Additional Educational Needs
KS = Keep Scaling! Keep Shining! Keep SEN! Keep Striving! Keep Sincere! Keep Singing!
Any child may have additional educational needs during their school career: something with which they need help, or encouragement. This may be due to a specified need defined by Special Educational Needs, English as an Additional Language or Gifted and Talented/Enrichment. In some cases, ill health or other incidents may be described as an Additional Educational need.
The Additional Educational Needs Department provides specialist teaching for pupils needing support in English, Maths or study skills, and for students identified as experiencing learning challenges in accessing the taught curriculum. All beginner learners of English will receive small group EAL sessions. Children who are more able will be challenged at their level within their classes.
If a child is to achieve his/her full potential, they need to feel confident, valued and motivated. As stated in the SEN Code of Practice… ‘all teachers are teachers of SEN.’
We aim to identify and support children who require extra help. We are aware that pupils will attain levels at different times, and that some will require an increased level of support in order to maintain progress. We strive for full inclusion of every student, where differentiated teaching and collaborative planning is greatly encouraged. We work alongside teachers to ensure the progress and happiness of every student.
Referral to the AEN Department
Should a teacher be concerned that a child may need learning support, the teacher monitors and assess the child within the classroom and a referal form is completed. If that the child may need additional support, speak to the teacher, then meet with the AEN Coordinator during an AEN meeting to discuss concerns and the referral form. The AEN Coordinator will complete an observation in class, complete further informal assessments and create a report detailing the results of the assessments with the parents’ consent. The teacher will then need to meet with the parent to discuss further steps, which might be in-class adaptations or further support. Any concerns expressed to a parent regarding a child’s learning will be made in person in a sensitive and appropriate manner. Open communication is vital!
SEN Provision
We try to provide an environment where a child with additional educational needs has the opportunity to learn and thrive. The teacher’s own belief is of paramount importance: all children can attain high standards in keeping with their affinities. In cases where students need specialised support, one-to-one provision is paid for by parents. Pupils are withdrawn from lessons, usually MFL with older pupils being taught, whenever possible, during non-core subject time. Sport times are sometimes used to avoid pupils missing academic lessons. (Senior students are withdrawn on a rotational basis, for the Toe-by-Toe spelling programme three times a week.)
Children who require lessons in EAL or SEN may be taken out of Modern Foreign Language (MFL) lessons and parents will be advised accordingly. AEN staff members also provide learning support in the classrooms as requested by the class teachers.
Specific learning difficulties are identified by an evaluation from an educational psychologist or speech and language therapist, and only when we have a report can our AEN teachers provide lessons, as these have to be tailored to the individual. An Individual Education Plan (IEP) is then devised appropriate to the child’s age and stage of development.
AEN may include: specific needs, i.e. specific learning difficulties, dyslexia, speech and language disorders, such as aphasia and dyspraxia, dyscalculia, sensory impairments, very weak literacy or/and numeracy. Indeed, very able children, who so often do not receive differentiated tasks, should also be considered as having ‘special needs’.
Children with Statement of Special Educational Needs
If a child has a statement of special educational needs, the requirements of the statement will be met by the LEA. Extra support will need to be paid for.
English as an Additional Language (EAL)
The needs of children with English as an Additional Language will be met in line with our policy to support individual needs. Learners who are new to English, will automatically be given EAL withdrawal sessions in lieu of MFL. As the student becomes more fluent in English, gradual immersion into the mainstream class is encouraged. At this stage, the EAL and class teacher will work together on strategies for EAL in the mainstream teaching. Similar to the IEP, EAL Grids illustrate the students’ progress and indicate when students are ready to join their mainstream class.
Gifted and Talented (G&T)/Enrichment:
All students are entitled to an enriched program of learning, where students are exposed to broad and meaningful curriculum. Some students, however, demonstrate superior strengths both academically and all round, where routine differentiation is insufficient. Such students can be nominated by teachers or parents, evidenced by assessment scores. In such cases, the AENCo will conduct further testing, and make recommendations. Recommendations may include curriculum compacting and the development of higher order thinking skills.
Keirouz (1993) suggests typical procedures in the case of gifted and talented children including:
deleting already mastered material from existing curriculum, adding new content, process, or product expectations to existing curriculum, extending existing curriculum to provide enrichment activities, providing course work for able children at an earlier age than usual, and writing new units or courses that meet the needs of gifted children.
What is Differentiation?
It is allowing each child to reach his/her maximum potential. To differentiate effectively, teachers must recognise the differences in learners and create learning opportunities for all these children. This requires activities in which children can learn at different rates, to different levels and employ a range of strategies.
There are obvious ways in which the curriculum does need differentiation for some individuals. Children with visual impairment will require enlarged texts in addition to the presentation of the lesson through a variety of media. Hearing impaired children will need to sit in the best possible position to make use of residual hearing and see the teacher in order to lip-read.
Differentiation can be tackled from several standpoints, for example by presenting and setting tasks at various levels of complexity. It can also be addressed by the way in which the children are expected to carry out tasks, the groupings, resources, and mechanisms for feedback by teachers and children. The outcome and results of the learning should be considered, along with the assessment, recording and presentation of any given task. AEN children may also have support from a learning support assistant during the introduction and main part of the lesson.
Maker's model of differentiated curriculum (Maker 1982a, 1982b, 1986) suggests that curriculum needs to be differentiated in terms of:
1. Learning environment: The aim is to create a learning environment which encourages children to engage their abilities to the greatest extent possible, including taking risks and building knowledge and skills in what they perceive as a safe, flexible environment. It should be:
child-centred - focusing on the child's interests, input and ideas rather than those of the teacher, encouraging independence - tolerating and encouraging child initiative, open - permitting new people, materials, ideas and things to enter and non-academic and interdisciplinary connections to be made, accepting - encouraging acceptance of others' ideas and opinions before evaluating them, complex - including a rich variety of resources, media, ideas, methods and tasks, and highly mobile - encouraging movement in and out of groups, desk settings, classrooms, and schools.
2. Content modification: The aim is to remove the ceiling on what is learned, and use the child's abilities to build a richer, more diverse and efficiently organised knowledge base. This building can be facilitated by encouraging:
abstractness - with content shifting from facts, definitions and descriptions to concepts, relationships to key concepts, and generalisations, complexity - with content shifting to inter-relationships rather than considering factors separately, variety - with content expanding beyond material presented in the normal program, study of people - including the study of individuals or peoples, and how they have reacted to various opportunities and problems, and study of methods of inquiry - including procedures used by experts working in their fields.
3. Process modification: The aim is to promote creativity and higher level cognitive skills, and to encourage productive use and management of the knowledge the children have mastered. This can be facilitated by encouraging:
higher levels of thinking - involving cognitive challenge using Bloom's Taxonomy of Cognitive Processes (1984 - see Appendix A for brief details), logical problems, critical thinking and problem solving, creative thinking - involving imagination, intuitive approaches and brainstorming techniques, open-endedness - encouraging risk-taking and the response that is right for the child by stressing there is no one right answer, group interaction - with highly able and motivated children sparking each other in the task, with this sometimes being on a competitive and sometimes on a cooperative basis (depending on the task and its objectives), variable pacing - allowing children to move through lower order thinking more rapidly but allowing more time for children to respond fully on higher order thinking tasks, variety of learning processes - accommodating different children' learning styles, debriefing - encouraging children to be aware of and able to articulate their reasoning or conclusion to a problem or question, and freedom of choice - involving children in evaluation of choices of topics, methods, products and environments.
4. Product modification: The aim is to facilitate opportunities for talented children to produce a product that reflects their potential. This can be encouraged by incorporating:
real problems - real and relevant to the child and the activity, real audiences - utilising an "audience" that is appropriate for the product, which could include another child or group of children, a teacher (not necessarily the class teacher), an assembly, a mentor, a community or specific interest group, real deadlines - encouraging time management skills and realistic planning, transformations - involving original manipulation of information rather than regurgitation, and appropriate evaluation - with the product and the process of its development being both self-evaluated and evaluated by the product's audience using previously established "real world" criteria that are appropriate for such products.
A number of management strategies that are often useful in implementing curriculum differentiation strategies include:
the use of contracts - allowing individualised and child negotiated programs and promoting the child's time-management skills and autonomy, conferencing - allowing dedicated child negotiation and review, and grouping strategies - facilitating children to work with "like minds" and encouraging group interaction (see separate notes on ability grouping).