Learning teaching and assessment

This presentation will inform a 750-1250 word written analysis of your own development needs in relation to the role of the teacher, when considering and making adjustments to assessments for students with disabilities identified in your presentation. Through working in a special school, teaching Learning Outside the Classroom (LOtC) I have had to adjust my teaching and own assessment practices to meet a range of disabilities, all the children at School, have a statement of special needs.

These needs include mild medical issues, developmental disorders including ADHD and Dyspraxia, utism and behavioural, emotional and social issues. Ways in which we assess the learning of these students has been adapted and changed to suit their needs and have been identified in this presentation. “Learning the skills for a happy and prosperous life will be at the heart of all we do”. (2010). The school follows the national curriculum with a strong focus on teaching skills. We have adapted skills competencies for LOtC from the National curriculum.

The skills the learners will gain are transferable, therefore any activity can be used to teach/learn any of the individual skill competencies. We have based the activities on what will motivate the learners making it easier for them to access the learning of the desired skill. By developing skills and confidence of the students they will make better progress when learning other curriculum subjects. “Although at this time, there is no cure for autism, targeting the unique learning styles of individuals with autism can and does meaningfully engage them, teaching them skills that have a positive effect on life outcomes”.

Joanne M. Caflero (2013) To enable learners with these disabilities to understand, engage and learn from their lessons a number of adaptations have been ade. The day starts with a wipe board where the plan for the LOtC session is drawn up (Apendixl). These animations of the activities enable both audio and kinaesthetic learning. Lesson plans are based on meeting the need of learners and are structured around the heading of the Every Child Matters Outcomes. These learners need routine, structure and visual clues to support Accelerated Learning (2001).

To assess the learners with disabilities, we have been progressing them through the skills sets on the Scheme of Work (SOW) (Appendix2) during the year. Each term the school focuses on a skill set determined on the SOW. The skill set is broken down into competencies which we focus on during lessons. Each lesson’s objective is always an individual skill competency from the SOW, which is pre-determined by myself and my colleague during our lesson planning. The skill competency is made specific by choosing an activity which will influence behaviours of the learners to develop the competencies through activity or communication.

The activity to promote skill competency development is kept very simple so the learners understand and are easily able to achieve it and promote development in the future. The skill competency is explained to the learners prior to the activity, learners are then given the opportunity to put forward their ideas as an individual or in a small group, on how to best demonstrate their understanding ot the skill competency, allowing tor differentiation and inclusive learning. For example, this term the school were working towards the skill set ‘Improving Own Learning Performance’ (Appendix 2).

My colleague and I identified to work on ‘Plan Ways to Improve Their Own Learning (Appendix 2, 2. ‘x). To simplify this for the learners to understand, we re- orded it as ‘Plan and get Better’. We identified Archery as a suitable activity for learners to demonstrate this skill competency. We asked learners to self-identify a lesson goal focusing on a specific element of Archery, for example improving aiming, or pulling of the string. We allow the learners to practice the activity and then we ask the learner to identify their improvement.