Supporting learners to re-engage with their core literacy skills.
The project aimed to address the challenge of progress and achievement in English for SEND learners.
In a one-to-one teaching and learning environment, comprehensive assessments took place. Learners were then supported with identifying one or two key focus skills areas and strategies were shared with the team to support the learners. All learners involved in the project made progress in their formally awarded qualifications, aspirations were raised and resilience improved. It was also found that fundamental to learner progress was the relationship between teachers/LSAs and learners.
OTLA 8
6. Build positive and collaborative relationships with colleagues and learners - Learners appreciated being involved in decision making around their learning as it enabled them to link what they were doing to their own goals; for example, they were able to choose options of work to tackle the same literacy topic and this helped to forge relationships. They also witnessed and appreciated when staff were working together for the learners’ benefit, and this led to greater efforts on behalf of the learners.
11. Manage and promote positive learner behaviour - The project enabled the exploration of learner behaviour and motivations which are closely linked. Behaviour here means positive approaches to learning, a growth mindset, which a number of learners began to demonstrate as they witnessed and understood their own progress and as they realised that they were at the centre of the project.
6. Build positive and collaborative relationships with colleagues and learners - Here the focus was overcoming ‘individual barriers to learning’ which proved to be learners’ historic experiences and what this had taught them, rather than their SEND. Strategies can be used and employed to tackle barriers of SEND but overcoming the impact on confidence, self-esteem and motivation due to perceptions of SEND has proven the greater challenge.