Teachers - How much could you differentiate? Is this too much to be sustained?

[Candlewax]

I have put this in Secondary as my ds is in a secondary school.

An LEA EP has carried out an assessment of my ds (who has AS) and the recommendations are that ALL his teachers do the following:

Give him a specific timetable of what is going to happen in every lesson and what is expected of him to achieve.

Some individual pre-teaching of concepts, processes, that he has found difficult and is therefore reluctant to attempt.

Meaningful rewards for tasks that are attempted and tasks which are completed.

Adaptation or supplementation of your language so that there is no confusion with figuaritive language, or complex instructions/explanations.

He must be allowed to type his work, not hand write it as even at speed, he can only manage 10 words per minute and he cannot listen to you dictate and write at the same time and he cannot read off the board to copy at speed either, so will need handouts for every lesson.

And most importantly of all, no other child must be aware that you are differentiating for him.

Just how feasible, in the real world, is this?

I would love to get your views.

It's not. Sorry

The provisor that no child must know that the differentiation is going on would be impossible in the secondary setting.

I would also find it difficult to achieve the 'pre teaching', I could (and probably would ) give up some time at break, but how could he possibly have enough time to do this for all subjects?

Timetable I effectivly do for evey child in every lesson anyway.

What would be a meaningful reward for him? and how possible would that be to do with no-one knowing?.

language issues would be do-able if her were in 'bottom' sets where things tend to go at a slower pace

We have SEN hand outs for all of KS3. Ks4 would be much harder.

I'm a TA in secondary & support amongst others, pupils with AS & some of what you mention could be done with 1-1 in class support.
A TA can forewarn of what's coming next in the lesson, re-explain / clarify anything, develop a reward system, laptops can be used in our school or a TA could write as he dictates. The bit about others not being aware - can't really be done (apart from in some cases, I ensure that I regularly walk round the whole class & make sure everyones OK, not just the pupil I support)

The majority of teachers share their lesson objective/s with the class and in plenary go through what pupils have learnt so, yes, he can give specific timetable of what is going to happen in every lesson and what is expected of him to achieve because they'll do it for all pupils. It might be orally though, not necessarily written down.

The individual pre-teaching of concepts, processes, that he has found difficult and is therefore reluctant to attempt is the toughie imo, as where does this time come from & it would be hard not to make him look picked out if this were to happen in class? This is where a good TA would be invaluable & there are other things schools can do, like booster sessions. Normally teachers do recap previous learning and concepts/processes.

The meaningful rewards for tasks that are attempted and tasks which are completed - do they mean in line with the school reward's system (easy to do) or something unique to your ds (will need to be agreed and decided how to be given discretely)?

Adaptation or supplementation of your language so that there is no confusion with figuaritive language, or complex instructions/explanations - standard teaching feature, esp if teaching AS.

Him typing is not a problem - he, teachers and you will have to monitor though that he prints it out for submission. That is an extra organisational task that some SN are not good at. Handouts for every lesson in some subjects will present no problem but will be a significant/onerous task for some. Again a LSA in the lesson would be very useful here.

Have the school said how feasible it will be?

I don't think this sounds sustainable.

The othe responses are much better than mine - sorry! Some of it is sustainable, as the others say.

I forgot to say the typing on a laptop or an alphasmart, wouldn't be an issue at all. But they kids would see that, and the school (sadly) doesn't have the facilities for all the kids to have them in every lesson....wish that they did.

The really impossible one is to do this with no child knowing.

the other tricky one would be the prelearning, but as others have said a good LSW would be fantastic in helping with that.

the rest we do on a daily basis, very often for kids with AS

I think the school will be in shock today. They have not let me know yet if they think it is feasible. I think we will need a meeting for that.

My ds will not tolerate a 1-1 or TA as the other children would know he is getting help.

This is such a mess.

His school have been fantastic and bent over backwards to help him and I cannot see what else possibly they can do.

The timetable would have to be written down as he cannot retain too much verbal information all at once.

He also has a very high IQ and is in Year 8 and for most subjects expected, even at the lack of learning, to currently get level 6 for most subjects.

School are very much aware of his difficulties and his not wanting a TA or any support.

I have to go out but I will look again at 9pm

Thank you for replying.

Hmm. I agree with most of what has been written. However, my lesson plans often have 'escape routes' - so if something isn't working well, I use one of these and change tack a bit. I do tend to use them with more challenging groups, so that might be an issue as the detailed timetable would not always be followed.

And I completely agree that others will know that the work is being differentiated, particularly if he is in a higher ability set, given the language requirements.

Candlewax without any TA support it sounds almost impossible - would he accept support if he saw others being supported ?? A TA could 'spread themselves' around the class so it appears that he's not the only one getting support.
It's asking alot, especially in secondary where he's having to cope with different rooms, different teachers etc. Even with background info on SEN pupils, in my experience many of the teachers do not take things into account. (nightmare scenario only the other day with a teacher 'forgetting' & asking a dsylexic pupil to read aloud)
Not knowing his whole history, I'd say it would be better working with him to try and accept support or even just to tolerate a TA in the room.

If he won't have a TA then you'll need to negotiate together what can be reasonably done. Maybe he'll they can withdraw him from a non-core subject that he is unlikely to pursue and do some 1-1 in the SN dept? That would keep him low profile.

Just because an assessment states something it doesn't mean it will be a disaster if he doesn't have it, particularly if he isn't keen; it can be to their detriment if forced upon them. Also assessments can be written with little idea of how the real teaching world operates or how practically it can be implemented but that isn't their concern; it ends up being the problem of parents and the schools.

We have a number of Asperger's pupils who all function without TAs (their choice) but I teach in a very structured school that suits their needs iyswim.

I've also taught children with AS without TA support. In general they tend to do better with a TA, particularly lower down the school.

I don't really see how they could get round the preteaching, unless they could give you the information the week before? Some teachers might do this do this, others may be less helpful.

I think this coulld be done by giving coopies of schemes of work/lesson plans to whoever is his SEN co-ordinator.

In our lesson plans it is stated waht the most able/able/least able are expected to achieve. Also all language/new terms in the lesson are highlighted. I'm not sure an individual teacher could do this though, but it could be done by his support worker out of the classroom so no other kids know.

I think that is the hardest of all, to sustain a level of support to do all the above stuff, he would have to be withdrawn from a couple of lessons, otherwise who would go through all that stuff with him. It is very very easy to fall under the radar in secondary despite everyones best attempts. The support doesn't always have to be in class, but a child like that in my school would be withdrawn to do stuff like this.

I think a lot of this would be for the SEN co-ordinator to do rather than clasroom teacher. Our SEN teachers have very small classes of kids who they help with this sort of stuff

But I agree about lesson changes, different teachers, timetables. This is hard enough for a new Y7 without AS

Totally agree with you about the risk of 'falling between the cracks'

I don't think it's sustainable, and it makes me cross that EP's can write such 'recommendations' knowing full well that with the resources available in schools, they can't be implemented.
With a good learning support team, and with committed teachers, there's no reason why quite a lot of this can't be achieved, but i think the proviso that 'no one else must know' is a sticking point.
Also if the student is not receptive to one to one support, then i think the pretutoring aspect would be impossible to deliver.

I think this can be done. I used to give my students a unit overview sheet at the start of a new unit to be stucj in their books with dates, key lesson content and key aims. They would then (in theory) refer back to it at either the end of each lesson or the end of the unit. I think that's basic good practice and certianly something that could easily be incorporated into a Scheme of Work. The same with handouts. I used to teach with power points and some kids woudl make loads of notes and others would underline the important words.It's about being aware of the needs of every child in your class.

The most important thing is that staff are aware of things they need to do in order to support him. Differentiation is subtle and can be done in many ways - through resources like word banks, sentence starters etc but also through task - setting groups/pairs different tasks within the same topic according to ability e.g studying a poem -
some students will have to read it and feed back on the story, some will read it and feed back on the metaphors etc.

The school should have a rewards system in place also.

He must be allowed to type his work, not hand write it as even at speed, he can only manage 10 words per minute and he cannot listen to you dictate and write at the same time and he cannot read off the board to copy at speed either, so will need handouts for every lesson.

And most importantly of all, no other child must be aware that you are differentiating for him.

Just how feasible, in the real world, is this?

I would love to get your views

Thank you all so much for replying. I will, in due course, let you know what his current school say or what they want to do.

All this business is just so draining. And that is for me and for school too. School have been fantastic and one Head Tutor in particular.

It's just that as they have been so fantastic, I wonder what more they can do.

And as someone said, it is all very well for EP's to "say" what should happen, but in the real world, not everything is going to be achievable and sustainable all of the time.

I wouldn't have a problem Candlewax's DS's IEP.