My Teaching

I teach children with special educational needs (sen) and therefore try to use a variety of approaches to support the learning of the children I work with. I've tried to outline a few of the different approaches I use below (keep checking back as I will add anything new that I use).

Visual timetables

I use visual timetables to support my students' understanding of what is happening and will happen throughout the school day. I usually choose to use symbol cards on these but have used photographs or pictures in the past too. For some students I have used a whole day timetable, for some I have split it into a morning timetable and an afternoon timetable and for others I have used a now and next timetable. Usually, I have a whole day timetable for the whole class and then other types of timetable for individual children where they need it.

Makaton signing

I use Makaton signs while I am speaking to support children to understand who may be more able to understand language visually. I also teach children signs so that they can use them to communicate or to support their own speech. I find this are particularly useful for children who had disordered speech and can become frustrated because they know what they are trying to say but the person listening cannot understand the word they have said. Signs can help both people to understand one another. To find out more have a look at The Makaton Charity .

Intensive Interaction

Intensive interaction is a technique used to support people to begin to communicate who might not usually choose to. The technique emphasises mirroring, turn taking, sequences, and sharing space with one another to encourage communication. It can be as simple as sitting alongside a non-verbal child and copying their play, movements or sounds. After some time using this technique with different children I've found that they begin to enjoy me communicating with them in the way that they are already choosing to interact and we often end up in short turn taking sequences where they make a sound or movement and then look to me and wait for me to copy them. This is the very early stages of conversation and communication. For more information take a look at The intensive interaction institute webpage .

Colourful Semantics

 Colourful semantics is a technique developed by Alison Bryan to support children in developing grammar with their language. Children use colour coded sentence strips to build subject, verb, object sentences and to extend the use of their vocabulary. The sentence strip starts off with an orange section for the subject (or the who?) of the sentence. Children may start off with just an orange square. They can then look at a picture and say 'who?' is in the picture. Children can either use symbols or words to fill their sentence strip in. So for example if the picture was of a girl eating a sandwich they would choose the girl symbol or the word 'girl' and fill in the orange square. The second square on the sentence strip is for the verb or the 'what doing?' part of the sentence. In the example given previously the child would then look to choose the 'eating' symbol or word. Finally, a green square is used to ask 'what' or to fill in the object of the sentence, in the example given the child would choose the 'sandwich' symbol or word. Sentences can be extended using other colours such as blue for 'where?' Children do not need to start off with a full sentence strip but can start wherever their current level of learning is. Some children may only be identifying 'who?' Some children may be saying 'who' and 'what doing?' And others may be using a full sentence strip.

This photograph shows an example of a worksheet I use with some children in my class to use colourful semantics to help them with sentence structure when writing.