Blog Post

Adaptive Teaching: Empowering SEN Students for Success 

Adaptive teaching is a pedagogical approach that tailors educational experiences to meet the diverse needs of all students, particularly those with Special Educational Needs (SEN). By anticipating and responding to individual learning requirements, adaptive teaching can support an inclusive environment where every pupil can thrive. 

Unlike traditional differentiation, which often involves creating separate tasks for different ability groups, adaptive teaching emphasises flexibility within the classroom. Teachers modify their strategies to ensure all students work towards the same learning objectives, providing support as needed without lowering expectations. This approach promotes a growth mindset and prevents the capping of potential.  

Adaptive teaching offers many benefits, particularly to those with SEN. These include: 

Enhanced Engagement and Participation: Adaptive teaching strategies, such as scaffolding and the use of visual aids, make learning more accessible and engaging for all, but particularly SEN students. This inclusivity encourages active participation and reduces feelings of isolation or shame. 

Improved Academic Outcomes: By providing tailored support, adaptive teaching helps close attainment gaps, enabling SEN students to achieve their full academic potential. This approach ensures that no pupil is left behind.  

Development of Social Skills: Inclusive classrooms that employ adaptive teaching support the building of improved social interactions among students. SEN pupils benefit from collaborative learning opportunities, incidentally enhancing their communication skills and building peer relationships. 

Cultivation of Independence: Adaptive teaching encourages self-directed learning, empowering SEN students to take ownership of their education. This autonomy builds confidence and prepares them for future challenges. 

To successfully integrate adaptive teaching, you will need to look at: 

Assessing Individual Needs: Regularly evaluate each student’s strengths and areas for development to inform instructional planning. 

Flexible Lesson Planning: Design lessons that can be easily adjusted based on student responses and understanding. 

Collaboration: Engage with teaching assistants, specialists, and parents to create a fully inclusive support system for SEN students. 

Ongoing Professional Development: Attend workshops and training sessions to stay informed about effective adaptive teaching practices. 

Embracing adaptive teaching not only enhances the educational experience for SEN students but also enriches the classroom dynamic as a whole. By committing to this approach, you can ensure that all pupils have the opportunity to succeed. 

At the upcoming SEND Leadership Conference on 4th March 2025, Beccie Hawes, CEO and Head of Service for Cadmus Inclusive, will deliver a keynote titled “Adaptive Teaching for Pupils with SEN: What is it and How Do You Do It?” With extensive experience across mainstream and specialist settings, Beccie will provide practical strategies for implementing adaptive teaching in schools. Her session will equip delegates with tools to create supportive and effective learning environments for SEN pupils. 

Phonological Awareness and Phonemic Awareness

11/01/2022

When we think about building the firm foundations of basic reading and writing skills three ‘ph’ terms often spring to mind: phonological awareness, phonemic awareness and phonics. Phonological awareness and phonemic awareness are auditory and oral. The focus is upon the sounds in the words. Phonics, in contrast, focuses upon the letters that the sounds represent. Put simply, phonics involves print.

When we ask our pupils to rhyme, blend smaller words to make a compound word, break words into syllables or onset-rime, we are working at a phonological awareness level. Phonemic awareness is the understanding that spoken words are made up of individual sounds called phonemes. A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound that we hear in a word – a sub-category of phonological awareness. For example, the three sounds /c//a//t/ can be blended to make the whole word cat.

Lack of phonemic awareness is a very common reason why pupils struggle to develop reading and spelling skills. Not providing explicit phonemic awareness teaching can lead to many pupils lacking the understanding that words are made up of individual sounds. Language is learnt naturally by listening to speech and words, hearing individual sounds in words is not as natural. We don’t speak in individual sounds, instead, our speech is co-articulated and we hear whole words in oral language. If we begin teaching reading and writing skills without working on phonemic awareness ultimately phonics won’t make sense.

It is crucial that we scaffold our pupils to develop phonological awareness so that they can develop the required skills to hear, hold and manipulate sounds. These are crucial skills in the development of segmenting, blending and manipulating.

How can we support the development of these skills?  

  • Remember to revisit very early skills such as: discriminating between sounds that can be heard in the environment, identifying the number of words in a sentence that is shared orally, recognising and sorting objects that start with the same sound, isolating and saying the first, middle and end sounds in three letter words, segmenting words into their separate sounds, blending given sounds to make a word and deleting sounds (pat without the p for example).
  • Sing lots of nursery rhymes, enjoy rhyming poems, formulate alliterative strings of words and rhymes and explore nonsense words.
  • Clap syllables in words.
  • Separate words into onset and rime.
  • Go on treasure hunts for items that start with particular sounds.

Note that all of these activities do not involve looking at print or writing anything down. Most of all, have fun – create a love for exploring sound!