SEND adjustments
4 curriculum adjustments to make learning accessible to all students
Welcome to the Curriculum Thinkers newsletter where we share research and resources from the We Are In Beta community.
This is a guest post by Pastoral Leader and Maths Teacher, Matthew Wood. If you’d like to write for us, head to the bottom of this post.
Supporting our SEND students well feels harder than ever, and the stakes feel higher. SEND pupils are consistently making less academic progress in schools, as well as suffering when compared to other markers like suspensions and attendance. It’s hard, and that’s before we talk about navigating new SEND legislation and White Papers.
At the same time, successful (and sustainable) SEND curriculum adjustments can be achieved. Across our community of schools, we see pupils with SEND thriving. Pupils are happily integrated within learning, working alongside their peers and overcoming barriers, with teachers who feel supported to build cracking learning environments. It can be (and is being) done well across our schools.
When we’re talking SEND adjustments, we’re naturally touching on the big inclusion question. How can we make sure the needs of all learners are met, so all pupils can excel in our schools? Of course, this is a key focus of the new Ofsted Framework, but most importantly, finding good answers leads to great outcomes for our young people.
To help you as you continue to support SEND pupils in your school, Researcher and History Leader, Temi Alanamu examined the SEND policies and practices of 30 secondary schools with high levels of SEND, strong outcomes for disadvantaged students and favourable Ofsted Gradings.
In this article, I look closely at Temi’s analysis of 100+ resources across the 30schools and highlight key SEND curriculum adjustments that are working for schools, and for the learners relying on them.
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Over the coming weeks, I’ll share key ideas from the research relating to:
Curriculum adjustments to make learning accessible
Collaborative support across the school to strengthen SEND practice
Classroom adjustments for SEND to unlock learning
There’ll be something to grab and use each time. I promise.
4 Curriculum adjustments to make learning accessible to SEND students
Well-communicated, well-understood, and sustainable changes at a curriculum level have a big impact on your students with SEND and additional needs.
And guess what? Every learner benefits, not just those with SEND.
Best practice curriculum planning for those with SEND is also best practice for those without SEND. Over time, inclusive curriculum approaches and SEND adjustments (supported by high-quality teaching) become ‘just what you do’. When we see this, what is a necessity for some supports all learners in your school.
This first snapshot of the research highlights 4 curriculum adjustments we’ve seen working to make learning more accessible for SEND students across the 30 schools in Temi’s research:
1. Proactive Year 7 transition groups
How does your curriculum best serve students arriving at secondary school with SEND, additional needs, or gaps in their learning?
It may be anecdotal, but I’ve seen even the most disaffected and disengaged Year 6 students resolve to ‘make a fresh start’ and ‘make a good first impression’ in those early days of Year 7. I bet you have too. You see it in silent corridors, new pencil cases and sharpened pencils. At this captive time, sticking to a rigid curriculum can quickly reinforce negative thoughts about their likelihood for success in school. They’ll see ‘same old worksheets, different day’.
Common themes were proactivity and strategy, meaning the right students land in adjusted curriculum models to support their transition.
Pre-class visits and lessons, with additional literacy and numeracy for those who most need it, were common in the most effective schools. Four schools listed specific year 7 nurture or achievement groups for potentially vulnerable starters (each of these crucial curriculum adjustments had its own creative name, and ‘7 Stars’ was a favourite for you to look at). Of course, the ongoing aim for these groups is to prepare for increased integration, but it’s clear how valuable this adjusted approach is for the learners.
2. Pre-teaching for confidence and understanding
Let’s introduce this idea before we jump in. A bit of pre-teaching, if you will.
Pre-teaching is a strategy where key vocabulary, concepts or skills are taught before the main lesson takes place. It’s different even to explicit teaching of vocabulary arising during the lesson, as the curriculum prioritises this preparatory work before any content is covered.
For example, if you’re analysing sources in history, you’d best make sure everyone knows the difference between HP in a bottle and a piece of historical evidence. If equations need to be solved in maths, first define and build understanding of the words equation, term and coefficient. Next, support students to recall and make links to earlier work where they added negative numbers, and you’ll limit confused expressions* in the classroom.
*zero apologies for maths pun here
With assumptions removed and skills built, students are ready to tackle more complex work.
Guess who benefits? You got it. Everyone.
But for those with SEND or gaps in learning, it proves successful in building confidence, bringing them up to speed, and ‘ruling learners in from the start, rather than ruling them out’.
It’s a strategy I’ve seen more widely used in primary schools. I see it used less explicitly in secondary schools, but I loved seeing this embedded into the curriculum design of one school. It’s well worth looking at this in the research piece.
3. Key curriculum interventions matched to key needs
Specific curriculum intervention shouldn’t (rather, it mustn’t) stop at the end of Year 7 transition. But it also can’t continue to look the same year after year; your curriculum adjustments have to look different for different learners.
Nearly all schools are using ongoing, tailored interventions. The most effective five were specific about their work for each year group and Key Stage, with the standout schools referencing their dynamic approach in response to changing needs. There’s a lot you can take from the full research piece and the schools involved.
For example, paired reading initiatives were part of a successful adjusted Key Stage 3 curriculum in some schools, with Key Stage 4 interventions linking to resilience and study skills developing later. As the whole school curriculum develops throughout an academic career, so do the adjustments through interventions in the most effective schools.
4. Repetition and Reading (‘A little R and R’)
It was really interesting to reflect on the impact of school curricula where frequent repetition and reinforcement were embedded into planning and delivery.
Wherever you sit on inquiry-based, knowledge-based, skills-based, or a project-based curriculum, the idea of repetition was specified as a whole-school approach for building competence, confidence and success. Starters, quizzes, and questioning techniques all play their part to support that motivating feeling students get when they’re able to acknowledge, “I’m finally getting this!”
It was also encouraging to see how reading was viewed as key for students to unlock the curriculum content in more than ten schools. We know that reading ages and comprehension are huge determining factors in outcomes for students.
You’ll benefit from seeing how this curriculum adjustment is worked out in other schools within the full research piece. From the paired reading mentioned above to whole school approaches to systematic class reading of texts, this is another curriculum adjustment that is essential for some but beneficial to all.
Would someone else find this helpful?
What’s next for your school’s adjusted curriculum?
Here are some questions to think about:
How rigid is your Year 7 curriculum, and how proactive and prepared are you to adjust for emerging needs?
How does your curriculum introduce new content? Do you dive straight in, or is there a need to rule more learners in with intentional pre-teaching?
Who in your school would you get in the room to think about the effectiveness of your school’s current curriculum interventions?
You’ll be overcoming similar challenges to colleagues across the country, so being able to compare curriculum approaches across different settings will be a valuable tool for you.
Access the full research
To explore the complete database of 100+ resources from all 30 schools, members can access the full research article and database here.
If you’re reviewing your own school’s approach to inclusion, SEND adjustments and adaptive teaching, paying members can read part II of this article. Here, you’ll see which schools employ which strategies and resources, meaning you can investigate further and connect with them.
Access the full analysis and download SEND and curriculum resources from a single database
To help you find schools like yours and strategies you can apply, we’ve created a sortable and filterable directory* of SEND resources.
*Access
Lite version here: SEND strategies without resources or named schools
Premium version here: SEND strategies, resources and named schools.
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Access a bank of SEND and curricular resources
To save you the 8 days it took us to research, curate and analyse the work happening at these schools we’ve pooled resources into single drive below.
Further SEND reading and listening
SEND policies: analysis of examples from successful secondary schools
Creating Truly Inclusive Learning Environments: Practical Strategies from SEND Leaders
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