Early years SEND resources
Special needs association nasen has launched new SEND resources designed specifically for early years professionals. Funded by the Department for Education, the charity will release a series of new early years SEND resources over the next six months. The free resources aim to increase the confidence and skills of early years staff to improve access to provision and outcomes for children with SEND. Resources already available include:
- Early Years ‘Focus on SEND’ online CPD course. This includes nine hours of free online CPD and covers all the basic information and understanding that staff need to be able to make their own universal approach as effective as possible.
- Seven new webcasts. These are short videos, each focusing on a specific area of SEND in the early years. Topics include: What is SEND?, Key documents, The role of the key person in relation to SEND, The role of the SENCO, Early identification, and The four broad areas of need.
Oracy and literacy research published
Spending more class time on meaningful dialogue that encourages pupils to reason, discuss, speculate, argue and explain, rather than simply give the expected answers, can boost primary pupils’ maths, science and English results, the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) has revealed.
The charity has published the findings from an independent research evaluation of the Dialogic Teaching approach, which has been devised and piloted by Professor Robin Alexander and developed by the Cambridge Primary Review Trust and the University of York.
Almost 80 English primary schools took part in the randomised controlled trial. Teachers were trained to deliver the approach, which aims to maximise the power of classroom talk. The programme uses video and print materials, as well as in-school mentoring to support teachers’ planning, teaching and evaluation in English, maths and science lessons.
The evaluation by researchers at Sheffield Hallam University found that the 2,493 year 5 pupils made, on average, two months more progress in English and science. The intervention also boosted maths results by two months for pupils in receipt of FSM and one month overall.
Meanwhile, an second evaluation report looks at the impact of Success for All, a structured training and support package that aims to improve literacy results for primary pupils.
Teachers were given training in different areas of literacy teaching and provided with daily lesson plans and teaching resources. School leaders were given support in effective use of data, coaching and strategic whole-school leadership of systems and resources so they could effectively measure pupils’ progress and regularly group and regroup pupils into classes based on their reading ability, not their age.
Pupils struggling to learn to read were given intensive catch-up programmes.
The evaluators from Queen’s University Belfast found that year 1 pupils made about one month’s more progress, with disadvantaged pupils making two months more progress.
You can find the evaluation reports via the EEF at http://bit.ly/2xPclMK (Dialogic Teaching) and http://bit.ly/2vMdUJX (Success for All).