About a Child!
Aims of the course
- To explore practical skills needed and strategies used to involve pupils and parents in person-centred and solution-focused thinking.
- To develop understanding of the provision required to meet the needs of the Code of Practice (2014) through involvement of pupils, parents and carers.
- To know the possibilities for next steps to further embed such practice across school.
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Target audience
Aimed at all practitioners and senior leaders looking for effective ways to engage pupils and parents in progress and outcomes.
Overview
The SEND Code of Practice (2014) demands greater responsibility and accountability from the class teacher for the SEND provision and outcomes within that class. This may mean subtle changes in the role of the SENCO in some schools, particularly where the SENCO has taken responsibility for most of the meetings with parents, writing and reviewing IEPS, or directly teaching pupil interventions. SENCOS are expected to empower class teachers to take responsibility for the progress and provision for SEND pupils. Where teaching assistants are supporting pupils and classes, the over-arching responsibility for pupil progress rests with the class teacher. This course aims to empower all staff to liaise, plan and review with pupils and parents in a way which makes school processes truly accessible, and reduces some of challenges faced by practitioners in pupil and parent voice. With the application of a few simple strategies, schools can meet and exceed the requirements of the SEND Code of Practice (2015).
Quality First Teaching for All
Aims of the course
- To begin to understand the significance of working memory in children’s learning.
- To begin to understand the significance of multi-sensory teaching and learning experiences.
- To be able to use the two-pronged approach to enable all learners to achieve in mainstream lessons, with the application of appropriate strategies.
- To identify the components of an inclusive lesson.
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Target audience
Aimed at all classroom teachers, SENCOS and Inclusion Managers.
Overview
November 2015’s DfE publication, ‘Supporting the attainment of disadvantaged pupils: Briefing for school leaders’, detailing research conducted by NFER and Durham University, highlights the need for high quality teaching for all as one of the seven building blocks for increasing school effectiveness for disadvantaged pupils. The document states, ‘Leaders of more successful schools emphasise the importance of quality teaching first.’ The SEND Code of Practice (2015) also places a renewed emphasis on quality first teaching for all children, aimed at both reducing the number of children requiring Special Educational Provision, and ensuring that those with SEND are taught alongside their peers. This raises many questions for practitioners. How can this be achieved when the gaps in children’s learning can be so wide? What does quality first teaching look like now that we are so accustomed to teaching through interventions? This course explores what inclusive practice can look like for children with cognition and learning difficulties and, indeed, for all underachieving children.
Teaching Assistants on the Frontline of Learning
Aims of the course
- To explore our understanding of children’s learning.
- To develop our knowledge and use of questioning skills.
- To know how to support and develop pupils’ independent learning skills.
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Target audience
Primarily teaching assistants, but is more effective if there is whole school involvement.
Overview
There are now around 250,000 teaching assistants in English schools. This represents around treble the number that existed in 2000 (EEF, 2016). In primary schools, there are more teaching assistants than teachers. Unlike teachers, however, the roles, responsibilities and preparatory training for this are extremely wide and varied. Unlike teachers, there is no common qualification or body of study that all teaching assistants must have before they can embark on their role. Yet despite training for teaching assistants being very patchy and varied, schools across England expect them to be firmly on the frontline of learning and teaching. Yet recent research from the Education Endowment Foundation (2016) has highlighted that without strong and effective training and deployment, teaching assistants can have very little positive impact on pupil progress – a bitter pill to swallow for any hard-working teaching assistant. However, the researchers do not point any blame at teaching assistants for this situation, but identify conditions of employment, preparedness and deployment as the ingredients that either help or hinder them from achieving good practice.
This course does not claim to provide all the training a teaching assistant will ever need – certainly not in one session! But it is a very helpful introduction to the fundamentals of learning for new teaching assistants, whilst also being a very thought-provoking reflection for those more experienced. It is not subject-specific, but addresses the more rooted questions around how children learn and how they fail. It addresses how we can use skillful questioning to lift the lid on children’s learning, and how we can use practical strategies to encourage independent learners. This is about exploring the role of teaching assistants at the point of interaction with children. I hope it forms an interesting part in a much wider professional development journey.
Teaching Assistants on the Frontline of Maths
Aims of the course
- To deepen teaching assistants’ understanding of learning in maths.
- To develop teaching assistants’ knowledge and use of questioning skills in maths.
- To know how to support and develop pupils’ independent learning skills in maths.
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Target audience
Primarily teaching assistants, but is more effective if there is whole school involvement
Please note that this course follows directly from Teaching Assistants on the Frontline of Learning (see details above), and cannot be delivered separately. Ideally, it is more effective to have a gap of a few weeks between the two courses to give delegates opportunity to reflect and feedback on classroom experiences.
Teaching Assistants on the Frontline of Literacy
Aims of the course
- To understand the use and application of multi-sensory language strategies.
- To understand effective strategies for reading with children individually, and for guided reading.
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Target audience
Primary teaching assistants
Overview
This course highlights strong multi-sensory language strategies to support phonics and spelling, as well as looking at structured ways to engage in reading with children, both individually and through a guided reading experience.
Please note that this course follows directly from Teaching Assistants on the Frontline of Learning (see details above), and cannot be delivered separately. Ideally, it is more effective to have a gap of a few weeks between the two courses to give delegates opportunity to reflect and feedback on classroom experience.
SEND in the Mainstream Classroom
An introduction to including pupils with SEND in the mainstream primary classroom.
Please note that this is a full day course
Aims of the course
- To clarify understanding of what special educational need is, and what it is not
To begin to understand some of the cognitive processes involved in learning, and what they might look like in practice.
- To understand a range of practical teaching and learning strategies that enable all learners to achieve in mainstream lessons.
- To appreciate some of the reasonable adjustments that might be made to enable access to the curriculum.
- To critically evaluate some of the components of an inclusive lesson, and the strategies that might be employed.
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Target audience
Training and Newly Qualified Teachers
Overview
The recent Carter review of Initial Teacher Training highlighted how little emphasis was given to the area of Special Educational Needs and Disabilities in the diet of many training teachers. Colleagues new to the profession repeatedly talk of how little time was given in their training to this area. This course is based on the premise that excellent provision for pupils with SEND starts from a Quality First Teaching basis. We examine what is required and expected of teachers in the Code of Practice, what causes some children to struggle with learning in the classroom, particularly those external barriers to learning that can present in the environment. We explore a range of practical teaching and learning strategies that can help teachers reduce and eliminate many of those barriers, and start to appreciate when Quality First Teaching requires some reasonable adjustments. The message given is that inclusive classrooms don’t have to be difficult to create or hard to manage, that if you can facilitate successful progress in pupils with SEND, you are likely to be seeing good progress from the rest of your class, and that high expectations of pupils with SEND are the crucial underpinning of success.
