Support for children with additional needs in primary school.. ideas?

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Hi, I work in a school, primary, and I often hear from parents that the school don’t do enough to support the children with SEN, those on a dx pathway, and children with additional needs.

However, I often run out of ideas, as do parents and other professionals.

Could anyone share specific ideas that you feel have worked for your child or think woukd work for your child or things you would like from your school.

Outside resources are very limited.

Thanks

Surely its about adapting the curriculum to make it more accessible, or offering support around school routines so they are a bit easier, e.g. playtime buddies, circle times etc.

The most important thing is don’t have a one size fits all approach. Get to know the individual child and what works for them.

The best thing I did for many of my children with SEND that I've worked with is giving them some space in the day to have some quiet time. A lot of children with SEND have sensory needs, get over stimulated or just feel the pressure of conforming really overwhelming. Giving them 15 minutes by themselves to do something easy e.g. colour in, listen to music, play with water beads or play dough can be so effective but so simple.

Only slight challenge is the space to do it where they are safe and overseen without adults being involved in their time.

100% the best thing I ever introduced. I used to make point of scheduling it at least once a day for kids who needed it but also used it when I spotted early signs of overwhelm. I'd have 2-3 things to choose from in there - not too many as that can be overwhelming and some ear defenders in case they wanted them.

For those kids who went home and parents reported they were having meltdowns after school, I ensured they had this time to decompress before they went home.

This only worked in a room by themselves. It doesn't work with other children around.

When you say you ‘run out of ideas’, who are you in the school? Are you the SENCo? Head? Deputy? Is it your job to be having the ideas?

Most LAs now have some kind of ‘ordinary available/graduated approach/universally available’ kind of documents you should be following which are an excellent starting point of what can be put in place.

Things you may already do:

• Talking pegs - record the task on them and then pupils can replay the message if they forget what they are meant to be doing
• WALT (What am I learning today)/WILF (What am I looking for) cards on the table so that children can look at them if they got distracted
• DD2 really benefited from being taken out from assembly to do a pre-teach of lessons. So they would say 'We're doing something in maths that will blow your mind, so we're going to look at it now...' or 'We did something a while ago that you've probably forgotten, so I'm just going to go over it'
• Choosing boards so that options are visually shown
• Visual class timetables with 'oops' markers for changes, that the teacher actually refers to through the day
• Timers and count downs for transition changes
• Movement breaks that are built into lessons

What works for my child and/or children in his class.

Visual timetable
adapted lessons (e.g my son does different maths work at times)
chill out corner with beanbags
Sitting children in the class in a position suited to their needs when possible (e.g my son sits at the front)
Movement breaks built into lessons

But honestly, the only reasons they help is because he also gets support from outside resources and the lack of them is the issue as well as the fact that some children in mainstream clearly need specialist provision.