My 6 year old daughter came back from this swimming school semester with a form with three out of five “can infer insightfully” boxes ticked. These forms are everywhere, all the time. I can swim but I cannot say wether "can float 5 seconds" is a useful skill, even less if it means she can safely move up to the next level group. But what choices do I have?
Hello Daisy, this is very interesting to me. We are looking at our semi-formal curriculum for learners with severe learning difficulties. Each child, as you can imagine needs very specific teaching of knowledge and skills that are quite unique to them; these are listed on EHCPs so we know the exact things that each child needs to be taught as directed by multiple professionals and parents. But as a school we feel it is right we are academically ambitious for all as well as responsible for providing a wide range of experiences with their peers which are not mentioned in EHCPs, especially linked to knowledge. We also know we need to sequence this into a curriculum that is meaningful for each child. All this means whole school curriculum design is very challenging. We have 100 children in 12 classes and each cIass, each child is different and demands different environments and teaching approaches. I worry we have fallen into vagueness due to the complexity of needs we want to explicitly support. This puts a lot of pressure on our wonderful, but very young and generally inexperienced staff team; a staff team however who know their own children very, very well and are determined to do the very best for them! As SLT it gives me sleepless nights. How do I provide the right specific guidance to support teachers when the demands on them to meet so many diverse needs means anything in addition to what is listed in each child’s EHCP ends up being distracting and unhelpful in terms of workload? I find myself going round in circles. We have just created new subject specific generic statements but….. here we go again! And putting anything more specific down whole school is impossible. How do I provide a framework that is specific enough to support my staff team with planning, sequenced with ambitious knowledge that prepares our children for adulthood covering all subject areas so we cannot be accused of ‘disadvantaging our SEN children further’ but flexible enough to meet all children’s specific immediate needs.
My 6 year old daughter came back from this swimming school semester with a form with three out of five “can infer insightfully” boxes ticked. These forms are everywhere, all the time. I can swim but I cannot say wether "can float 5 seconds" is a useful skill, even less if it means she can safely move up to the next level group. But what choices do I have?
Hello Daisy, this is very interesting to me. We are looking at our semi-formal curriculum for learners with severe learning difficulties. Each child, as you can imagine needs very specific teaching of knowledge and skills that are quite unique to them; these are listed on EHCPs so we know the exact things that each child needs to be taught as directed by multiple professionals and parents. But as a school we feel it is right we are academically ambitious for all as well as responsible for providing a wide range of experiences with their peers which are not mentioned in EHCPs, especially linked to knowledge. We also know we need to sequence this into a curriculum that is meaningful for each child. All this means whole school curriculum design is very challenging. We have 100 children in 12 classes and each cIass, each child is different and demands different environments and teaching approaches. I worry we have fallen into vagueness due to the complexity of needs we want to explicitly support. This puts a lot of pressure on our wonderful, but very young and generally inexperienced staff team; a staff team however who know their own children very, very well and are determined to do the very best for them! As SLT it gives me sleepless nights. How do I provide the right specific guidance to support teachers when the demands on them to meet so many diverse needs means anything in addition to what is listed in each child’s EHCP ends up being distracting and unhelpful in terms of workload? I find myself going round in circles. We have just created new subject specific generic statements but….. here we go again! And putting anything more specific down whole school is impossible. How do I provide a framework that is specific enough to support my staff team with planning, sequenced with ambitious knowledge that prepares our children for adulthood covering all subject areas so we cannot be accused of ‘disadvantaging our SEN children further’ but flexible enough to meet all children’s specific immediate needs.