SEND
All Devon Local Authority (LA) maintained schools have a similar approach to meeting the needs of pupils with Special Educational Needs and are supported by the LA to ensure that all pupils, regardless of their specific needs, make the best possible progress in school. All schools are supported to be as inclusive as possible, with the needs of pupils with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities being met in a mainstream setting wherever possible.The four broad ‘areas of need’ are Communication and Interaction, Cognition and Learning, Social, Emotional and Mental Health Difficulties, and Sensory and Physical Needs.
What is the Local Offer?
The Children and Families Bill will become enacted in 2014. From this date, Local Authorities and schools are required to publish and keep under review information about services they expect to be available for the children and young people with Special Educational Needs (SEN) aged 0-25. The DCC Local Offer can be found at https://new.devon.gov.uk/send/
The intention of the Local Offer is to improve choice and transparency for families. It will also be an important resource for parents in understanding the range of services and provision in the local area.
The school SEN information report utilises the LA Local Offer to meet the needs of SEN pupils as determined by school policy, and the provision that the school is able to meet.
What can we at school offer you?
Adaptive Teaching, planned and instinctive, is what we do at Appledore School to ensure learning is accessible and appropriate to all children.
At Appledore we do this through the adoption of various techniques to target support for pupils so no child has a limit to the ceiling of their achievement. Examples of how we do this include:
Having clear learning objectives about what we are learning and how we can achieve
Recap and revision of previous learning
Now/next instruction
Visual timetables
Different ways of presenting and recording outcomes
Targeted/tailored support
Rapid response support
Sensory breaks
Scheduled activities (i.e. keep-up, catch-up and specialist SEND targeted support)
Adult supported group
Classroom layout and positioning
Additional practice
Pre-teaching
Slower pace to for identified groups to accommodate more repetition
Shared writes
Opportunities to rehearse responses (e.g. talk partners)
Breaking down component knowledge further
Slower pace for identified groups to introduce new material in smaller steps
Shared writes
Processing time to answer questions
Acting on information from observations, questioning and assessment (formative and summative)
Rapid response support
Scheduled activities (i.e. keep-up, catch-up and specialist SEND targeted support)
Questioning
Selecting well-chosen resources
Word banks, sound/number mats
Dual coding (i.e. words and images)
Manipulatives
Models and shared examples, scaffolds and frameworks
Different challenges for different levels of need
Physical aids (eg pencil grips, standing desks, wobble cushions, ear defenders)
Modified resources (e.g. larger text, overlays)
Chromebooks
Use of the outdoors
Teaching carefully selected groups
Rapid response support
Scheduled activities (i.e. keep-up, catch-up and specialist SEND targeted support)
Move to a less crowded and less stimulating space following whole class input
Assigning different tasks to different groups
Reasonable adjustments to activities might be needed for lower attaining pupils and pupils with SEND. However, whenever and wherever possible, those who are able must join in and are expected to keep up with the pace of the curriculum and its end points. For more information on adaptive teaching for the Early Years in our Foundation Stage Unit, please click here.
For the Appledore School SEND information report please click here and for policies relating to SEND please click here. Our special educational needs co-ordinator (SENCO) is Mrs Kathryn Mitchell and she can be contacted on 01237 474365 and admin@appledoreprimary.co.uk
Useful links:
Devon CC referrals forms (eg neurodiversity, behaviour, early years delay, speech and language, learning disability and more) https://childrenandfamilyhealthdevon.nhs.uk/referral-forms/
Devon Information Advice and Support for SEND www.devonias.org.uk
Family Information service in Devon www.devon.gov.uk/disc
