Individual interaction styles can have a huge impact on learning. When working with young people with SEN there are many different strategies and approaches to engage them in learning. What is often overlooked is the adult's interaction style. This can influence not only engagement but behaviour, wellbeing and, well all outcomes really. I would like… Continue reading Develop Authentic Interaction Styles To Improve Learning
Category: research
Make Your Own Maths Manipulatives
In this post, we will look at two great resources to buy and two free to make maths manipulatives. As an SEN teacher, you will be used to making the most of what you have. Specialist sensory toys, resources, and equipment are usually very expensive. This means the SEN teacher needs to get creative when… Continue reading Make Your Own Maths Manipulatives
An Essential Guide to Teaching Phonics in Early Years
Written for us by an Early Years leader, this post outlines a suggested phonics session, the activities and routine will be appropriate for all mainstream settings, and with a little imagination to any SEN setting. The phonics session mirrors what I taught to my class. Keeping the same routine really helped my autistic learners and is the key takeaway from this post.
Engaging the failed Autistic Learner.
this post is specifically focused on strategies that may be effective for autistic children. This post draws heavily on the work of Damian Milton from who's writing I have learnt so much from over the last year or two. This booklet has particularly shaped my approach to teaching. Most of these strategies are really just aimed at reducing stressors throughout the day. I would like to stress these are interpreted through by teaching experience and context is very important.
Sibling relationships in Neurodiverse families
The interactions, bonds and relationships of a family unit are so diverse that what may help one family will insult another.
Research, Relationships and Reality.
This post will outline the role relationships play in behaviour support, I will also outline some of the research led practices I have used. Before I start I do want to say that I have read studies I do not agree with. I also know that a huge number of studies conducted ON Autistic children/adults focus on strategies intended to normalise social behaviours which is a huge ethical issue. Fortunately I have had the opportunity to listen to and discuss elements of my practice with actually Autistic academics and practitioners. This has greatly shaped my approach and ethos towards behaviour support, I will also admit this has slanted my view of a lot of studies that remove the human element from behaviour and reduce the children to purely objects to study. To this end I fully expect some of the approaches in the post and the presentation to be a bit controversial and I am 100% sure that at least some of them will contravene your school (or center's) behaviour policy.
CPD: Essentials for effective training
Training is big business. How big I don't know despite googling this frantically. I have no answer. The reason for this is because CPD is such a wide term. A school's training budget can cover a multitude of areas, non teaching and learning areas such as: health and safety, food hygiene, seagull avoidance, first aid,… Continue reading CPD: Essentials for effective training
Research vs Experience in Classroom Practice
Everything about our classroom is a decision we have made, if the desks are set up a certain way it is either because we put them like that or we decided (consciously or unconsciously) that they were fine as we found them.
Leading Through Trust: NPQML
Leading Through Trust. A Reflection fROM my NPQML Clearly trust is a hugely important element in the atmosphere of a school ecosystem. Given the level of vulnerability of our students the organic trust (Bryk and Schneider (2002)) within the school community is of paramount importance. However it should never be unquestioning. This would lead to… Continue reading Leading Through Trust: NPQML
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