Statement on Inclusive Pedagogy at Cardinal Wiseman Catholic School

 

 

At Cardinal Wiseman Catholic School, teachers have committed to making the following adjustments in lessons to support students whose Special Educational Needs disadvantage them pastorally:

  1. Provide a calm and safe environment, with attuned use of voice and gesture, and mitigate sensory overload.
  2. Consider use of language when teaching, such as vocabulary, short sentences, pauses, checking understanding, personalising questions, and avoiding ambiguity.
  3. For students with autism, avoid sarcasm and idiom in functional communication, do not insist on eye contact, and avoid learners becoming ashamed or embarrassed by what you say.
  4. Find out all you can about the learner’s background, to help you understand what they might be trying to communicate through their behaviour .
  5. Pay attention to small social or learning behaviours and praise these immediately.
  6. Teach and rehearse our Culture for Learning and Wiseman Virtues, being confident to notice small misdemeanours.
  7. When responding to behaviour difficulties, try to stay calm and not raise your voice.
  8. Ensure a warm tone and a relational element in how you approach students.
  9. If a student’s response to a Teaching Assistant becomes disruptive, direct the TA to work elsewhere briefly, and give the student discreet advice in a warm-strict tone on how to respond to the TA, before reinstating the support.
  10. To avoid discussions with students with ADHD becoming rapidly about behaviour difficulties, front-load communication with academically-focused comprehension checks.
  11. When reading aloud is to be done in class, direct students with ADHD to do this more frequently to help them concentrate, and direct students with language difficulties (or high-need EAL) to do this when appropriate.
  12. Provide additional supportive prompts when students with ADHD struggle with concentration, before issuing ‘off-task’ or ‘effort’ marks.
  13. If a student with ADHD receives a log for off-task behaviour, ensure that a comment is included with the log to describe the issue.
  14. During restorative work, avoid forcing apologies from students with autism or speech, language and communication needs, (SLCN).
  15. Pastoral intervention should involve close liaison between the SEND and pastoral teams for students with autism, ADHD, SEMH or SLCN.

 

At Cardinal Wiseman Catholic School, teachers have committed to making the following adjustments in lessons to support students whose Special Educational Needs disadvantage them academically:

  1. Prioritise students with SEND for regular comprehension checks, (including by circling the room), going to them earlier in the lesson when possible.
  2. Carry out regular on-the-spot formative assessment
  3. Prompting from generic to specific, before modelling or correcting, (e.g. ‘where could you find the answer to that question?’, before ‘Turn to page 4’).
  4. Repeat key information in simplified language, as part of your direct instruction.
  5. Increase wait times, and control pace and quantity of new information.
  6. Make routine use of visuals (including diagrams) to support explanations.
  7. Ensure that slides (& instructions) are shared with Teaching Assistants in advance of the lesson, and take feedback from the Teaching Assistants afterwards on their role and how students responded.
  8. Communicate frequently with Teaching Assistants during the lesson, directing them as needed, including to such support activities as reading aloud, following reading with a finger, feeding back on behalf of anxious students, (though this should be monitored), and repeating/ simplifying/ reducing information and explanations.
  9. Provide additional scaffolding when necessary, and anticipate misconceptions before lessons.
  10. Model example responses live, (e.g. using non-examples/examples that need improving).
  11. Use mini-whiteboards to ensure visible participation, with appropriately pitched questions.

To ensure accountability/ participation of high need students (including those with EAL) during Turn-and-Talk activities, establish a routine of them