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SecondarySENCoSEND

Ask The Expert – Reading and SEN

Samantha Garner advises two Teach Secondary readers with queries about struggling readers…

Samantha Garner
by Samantha Garner
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SecondarySENCo

Q: I am Head of Year 7 at a small secondary school on the East coast of England. The area we serve is one of high deprivation, and many of the children who join us from KS2 arrive with levels of reading, writing and comprehension that are considerably below the national standard expected for their age.

Of course, we have a range of strategies and interventions in place to help them get to where they need to be. However, I am increasingly concerned that our focus on those young people who lag dramatically behind is having an impact on the ones who hover just beneath the line, and certainly have no identifiable SEN.

Their reading skills are adequate – just – but not really of a level to enable them to access the curriculum to its fullest. Do you have any suggestions for ways they could be better supported, without taking resources away from their more disadvantaged peers?

A: This is a difficult area for a lot of schools. Limited budgets mean that many students don’t meet the threshold for SEN intervention, but their literacy skills are disadvantaging them. For some of the students, their literacy skills are unlikely to improve and they probably have a slight unidentified learning difficulty. For others, their literacy skills would likely improve with intervention.

I would recommend you make use of the excellent assistive technology now available in class to help young people. This allows improved access to the curriculum, and studies show that using assistive technology can improve literacy skills.

In terms of which technology to choose, there are a lot options out there – the British Dyslexia Association’s ‘BDA Technology’ website has a good list of what solutions are available. Some, such as mobile phone apps, may not be suitable for use in the classroom, as they may clash with a school’s personal mobile devices policy.

The assistive technologies most commonly used in mainstream schools, in my experience, are text-to-speech software and/or digital reading pens. There’s a variety of text-to-speech software available ranging from free to high cost. Involve your IT department when considering the software, so you can identify what the system requirements are and what training is required.

Digital reader pens require less investment, other than initial cost. These are portable and can be used in school and at home. There are several on the market, with some coming with additional features such as a dictionary, a voice recorder function and ‘scan to file’ facilities.

Q: I teach English in an academy in London. Many of my students have English as a second language, and I have the usual mixture of SEN, behavioural and other issues to factor into my planning, too.

To boost their confidence and enable them to progress, I use a range of support strategies for reading in lessons and for home learning. Most of these pupils will not qualify for special access arrangements when it comes to externally moderated exams – so my question is, how can I best ‘wean’ them off the support I really feel they need in order to achieve their full potential in the classroom in time for such exams – and when do you think I should start the process?

Could I even be doing them a disservice by offering the extra support in the first place?

A: Many schools have a high proportion of EAL students to manage, as well as the usual SEN students – it’s a natural reflection of today’s society. You deserve Brownie points for having a range of strategies in place to help these youngsters – please never feel you are doing them a disservice by offering them extra support. For most EAL students, their difficulties will come from not knowing the English language, rather than because they have SEN. The strategies you are using will help their knowledge increase, so will not be required long term.

With regards to access arrangements (AA), the authorities are very tight on students being awarded these simply because of their English difficulties. However, there is some support you can put in place without going against regulations. Firstly, you can get an AA awarded if you can prove a young person does indeed have a learning difficulty. This would be done either by conducting ability tests in their own language (if possible) or using cognitive tests, such as CATs.

Secondly, all EAL students are entitled to a bilingual dictionary in their exams, no matter how long they have been in the country. Having extra time in addition to the dictionary has been clamped down on, however, and should only be awarded in exceptional circumstances and according to JCQ guidelines.

Finally, do consider the use of digital reader pens. These are a centre-delegated access arrangement, and must simply be the candidates ‘normal way of working’ – which includes using them for mock exams. The reader pen can also be used in the English GCSE reading paper.

Samantha Garner is international school sales and education advisor at Scanning Pens; for more information, visit www.scanningpens.com or follow @scanningpens

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