Local Offer - Support for all Learners
This page explains how children and young people are supported in their education settings.
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Children and young people accessing an education setting in Doncaster should be taught using the curriculum set out by the Government. All learners should have access to inclusive High-Quality Teaching, regardless of their ability. This is known as "universal" support within the graduated approach. Some children may benefit from time limited interventions to help them with their learning. This support is known as "universal +" and learners who receive this level of support may be given an informal SEN plan.
What is High-Quality Teaching?
High-Quality Teaching is a teaching style which ensures that every child and young person within a setting has their learning needs met. Staff use High-Quality Teaching to ensure their lessons are planned with a range of learning styles in mind. This means staff should adapt and amend their way of teaching, using reasonable adjustments, when required.
By offering this personalised learning experience, children and young people can learn in a way that suits them. This encourages a more inclusive classroom environment for all, especially those with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND).
Some of the key elements of High-Quality Teaching include:
- Adaptation of teaching as necessary
- Differentiation in learning
- Designing environments to support learning
- Continuous planning
- Secure subject knowledge
- High aspirations for all learners
- Reasonable adjustments.
What is Adaptive Teaching and Differentiation?
Adaptive teaching and differentiation are two of the key elements of High-Quality Teaching.
Adaptive teaching involves planning prior to, and adjusting practice within, a lesson. It ensures that students receive the same learning but at a varied pace. By using adaptive teaching, staff are able respond to the needs of learners whilst checking and reflecting on their progress in real-time. Adaptive teaching is designed to provide support when it is needed for all within a setting.
Differentiation is the practice 'tailoring teaching to attend to a specific student’s needs and the way they learn’ (VanTassel-Baska, 2012). This can be achieved through modification of content, presentation, environment or expectations. Differentiation can be carefully planned into specific activities but also covers a variety of in the moment adjustments that can be made, for example, simplifying a question.
When using differentiation in conjunction with adaptive teaching, learners are able to work towards the same lesson objective. The adaptations made by staff can ensure that universal High-Quality Teaching is delivered to all learners.
Examples of Adaptive Teaching Techniques
- Content or questions being rephrased
- Showing examples of a ‘finished product’, i.e., WAGOLLs (what a good one looks like) but with ‘deconstructions’ to explicitly show how they can get there
- Having flexible and temporary groupings to help scaffold learning
- Language adaptations to help learners grasp concepts.
Examples of Differentiation
- In literacy, reducing the amount of reading for learners with dyslexia or providing visual resources instead
- In maths, using objects such as counters, tokens, etc. to maintain the attention of learners with ADHD and sensory processing difficulties whilst aiming to achieve the same outcome as others
- Using a range of presentation techniques, i.e. visual, kinaesthetic, auditory
- Factoring in regular short breaks to lesson plans to maintain pupil focus.
What are the next steps if further support is needed?
The learning and development need of most children and young people will be met by the personalised, inclusive High-Quality Teaching with added reasonable adjustments that they receive in their school or college, as described above. However, some learners may require additional or different support to their peers, to help them meet their targets. This is often referred to as having special educational needs (SEN).
When a learner is identified as having SEN, their education setting should put support into place to help them. This is known as SEN support or special educational provision.
Find out more about SEN support
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City of Doncaster Council’s Families Information Service is responsible for co-ordinating and publishing the Local Offer – Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND).