BESA CORNER
This month, in our ongoing feature highlighting the work of members of the UK education suppliers’ trade body BESA, authors DANIEL SOBEL and SARA ALSTON discuss their new book “The Inclusive Classroom: A new approach to differentiation”; and we learn more about the award-winning FLASHACADEMY digital EAL platform.
The Inclusive Classroom: A new approach to differentiation
Authors DANIEL SOBEL and SARA ALSTON discuss their new book.
How schools are helping pupils with
EAL during remote learning Pupils with English as an Additional Language (EAL) have been at a greater disadvantage during the COVID-19 pandemic; school closures mean less exposure to the English language, with some mainstream remote learning provisions not suited to this vulnerable cohort of learners. The striking education divide, which before the pandemic saw late arrivals with EAL being 15.5 months behind in Primary and 20.7 months in Secondary, is being exacerbated by COVID-19.
With an ever-increasing EAL pupil population in the UK, schools are working hard to ensure these learners are supported and provided for. At Fortis Academy, around 36.5% of the school population is EAL – more than double the national average of 16%. For Hollie O’Sullivan, the school’s Director of EAL, a whole-school approach to EAL has been key for pupil support – an EAL ethos, cross-department engagement, everything to get EAL firmly onto the school map.
Hollie also incorporates the award-winning FlashAcademy digital
EAL platform as part of their whole-school strategy, with learners using FlashAcademy three times a week within a targeted timetable to help improve English language proficiency. By incorporating FlashAcademy into their suite of EAL initiatives, Fortis Academy has seen English acquisition progressing three times faster than the UK national average for their pupils with EAL. The app helps overcome a common barrier for EAL pupils working remotely, by delivering curriculum lessons from 45 home languages and English to English, where students have low home language literacy. Accessible on all devices including smartphones, the platform enables independent multi-model learning and provides a complete remote learning strategy where teachers can assign work and track pupil progress, easing time and workload pressures in this climate.
Now that learning has once again move to a temporary online
space, Hollie and her team deliver PowerPoint lessons so that pupils can continue to hear their teachers voices and listen to the English language being spoken to them daily, guiding them through the work, as well as encouraging learners and their families to engage with the FlashAcademy platform and free resources:
"We have been so grateful to FlashAcademy who responded so quickly
to the initial lockdown by providing us with high quality support, including EAL appropriate home learning booklets. This meant we could provide our EAL learners with an extensive range of both digital and paper resources to continue their language acquisition from home at this challenging time."
Hollie offers further suggestions for remote learning in her
webinar, ‘Doubling Attainment for EAL in Secondary’. This, along with more webinars hosted by teachers and specialists of EAL, can be viewed for free over on FlashAcademy’s Events page. Sessions cover topics such as Health & Wellbeing, Managing EAL in High-Need Schools, Language Awareness and more. Free remote learning resources can also be found on FlashAcademy’s website, ranging from Maths & Literacy to Mindfulness, to help pupils engage with their English language development from home.
u
https://flashacademy.com/remotelearning/ 14
www.education-today.co.uk
We want to be able to say our classrooms are inclusive – certainly, OFSTED and Ministries of Education all over the world talk about this a lot and even parents and children themselves. But how do we actually do this in a way without asking already overwhelmed and stressed-out teachers to do yet more? The standard answer is ‘Differentiation’, which has become synonymous with alternate worksheets and resources – but frankly who has the time to make those and is there any evidence they even work? We need a solution that is time saving and teacher- supporting, and that actually works.
Schools tend to think about SEN from a diagnostic position that labels
children. The time has come to evolve this old way of thinking to focusing on children’s actual needs as they present in the classroom. Not all children with autism present the same and as such, it is more effective to think about them as individuals. Combine ‘children are individuals’ with our simple approach of ‘small tweaks’ throughout the lesson and you have the successful formula in our book The Inclusive Classroom: A new approach to differentiation.
This new way of doing the same old enables teachers to see the
lesson as ‘a series of short manageable steps’. We split up the lesson into five obvious phases and demonstrate how teachers can use small tweaks and adaptions to build a culture of inclusion, making it workable and supportive of all children, not just those with special needs. In the end, this saves time and stress and is far more effective to include all children regardless of diagnosis or not.
It’s all simple and obvious when you think about it; each of these
parts of the lesson are fault lines where problems occur and therefore, great opportunities to do inclusion expertly. We start with getting the entrance into the classroom right, considering how to make the children feel safe and welcome – without this some may kick off. In the next phase, we focus on the delivery of instructions for learning, ensuring that they are accessible and understandable to all – this is where many lessons break down because a child simply doesn’t understand the task. The book demonstrates many tips and tricks such as using visuals and effective questioning to support all children to engage. We explain how simple adaptions can support children to access learning when working as an individual or as part of a group. Finally, we look at the last five minutes of the lesson as not just a time to round off the lesson, tidy up and get the children out of the room, but as a transition point to the next lesson. Get this right and the whole day becomes easier for all.
This book is designed to make SEN and differentiation in a classroom
as easy and effective as possible for every teacher regardless of their setting.
‘Each and every pupil is both unique and special. An additional learning need is not necessarily a difficulty. This book provides a timely, personal and welcome reminder of the importance of individual pupils' needs, instead of an obsession with a diagnosis.’ – Allison Yarrow, Deputy Headteacher and Wellbeing and Achievement Lead, @AllisonYarrow
February 2021
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44
