Best Practice

SEN: Are you listening?

Inclusion
Are you listening to your SEN students? Teacher and SEN expert Adele Devine discusses some strategies and resources she has found effective in special schools to help support your students by reducing their anxiety and building good mental health

Suzie is looking out the window. She is watching a little bird flying about collecting sticks to build a nest. She is not hearing a word her teacher is saying. Step into the teachers shoes. What would you do?

So what actually happened between Suzie and her teacher? The teacher confronted Suzie: “Is what’s out the window more interesting than my lesson?” Suzie replied truthfully: “Yes.”

The teacher sent Suzie to the headteacher, who in turn phoned Suzie’s parents about their “defiant and lazy” daughter. Ouch! The phone call about this incident confirmed Suzie’s mum’s niggling feeling that her daughter was in the wrong school. Suzie started at a different school soon after.

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