From SEND To Greater Depth: Taking Everyone On The Journey (And Getting Them All To The Destination)
Imagine your next unit of work as a journey into a city centre.
In this post I'll use a journey into the centre of London because it was when working with a school there that I started to use this analogy.
You want all your pupils to experience a visit to Buckingham Palace, so you plan a route on the tube. You plan the best route - its economical, its efficient, and, after checking the tube map for stops with wheelchair access, its accessible to all pupils.
But you know there are important and incredible things to see on the way too, so you plan a few stops to see some key sights. Getting off in these places will help them enjoy what they see in the centre of the city all the more.
This is your unit overview - your medium term plan. Importantly, it features a goal, a destination, and the necessary steps to get there. Crucially, it has been planned in such a way that all children are going to be able to access those steps and consequently that goal. You've found the best way to teach things to the children who you think might find things hard, and so you have found the best way to teach all the children.
When the pupils arrive at the first tube station, some of them have never travelled on the underground before. They don't understand tickets and barriers and escalators and lifts. You, as well as the TfL staff, are on hand to help those through, whilst those with prior experience head on through to begin their journey.
The problem is and always will be, that children are not clones. They work at different paces. Some may be working at Greater Depth. Others might have a special educational need or disability (SEND). Different things present as barriers along the way. And this is where, admittedly, the analogy falls down (as all do). The problem with this journey is that children will take each step at a different pace, and as a result will arrive at the final destination at different times. Some children are still at South Kensington having a good look around the Natural History Museum whilst others have progressed to Victoria to have a walk to see Buckingham Palace.
That's not to say that they won't all get to see Buck House - they will, they will just see it later.
And whilst those children who took a little longer to arrive at Victoria are marvelling at The Queen's house (I know it's the King's now, but I'm still not used to it) those who arrived earlier are doing an extra deep dive into the area, perhaps taking in St. James' Park and heading down The Mall.
You see, when you planned your journey and your final destination, you already knew some would arrive sooner, and you planned for what they would do with their extra time. You knew that over and above seeing Buckingham Palace there were other things worth seeing even if they weren't essential for everyone to see. Not just any old things, but St. James' Palace, residence of Kings and Queens of England for over 300 years until the reign of Queen Victoria, and the statue of Queen Victoria - things that would help them understand even more about Buckingham Palace.
Have some children missed out because they only got to see Buckingham Palace? No. They got to see Buckingham Palace, which was the destination - the goal. Did those who got there earlier have to stand and wait around once they'd seen it? Obviously not. Everyone was using their time well and everyone made it to Buckingham Palace.
Stepping away from the analogy now, you planned a sequence of steps which were accessible to all and which had a common goal. You also planned some depth work for those who reached the goal. This is how you meet the needs of all pupils, including those with SEND, those working at Greater Depth. You held high expectations for all - you wanted them all to get to the same final destination - and you lowered the threshold to allow all to cross it from the very beginning.
Now, this has been a very brief post - an attempt to begin to join up all my thinking about how best to meet the needs of all pupils without the need for excess workload for teachers. I intend to write more on this, to flesh this idea out, and to dive deeper into particular areas of this practice.
For now, here are a few additional considerations and some links to what I've written about them before:
An approach like the above has significant impact on what a 'lesson' might look like. Essentially they need to be very flexible in order to accomodate pupils at different points on their journey.
This approach requires teachers to have whole sequences of learning planned out and resourced ahead of time so that pupils who work quickly and successfully can make progress.
To make this approach work for all pupils, including those with SEND, teachers must be really careful to ensure accessibility.
Teachers must also think about challenge for all within this sequence.
In order to really challenge those you've identified as working at Greater Depth throughout the sequence, teachers will also need to think about how this is done both through tasks, and in other ways.
If you'd like some bespoke help with developing how you meet the needs of all pupils without burning out your teachers, here's your 3-step plan:
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