This term has been a massive ridiculous mess of ridiculousness and messiness. The year since March has been insane. I saw a thing on Facebook the other day that read: January, February March, COVID, Christmas. It’s not wrong. The year has been pretty pants. And pretty pants is how I’m […]
SEND
Council for Science and Technology: Rapid Evidence Review on Using Assistive Technology to Support Learners with Specific Learning Difficulties I have been working with the Council for Science and Technology to provide professional expertise alongside structured, systematic review of evidence of how to best support young poeple with specific learning […]
Live streaming lessons? Me?!?! No-one needs to see that. EVER. I’m lucky (or actually, my kids are lucky) that no one is expecting me to live-stream. But some schools are. It’s not that I can’t do it. I can. But no. Just no. Not for a whole class, in the […]
I’ve got my feet in many camps and my fingers in various pies and I am very lucky for it. This term so far, my focus has been in the special educational needs and disability (SEND) camp, with a finger firmly planted into the ‘climate change education’ pie. What I […]
I had a meeting this week in Wiltshire, with a commissioner from the council, a seminar as part of my AMBDA course with some Educational Psychologists from BANES and I’m in the middle of writing a book chapter on parents and schools working together to support dyslexic young people, mainly […]
Yesterday, I read a thread on a Facebook Group I’m part of asking about support strategies for a student who was trying to revise and retain information ready for their GCSEs. This is fairly run of the mill. That is, until it transpired that the student had only recently arrived […]
The National Audit Office review of SEND provision in England has just come out and there are details of its findings outlined already. I don’t have very many polite words that would add to the current debate, suffice to say that there are no surprises: SEND Provision is an utter […]
I keep reading and I keep getting cross. I’d love to call the current state of affairs surrounding special needs provision in England a dog’s dinner but even my hounds metaphorically eat better than this state of affairs. There is no money. There is little to no provision for some […]
APPG This time last week, I was in London getting ready to speak at an All Party Parliamentary Group for Dyslexia and Other Specific Learning Difficulties. It was a fantastic event and I really enjoyed my time there talking with policy makers, educators, professionals and those whose lived experiences have […]
I’ve read a really sensible article today in the Times Educational Supplement where a teacher writes about the opacity of how teachers understand ‘sensory’ as an adjective to describe learning, teaching and needs. ‘Sensory’ could be viewed as a bit of a buzz-word at present. As written in the article […]
This is not an easy one to write. I read this article this afternoon and it made me sad, angry and a whole host of other emotions. Partly from personal experience of seeing some of the horrendous circumstances that some of my kids have ended up in and partly because […]
2018 was a funny old year. I finished 2017 and moved into 2018 as a Dr rather than a Mrs and that was quite a big change. I graduated my PhD and was picked up at the University of Bath Winter Ceremony as quite an out-of-the-ordinary Phd-er. I did it […]
I am in a very privileged position, in that I genuinely love my job. I have flexibility because of the different things I do around my classroom-based time and I am eternally grateful for that. I realise that there are significant numbers of people who are not in that position. […]
I mean REALLY see them for who and what they are? Today, I was going to write about how two thirds of secondary schools can’t find maths teachers after reading about it. Then I was going to link to another article where Professor Jo Boaler discusses primary teachers’ experiences of […]
My PhD focussed on supporting young people with dyslexia and explored how they understood themselves through their relationship with their dyslexia. On one hand, I found that young people could frame their dyslexia positively and that is didn’t need to impact their access to learning and pr ogress negatively. ON […]
It’s taken me a while to work my brain through the 2018 GCSE results and their fall-out. In my last duty as Head of Learning Support, I duly attended school and, having cycled 8 miles to get there was met with some lovely families, incredibly happy students and some really […]