Rationale

The focus of our project was the collaboration between our academic and SEND teams and the exploration of techniques to support our learners with neurodiversity. We are a large college with an increasing number of learners enrolling annually with specific learning difficulties and the most common areas for support include information processing, listening skills, attention and organisational skills. Our intention was to raise awareness amongst the teaching teams of the phonological, visual and memory difficulties that many of these learners experience in the classroom, forge closer links with the academic learning support team (ALS) and provide strategies for supporting these learners.

Reciprocal reading strategies had been explored in OTLA 7 (ETF, 2021) and we wanted to expand and explore similar techniques that could be embedded into the GCSE English and maths curriculum that would also specifically benefit our ESOL learners. We wanted to use some of the findings and evidence from our previous project to explore further structured approaches to teaching strategies to improve reading comprehension skills.

Other Contextual Information

The action research undertaken was part of Education and Training Foundation’s OTLA 8 Programme. South Essex College of Further and Higher Education is a large general further education college with approximately 16,000 full time equivalent learners. It consists of five campuses spaced across the South Essex Region. There are currently approximately 1400 learners enrolled on to both GCSE English and GCSE maths. Learners generally take GCSE rather than Functional Skills and grades on entry range between a U and a 3. The team focuses on supporting learners to make progress between the grades and encouraging learners to develop their skills and attainment. We have annually increased numbers of learners with high needs and with wider SEND.

The team involved in the project consisted of 4 GCSE teachers, an ESOL tutor and an Academic Learning Mentor who worked and shared practice with her team as the project evolved. Each tutor involved in the project identified at least two learners who they wanted to work with. And above everything else, the project was designed to be inclusive. The academic tutors wanted to create a resource that could be used with all learners and therefore they each focused on a learner with SEND and also a learner without any learning support needs.

Approach

To fulfil the project criteria and achieve an outcome, the team needed to develop a stronger understanding of the types of barriers to learning experienced by learners diagnosed with a neurodiverse learning difficulty and explore strategies and different ways that they could be supported. The project built on insights from the action research undertaken the previous year on reciprocal reading, developing a broader understanding from the academic learning support team with a strong focus on joint working.

Stage 1

The project began with a series of meetings involving the Academic Learning Mentor and the GCSE and ESOL tutors. The team reflected on the type of issues that they regularly saw learners encountering in the classroom when reading information and having to write responses and problem solve.

Stage 2

Two members of the team that had been involved in the action research the previous year discussed the work they had undertaken around reciprocal reading and shared their findings. You can read more about our previous work here: OTLA 7, Project 15, Curriculum approaches to improve engagement in GCSE maths.

Stage 3

The Academic Learning Mentor undertook research with the teams in place at the college supporting learners. The objective was to look at what could be done to improve reading comprehension from a SEN perspective. The ALS mentor identified potential problems surrounding ALS learners regarding reading comprehension in both GCSE maths and English lessons and exams. Meetings and discussions took place with a variety of student learner coaches who support learners in class in order to obtain their views and feedback. Although neurodiversity encompasses an expansive range of diagnosed learning and medical conditions, for the purpose of the project, three commonly supported neurodiverse conditions were explored: ADHD, dyslexia and Autism/Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD).

Stage 4

The ALS team explored the different types of learning disabilities under the umbrella of neurodiversity and created a mind map highlighting the most common difficulties that these three conditions cause. The chart rapidly illuminated that there were several difficulties and potential solutions that were common to all three of the conditions. (Appendix 3.1).

Stage 5

The academic team then worked with the ALS mentor involved in the project to develop a broader understanding of learners with SEND and to consider the information that the ALS team were encountering, and the type of support learners needed. From this discussion the most common challenges with reading comprehension were identified as:

• identifying, decoding, and understanding language features (e.g. metaphors, similes, idioms, hyperbole, colloquial language, figurative speech, irony, oxymorons, symbolism, homographs)
• ‘reading between the lines’ – recognising implied meaning by interpreting figurative, emotive or non-literal language
• keeping learners engaged in an activity and confident in tackling tasks that contain copious amounts of text and information (Appendix 3.6 and Appendix 3.7).

Stage 6

The academic team were asked to take the information detailed above and consider how or if any of these common themes were encountered by learners who did not have an SEN requirement but may have been at a lower level with literacy on entry to the classroom as many of our learners join us with levels 1-3 on entry. This inevitably means that the variation in abilities within the classroom is large. Time constraints also mean that insufficient focus is placed on unpicking the level of each learner’s reading level. We felt that these issues, coupled with low confidence levels meant that the focus should be on making tasks as accessible as possible which is why we came up with the idea of using images rather than words as it was felt that the difficulty of predicting answers was common among many learners.

Stage 7

The academic team undertook research around some key educational theorists and different teaching and learning techniques that would benefit our learners. For example, they revisited Vygotsky’s theory and the use of scaffolding as a tool for growth. Research was also carried out into Piaget’s schema theory and cognitive learning which the team used to inform their practice (see references for further details).

Stage 8

The team then used the insights gained from their research and from the practices shared by the ALS team to design and pilot a resource which reflected our view that one of the overarching challenges in developing learners’ reading and thinking skills involved helping them improve their prediction skills. Our Thinking Aloud resource (Appendix 3.2) was created bearing in mind the three conditions above and was trialled with maths learners and English learners to support with processing written information by chunking this down and adding supporting images (see learner case studies and appendices for further details). The resource featured:

• the use of images to prompt class/small group discussion and to predict/estimate answers
• the use of colour and different fonts/layout to stimulate interest which we hoped would enrich the task and allow neurodiverse learners to express their ideas
• a format that enabled the resource to be used in developing both maths and English skills.