SEND provision
Learning Support Assistant (LSA)
Our Learning Support Assistants support students in lessons and around school. They are attached to specific year groups, which allows them to become really familiar with the students that they support and gain a deep understanding of their specific needs.
Our LSAs support all of the students in a classroom; support is given to any student who requires it on a lesson by lesson basis. LSAs try to not make any student stand out as needing more support than others. They work alongside the teacher to support the class as a whole and collaborate effectively to ensure that every student in the class makes good progress.
LSAs will provide feedback for student reviews on progress within specific lessons and will communicate any issues or successes that arise throughout the school day directly to our SEND Leads. Our LSAs may also do some intervention with students on a one to one basis or mentor students where necessary. Our LSAs support designated form groups during registration time to help students to settle into the new school day and they also provide homework support after school.
Interventions
Interventions that are put in place are constantly monitored to keep measuring impact. This is done through the following mechanisms:
- Re-assessment using parallel tests to the ones administered in the baseline
- Analysis of progress across the curriculum using DALPS
- Gaining feedback from teachers with respect to students’ confidence and progress in class
- Student self-assessment pre- and post-intervention
- Review mechanism through termly SEND reviews, informed by feedback from a range of school staff.
- Discussions and communication with parents/carers
We acknowledge that certain difficulties may be deeply ingrained and long-term in nature. As a result, there are no ‘quick-fixes’ and instead we acknowledge that some students may need regular and repeated interventions. We maintain a sense of professional curiosity, asking continuously ‘what else can we do here?’.
We have numerous interventions that are personalised and bespoke to our students’ needs, however there are three main strands to our intervention:
Literacy
We want all students to have a level of literacy commensurate with their cognitive ability. Every student working significantly below their peers will receive targeted intervention from our literacy specialists. The intervention they receive will be matched to their specific needs and a range of diagnostic testing will be used to ascertain exactly what those needs are. The intensity of intervention will be driven by the severity of need.
Interventions offered include: Fresh Start, Toe by Toe, Guided reading, Spellzone, Bedrock
Numeracy
We want all students to have at a level of numeracy commensurate with their cognitive ability. Students with significant difficulties will work as part of a small group supported by a numeracy specialist. Mathematical confidence and resilience will be nurtured as part of this group and will support students to develop their understanding of the mathematical models used across the curriculum.
Interventions offered include: Targeted numeracy, Fit 4 Figures, Power of Two, IXL, small group teaching
Social, Emotional and Mental Health
We want all students to be emotionally articulate, self-aware and resilient. We recognise that our most vulnerable students may have experienced traumatic and adverse childhood events, and may therefore require extra support. Intervention in this area targets a broad range of behaviours and needs from anxiety, self-esteem and social skills to depression and emotional self-regulation skills. The breadth of this intervention is matched with a wide range of expertise from pastoral and SEND staff. These teams work together closely to triage the needs of students to efficiently identify the best response or intervention.
The main types of intervention run across our Trust are delivered in the main by our SEMH specialists in each school. These fall broadly into the following categories:
