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Sign in or register for an accountWhere a young person has an EHCP:
Create a supportive learning environment eg ‘help box’ with appropriate resources in each classroom; folders in classrooms (on tables) containing resources such as word mats; using off-white paper (not black text on white paper); colour coding/ dyslexia friendly environment; working walls and purposeful displays (eg key vocabulary); prompts/ reminders/ ‘to do’ lists; seating selection; visual cues and timetables; timed rewards and consequences; brain breaks.
Differentiation eg task sheets; providing PowerPoint printouts; timers; breaking down skills; understanding of ‘small steps’ approaches; targeted questions at different levels.
Scaffolding of work eg task plans; word banks; sentence starters; writing frames.
Promotion and encouragement of independence eg through scaffolding; visuals; sharing expectations; work pitched at the young person’s level; effective deployment of support staff; offering mediation at a lower level first before increasing, where necessary (see Getting Help column).
Staff awareness of The Instructional Hierarchy to support their understanding of the stages involved in developing a skill and identifying which stage young people have reached/ where additional support to progress may be needed.
Facilitate learning activities in smaller and targeted groups, in limited distraction environments where possible.
Awareness of learners who may benefit from additional support at the acquisition and fluency stages of the learning hierarchy (e.g. strategies such as pre-teaching of key concepts/ vocabulary and increased repetition and over-learning with opportunities to revisit concepts more frequently).
Individual and/ or small group interventions with appropriate pre- and post- measures to evaluate progress. Good starting points for finding out about evidence-based interventions, programmes and approaches are:
Different young people will require different types, levels and intensity of adult mediation (approaches and strategies used to support during tasks and activities) to maximise their learning of specific skills and to promote increased levels of independence. The focus of mediation may include:
Use appropriate assessments to identify difficulties early, establish a greater understanding of the young person’s needs and inform appropriate referral to other services.
Over rehearsal of information to enable young people to progress through the hierarchy of learning (see General section) eg Precision Teaching (PT) intervention. PT intervention is suitable for those who struggle with working memory difficulties and retaining information and is used as an intensive 1:1 intervention.
Higher levels of mediation during tasks (see Getting Help).
Referral or multi-agency meetings for assessment and advice for further support around learning and the factors that may impact a young person’s progress.
Agencies may include:
Employ strategies to develop young people’s metacognition and self-regulation (i.e. the ability to monitor, direct and review their own learning, through explicitly thinking about their own learning, setting goals and evaluating progress) and executive function skills (these are a set of skills and mental processes that develop throughout childhood and adolescence, which support young people to self-regulate, initiate, attend to and persevere with activities successfully).
Explicit teaching and reference of metacognitive strategies following the seven-step model:
Organise and structure group talk and dialogue, including Socratic Questioning, talk partners and debating.
Teacher/lecturer/tutor scaffolding and modelling of own thinking at a whole-group level (eg modelling self-talk when preparing for a task, making mistakes or monitoring comprehension).
Use of structured planning templates (task plans, checklists and writing frames), worked examples, and breaking down activities into steps. Provide prompt sheets, questions to answer, key words to build sections or paragraphs around.
Provide explicit teaching of independent study and working skills.
Provide journals/notebooks for young people to sequence their thoughts, log ideas or questions during lessons.
Provide multiple examples of new concepts, taking examples from real life experiences.
Access to key information (eg subject specific vocabulary, key spellings, number facts etc.) visually to promote independence and reduce working memory loads.
Use of verbal and visual cues/prompts to direct or redirect attention – access to opportunities for movement breaks and different modalities of teaching and learning.
Teaching and support for independence skills, for example: planning, organising and time management.
Promote and develop metacognitive talk in the classroom and in interactions with young people.
Dialogic teaching, for example, emphasises classroom dialogue through which young people learn to reason, discuss, argue and explain.
Gather observational data and conduct targeted assessments to further clarify strengths and needs (eg Automated Working Memory Assessment).
Explicitly teach young people how to organise and effectively manage their learning independently – provide guided practice.
Provide exam preparation and self-study support in small groups for targeted students. Use of self-evaluation and feedback tools such as ‘exam wrappers’ (a pre and post-exam self-evaluation tool).
Small group/individual intervention to develop targeted skills (eg working memory instruction/ practice: Cogmed Skills learned during targeted provision should be complimented with strategy -based practice within classes.
Teach and model working memory and recall strategies within small groups (rehearsal and chunking of information, visual memory strategies and creating narratives).
Small group-based support around key skills for independence (eg time management, self-regulation and self-organisation) to support plans for employment or training.
The use of appropriate assessments to identify needs early, establish a greater understanding of the young person’s needs and inform appropriate referral to other services. More fine-grained assessments of skills may be required for young people with more complex needs (eg Engagement Profile).
Referral or multi-agency meetings for assessment and advice to inform programmes and activities to inform intervention and programmes to develop key skills (eg attention and listening, memory and retrieval, inhibition control etc).
Agencies may include:
Strong links between young person, school/ college, external agencies and home.
Access to a highly personalised curriculum incorporating additional support to enable ‘readiness for learning’ (eg self-regulation, planning, preparation, and organisation).
Professional reports to inform support and provision map for young person.
Individualised planning around key skills for independence to support plans for employment or training.
Collaborative learning and peer tutoring approaches (eg Paired Reading, Cued Spelling).
Whole group literacy programmes which can be differentiated for individuals eg: Empower3000.
Effective quality first teaching, whole setting approaches and assessment.
Ensure all text and print is clearly visible, using appropriate fonts and backgrounds. Allow extra time for processing information, answering questions and completing tasks. Present new information in small chunks and keep language simple. Introduce material in a multi-sensory way. Use technology to support learning.
Consider seating arrangements and grouping so that peer support can be implemented and encouraged.
Opportunities for pre-teaching/instruction and over learning including repetition. Modification of level and pace of curriculum content to account for young people’s needs.
Alternative forms of recording eg PowerPoints, oral presentations, posters, sound buttons, mind maps, matching labels to pictures, sorting, etc.
Targeted assessments such as Connective Learning.
Standardised assessments such as the CTOPP-2 Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing the Detailed Assessment of Speed of Handwriting and the WRAT-5 Wide Range Achievement Test, Fifth Edition.
Discussion with the young person involving them in planning. The young person may be happy to disclose information on any previous support and any past assessments should be considered.
Further investigate gaps in learning to identify specific needs or barriers.
Small group support for young people struggling with literacy. Resources should be specific to need with pre/post measure assessments to evaluate progress.
Interventions should allow for a focus on meaningful texts to their course and their aspirations in relation to preparation for adulthood, eg:
Use of software and technology such as Dragon Speech Recognition Software, Inspiration 11, ClaroRead - Text to Speech Software and DocsPlus - Further Education.
Introduce accessibility tools on Microsoft Word eg Immersive Reader.
Explore alternative methods of recording, for example, access to a laptop or tablet, Dictaphones, or other voice to text support.
Use of a reading pen.
Opportunities are provided for skill reinforcement / over learning / revision / transfer and generalisation.
Pre teaching and pre learning of content required for individual lessons.
Boosting sessions and one to one sessions.
High quality training/support is provided to all staff involved in delivering and monitoring targeted provision.
Access to resources such as aurally encoded dictionaries.
Increasingly individualised / adapted personalised curriculum/programme and bespoke timetables.
Evidence based interventions to develop literacy skills, based on principles of repetition and overlearning, with support to generalise skills (eg Precision Teaching).
Referral or multi-agency meetings for assessment and advice to inform programmes and activities to inform intervention and programmes to develop key skills.
Agencies may include:
Skills learned during targeted provision are practised in other key environments.
High levels of support for modelling and enabling the young person to access learning / curriculum / programme.
Strong links between young person, school/ college, external agencies and home.
Effective quality first teaching, whole setting approaches and assessments.
Collaborative learning and peer tutoring approaches.
Use technology to support learning of key skills.
Opportunities to practise skills learned in real life contexts. Cross curricular embedding of key Maths skills.
Promotion of concepts such as mathematical resilience in further education and Growth Mindset approaches focused on Maths skills.
Use of appropriate assessments to identify strengths and areas of need, in order to target intervention at an early stage. This may include standardised assessments as well as formative, criterion-referenced and curriculum-based assessments such as Precision Teaching baseline probes.
Discussion with the young person involving them in planning. The young person may be happy to disclose information on any previous support and any past assessments should be considered.
Use of interventions such as Precision Teaching.
Access to real-life maths learning eg Maths in Education and Making Sense of Maths.
Embed numeracy into aspirations to support relevance and context.
Opportunities are provided for skill reinforcement / over learning / revision / transfer and generalisation.
High quality training/support is provided to all staff involved in delivering and monitoring targeted provision.
Increasingly individualised / adapted personalised curriculum/programme and bespoke timetables.
High levels of support for modelling and enabling the young person to access learning / curriculum / programme.
Strong links between young person, school/ college, external agencies and home.
Skills learned during targeted provision are practised in other key environments.
Referral or multi-agency meetings for specialist assessment / intervention for example:
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