SEN Pupils in the Classroom

SEND covers a huge range of needs and challenges that our children face every day, and finding the best approach can be difficult. We are seeing an increasing number of pupils with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities in our mainstream classrooms, so how do we support them? 

There are four key areas of SEND:

• cognition and learning
• communication and interaction
• social, emotional and mental health
• sensory or physical needs 

This blog focuses on cognition and learning. Things will vary between schools, but the SEND Code of Practice recommends the Assess, Plan, Do, Review approach, and you’ll be at different stages of this with your children.

Assess

The first stage of ‘Assess’ is part of all you do, and your assessment of pupils happens all the time, through discussions with colleagues and family, your classroom observations, and a wide range of summative and formative assessments. 

Assessing SEN pupils can be difficult, especially if pupils are working far below age-related expectations, but it can be helpful to focus on the individual’s strengths, rather than what they can’t do. This allows you to build a learning plan which builds on those strengths. SEN strategies are most effective when they focus on the pupil and work towards specific outcomes. Always consider the child as an individual. 

For example:

• If they work well with visual challenges, you could provide more visual support for vocabulary using sign-supported English or illustrated tasks (such as this worksheet on identifying adverbs).
• If they work well with numbers but struggle with writing, you could try to structure tasks so that they clearly build on each other.
• If they love a hands-on puzzle, manipulative table-top tasks, such as this activity on identifying prepositions, provide a more active learning experience.

Plan

Now it’s time to ‘Plan’. You’ve worked out what the child is struggling with, and you might be looking for evidence of a specific learning difficulty such as dyslexia, but either way the plan should include work to narrow the gap between the child and their age-related expectations. Your SENDCo can offer support and help you get wider training, as well as helping you to check pupil outcomes, understand their barriers and come up with a plan moving forward.

Do

If the child is struggling to keep up with learning, pre-teaching the objective of a lesson might help. Finding time to do this is tricky because we don’t want to withdraw the child from assembly or play times. The key is to plan. There are likely pockets of time that you can grab for ten minutes to access a task. For example, towards the end of a lesson consider drawing together a small group of children to pre-teach learning for the next activity, which will allow you to check prior learning or help them with new concepts before they meet these as a whole class.

CGP+ have recently launched KS2 English SEN resources, with pre-teaching activities. A lot of pupils with SEN struggle with confidence, and pre-teach activities help to build this. Whenever there is a chance to allow the children to share their pre-teach learning, this is a great way to turn the children into ‘mini-experts’ in your classroom!

The next step is to support learning in the whole class. Grouping pupils in the classroom can be difficult. Group all of the SEN pupils together and you will be able to provide them with extra support more easily but we also know that children learn better from their peers, so mixed ability seating would also be great for your learners. In the end, the decision around seating will most likely come down to which children will work best together, but thinking about flexible seating for different subjects might help you to meet the needs of the pupils more widely. Once you’re happy with where the pupils are sitting, it’s important to differentiate their learning to make it accessible, and to try and do so without knocking the fragile confidence you’re building.

It would be easy to print off a reading comprehension task from two years below, for example, but then the SEN pupil isn’t accessing the same materials as their peers, and this can be demoralising. The KS2 English SEN resources on CGP+ are all matched to standard level versions so that SEN pupils can work on the same themes and topics as their peers at a level they can access. Try this comprehension on the Perseus and Medusa myth with a pre-teach activity on the characters and vocabulary featured, or this worksheet on parenthesis with cut-out examples for pre-teaching. You can read much more about CGP+’s SEN resources in this blog.
 

Review

Once you’ve done all of this you’ll need to ‘Review’ the impact and establish more next steps as part of the cycle. As you go, you’ll more easily gather evidence of your pupils’ success because the tasks they will be doing will be more closely matched to their abilities and strengths. Effective use of adults is crucial too, but not every classroom has a teaching assistant available, so planning in where this support can be most effective is vitally important. With quality training, effective support, great resources and focused planning, SEN pupils can make good progress towards their individualised outcomes.

I have been working in mainstream and special primary schools for the last 18 years. Over those years, I've coordinated every subject, and currently lead on curriculum development for our specialist provision. I'm also a published author of a YA fantasy series, have delivered private tuition on and off, and currently enjoy developing CGP+ resources in my free time.

To see resources written by Joanne, click here.