avoiding over-elaborate activities that are difficult to manage and take too long to complete, thus distracting the children from concentrating on the learning goal.’ With this in mind, and more than a cursory nod to the multi-sensory language programmes employed by specialist teachers through the decades, we look at successful multi-sensory language strategies adapted for young children, and establish precisely what is, and is not, a multi-sensory learning experience.

Course presenters

• Zena Martin

Target audience

All staff – SENCOS, teachers, maths subject-leads, Inclusion Managers, teaching assistants.

Overview

The significance of maintaining good concrete and visual representations for children throughout their mathematical education.
We identify why some children find it difficult to grasp mathematical concepts, and what can be done within a quality first teaching context to address these difficulties and remove some of the barriers.
Presented with a range of practical strategies.

Course presenters

• Zena Martin

Target audience

Teachers, teaching assistants, SENCO’s, maths subject leaders, SEND teachers

Overview

This course is designed to support teaching staff who may never have used these versatile rods before, or have used them but not appreciated yet the power they have to secure number sense, showing the variety of strategies to use for a wide range of mathematical concepts and for all ages and stages of development.

Course presenters

• Zena Martin

Target audience

All primary teachers and teaching assistants
Training and Newly Qualified Teachers
Senior leaders responsible for developing reading comprehension

Overview

Reading is a complex process, requiring the synthesis of many skills. Yet it is possible to break the process down into these individual skills. In this course, we aim to unpick the Simple View of Reading, using its component parts and assessment strategies to identify where some children may be struggling. From this, we look at ways to optimise the reading opportunities that children get in primary school. We develop strategies for reading with children individually, which can be shared easily with everyone who hears children read in school, and parents and carers at home too. We go on to look at effective strategies to make guided or reciprocal reading work effectively.

Course presenters

• Zena Martin

Target audience

Teachers, teaching assistants, SENCOS, literacy subject leaders.

Overview

This course highlights the multi-sensory nature of reading and writing. Built on the very latest research and specialist teaching techniques, it allows teachers to identify potential literacy difficulties much earlier in a child’s schooling than we might have previously thought possible. We analyse the strategies that these children require to ensure that they keep up with their peers, rather than falling behind and allowing the gap to widen.

Course presenters

• Zena Martin

Target audience

Teachers, teaching assistants, SENCOS, literacy subject leaders.

Overview

Following on from the previous course, we examine the complexity of the writing process and the wider range of barriers to learning that exist for pupils in writing. We reflect on when intervention is appropriate and when it is not, and what the evidence is from research around writing development. Delegates go away with a range of practical strategies to apply in the classroom.

Course presenters

• Zena Martin