Keeping careers advice accessible: Top tips for SEND teachers
Kirstie Mackey, Head of Barclays LifeSkills, on how relating careers advice to real-life school situations can help pupils with SEND to explore their employment potential… Helping young people realise their aspirations and reach their full potential is a universal aim for teachers. Particularly when it comes to careers education and building the life skills that will prepare young people for the world of work, we know that educators are constantly on the look-out for better ways to equip their students for this next phase. And this is no different for educators of young people with special educational needs and disabilities. In the era of a changing world of work where the nature of future job roles is increasingly uncertain, every young person deserves to have access to quality careers education. However, from five years of working alongside educators through our LifeSkills sessions, we know that with already busy teaching staff and a packed core curriculum, it’s increasingly difficult to devote time specifically to this. That is why we were delighted to partner with Talentino, who specialise in developing career development programmes particularly for students with SEND, to develop a suite of high-quality SEND-oriented LifeSkills careers resources. As educators already well know, careers guidance isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach, and that’s why it is important to put together flexible, adaptable lesson plans and resources that teachers can easily work into the existing curriculum and apply to both mixed-ability and exclusively-SEND student groups. From our experience of producing SEND content for educators that focuses on building key 21st-century skills, we have put together some top tips for teaching specific transferable skills to students with special needs that will help prepare them for the world of work. 1. Help students to recognise their transferable skills Building employability skills can often seem daunting to SEND students, as they may not see themselves as possessing skills that are relevant to the workplace. It’s important to show students that employability skills can be developed through a variety of experiences, and to help them recognise the value of what they have already learnt at school. Ask your students to list out various activities they’ve done at school recently, from presenting an idea in class, volunteering to help a teacher, or playing a team sport. Then give them examples of common workplace tasks – such as serving a customer or working in a team – and help them connect the skills they’ve used in their school life to the workplace examples. Doing so can make the world of work seem much more relevant and far less daunting. 2. Creative careers advice sessions which foster an entrepreneurial mindset Developing an entrepreneurial mindset isn’t just important for students who might want to set up their own business. It’s also an effective way of building valuable resilience and problem-solving skills. Putting creativity at the heart of teaching enterprise skills can bring these skills to life through exercises like coming up with a need or problem and then working about a way to solve it. Supporting students to work through various problem scenarios in fun and imaginative ways keep them engaged, shows them how to be creative in their approach to solving issues and fosters an entrepreneurial mindset that will help them succeed in any workplace. 3. Boost self-confidence by learning from past experiences Building self-confidence in young people with SEND is particularly important. Here it’s helpful to encourage students not to shy away from situations that make them feel nervous, but instead to see them as opportunities to learn and grow. Try asking students to share a challenge they’ve faced and overcome at school and have other pupils pick out what they did well and the skills they used to succeed in that situation. Not only will this help to boost their self-confidence to be complemented by their peers, but it will also help reinforce to the student that they are capable of overcoming obstacles, and that they have grown as a result. Whether you’re an educator working with mixed ability groups or delivering lessons to groups of young people with additional needs, employing these methods can make teaching life skills easier and more effective. Through tying key life skills to young people’s everyday life experiences and making content simple and easy to understand, quality careers education can be made available and accessible to young people of all abilities and needs. The LifeSkills programme offers careers advice lesson plans and teacher resources for young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). The lesson plans can be used alongside mainstream LifeSkills content with mixed ability groups or separately with exclusively SEN-focused groups. These resources have been created with experts at Talentino, are supported by the National Development Team for Inclusion, and have been tested with staff and students at several different schools.
Longmoor Primary School wins Shine a Light communication award
Longmoor Primary School in Liverpool, which is dedicated to developing their pupil’s communication skills, has won the coveted Primary School of the Year Award at the 2019 Shine a Light Awards organised by Pearson, in partnership with The Communication Trust. The awards were presented by British comic actress and writer, Sally Phillips with special performance from Britain’s Got Talent winner Lee Ridley (Lost Voice Guy). Longmoor Primary School started an initiative in 2011 to address the very low communication and language skills of their youngest pupils and due to the team’s hard work and dedication, Longmoor Primary has now become a ‘trailblazer’ in their local authority! The school has developed a bespoke diagnostic assessment for pupils on entry to early years so they can specifically tailor interventions to individual needs. This has formed the basis of provision that has been so successful, it has been expanded throughout the whole school to improve the language skills of every child. The Shine a Light judges were blown away with the level of importance the school places on communication. It is at the forefront of everyone’s mind and the school has a dedicated oracy team and a communication specific teacher performance management target. In addition, Longmoor Primary has joined the nationally recognised Voice21 project and a dedicated section about speech, language and communication within their annual school improvement plan. The high priority of oracy is also reflected in the school’s curriculum planning documents and despite school budgets being squeezed, a portion of Longmoor’s budget is directed to the development of oracy for staff training and purchasing specialist equipment. They have also employed a specialist drama teacher and invested in a new communication and language tool, Stoke Speaks Out. It wasn’t just the senior leadership team and staff room activity that grabbed the judges’ attention, it was also the support they provide their children. Following assessment for speech, language and communication needs (SLCN), a provision map and pupil profile is created for each child requiring additional support, working with their experienced Communication and Language Assistants to ensure progress. On a wider, whole-school level, the school is constantly looking at ways to promote and support communication in a fun and interactive way. They have introduced themed weeks with an oracy element and encourage participation in whole-school/public performances with their spelling bees, Poem a Day, choir, orchestra and productions at Christmas and over the summer. Longmoor Primary has even created specific roles and clubs that prioritise communication including school councillors, playground buddies, play leaders, debate team, public speaking club and press gang. As if all that wasn’t enough, the staff take the time to extend their support to parents, working closely with them to promote speech and language skills via parental training, oral motor and health sessions and stay and play sessions. They have also created a weekly Lego Club for parents of children with special educational needs (SEN), particularly those who have SLCN. Longmoor recently worked with the Ethnic Minority and Traveller Achievement Service team in Liverpool to develop a programme for new-entrant pupils, who have English as their additional language, and their families to support integration into school, assessment of their language needs and appropriate provision. The school performance results are testament to the school’s amazing work in promoting communication. Just 10% of their pupils are at the ‘expected’ level for communication and language (C&L) upon admission to the nursery. By the time the children leave, they are articulate, fluent and confident speakers. Summer 2018 results showed 94.9% of children were at expected level in C&L come the end of Reception. By the end of Key Stage 2, 93% of children were at expected level in reading, 88% in writing and 91% in EPGS (English, grammar, punctuation and spelling). For more information on the Shine a Light Awards visit shinealightawards.co.uk and follow on Twitter: #awards_SAL
Holistic Healing approach empowers children with emotional issues
Jacqueline Gray, the co-founder of Holistic Healing 4 Children along with Terri Allen, talks to QA Education editor Victoria Galligan about the work her team carry out with pupils and their families, as well as schools, to provide a holistic approach to empowering pupils to control their emotions. What is Holistic Healing and how does it help children? Holistic Healing 4 Children works closely with the family to bring about a positive change for pupils. As we are holistic we look at the whole child including their environment, diet, exercise, how much TV they watch, how much sleep they get etc. We have a questionnaire that we ask the parent to fill out initially and we generally have a talk to the parent before seeing their child, to get a good idea of the issue from their point of view. The pupil has a minimum of three sessions (this is usually enough to make a desired change to the situation) and the sessions are totally non invasive and very creative. We get a lot of information from the child through their drawings and guided imagery. Once we have got an idea where the problem lies and where they are out of balance, we then make recommendations to the pupil and the family. Sometimes an adjustment in the family is needed in order for them to become back into balance. They are given suggestions, recommendations, tools and strategies as to how they can make positive changes and we send a write up report with these suggestions after the initial consultation. We believe that working closely with everyone really benefits the client. This can even involve going to the school and doing observations and making recommendations for the teacher where necessary. What different types of services do you offer? We work individually with clients and we offer emotional wellbeing workshops in schools and training for teachers and parents on how to use our resources to get the very best out of them. How does the crystal healing bed work? The Crystal bed is something that we offer our individual clients, including members of their family. It helps to balance and harmonise the body as well as the emotions. Can you give some examples of how holistic healing has helped mainstream schools? We go into schools and deliver emotional wellbeing workshops using our books My Magical Garden and My Magical Tree. The workshops help the children with emotional expression and regulation through the use of their imagination.. We also offer teacher training to give the teachers the tools to access the child’s imagination and through this approach, which when used regularly, it can help a child/teenager to transfer a physical safe place to a mental safe place, giving them a new skill to cope with difficult situations. We have had great feedback from our workshops and they are always very well received. The children connect to the approach very quickly and when encouraged they use it to help them through negative moments. The books also offer advice in the back which teachers have found very informative and a way of encouraging their pupils to communicate their feelings. If you see our YouTube channel, you will see interviews that we have had with teachers who give their feedback after attending the workshop. It’s all about giving the children and teachers a strategy to use when there are emotionally challenging moments. What advice can you give to headteachers of mainstream schools re holistic healing? We totally recommend trying our workshops and learning about our approach. It is simple, enjoyable and yet very effective and in particular for children who present with challenging behaviours. When the strategy is fully embraced by the whole school it becomes a powerful tool to help develop emotional wellbeing in schools; a great resource for PSHE and an opportunity for cross-curricular activities in creative writing and art. It can have a significant impact, especially for the children who are more emotionally challenged, allowing them to flourish. Can children with severe SENDs benefit from holistic healing? Absolutely. Everything we do can be adapted to whoever we are working with. Holistic Healing 4 Children offers a non-threatening way to communicate and it offers a strategy for children who struggle with their emotions. Does holistic healing help families as well as schools? Yes we work with both schools and families. With schools we generally go in for a full day of workshops and at the moment we offer these for free (we do need to ask for travel expenses where necessary). We train the teachers and offer a workshop for the parents too so that everyone is onboard with the approach. We run workshops for parents and we offer individual sessions. The idea is to empower the child. We give tools and strategies so that they can learn to regulate their emotions without becoming reliant on us. We recommend a minimum of three sessions and usually that is enough but if more sessions are needed then we go with what feels best for each client. For more information, see the Holistic Healing 4 Children website.