At last, some sunny days are upon us!
A hopeful ray of light is very much the vibe of this issue’s SEND special too. We have some really heartening success stories for you, including Emily Rushton’s moving feature about neurodiversity champions (p60).
Elsewhere, Lisa Pigg talks us through how her school rolled out a series of nurture spaces, and the impact they had (p66), while Fiona Carswell suggests we need to have the courage to answer awkward questions if we want neurodiverse children to be understood by their peers (p69).
In our regular Teach Reading & Writing section, Alake Pilgrim’s WAGOLL feature on writing a breathless chase scene (p38) made me want to run out and grab a copy of the book straight away.
Another gorgeous title we explore is Kate Greenaway winner Grahame Baker-Smith’s The Ever-Changing Earth, which can take you way beyond literacy activities to inspiring art and design, geography, science, music and more (p47). And as part of our poetry series in association with the CLiPPA, Charlotte Hacking takes a research-driven look at using poems in the classroom (p34).
I’m sure you’ll all have seen, or at least heard about, Ofsted’s English subject report by now. On page 44, literacy expert Rachel Clarke picks out some of the key findings and offers recommendations for how your school can address the areas for improvement that were highlighted in the report.
Recently, we’ve had a lot of queries on our website (teachwire.net) asking for advice on two pedagogy hot topics: adaptive teaching and talk partners. So this issue we’ve included some useful articles on these for your reading pleasure.
Professor Mike Askew details how to use adaptive teaching effectively for maths (p27) and Jack Dabell checks that you’re going about talk partners the right way (p32).
If you’d like to write a feature on how you incorporate techniques like these into your teaching practice, do drop me a line (lydia.grove@theteachco.com).
Lydia Grove – Editor
