Adaptive Teaching

Apr 272 min read

Curriculum For All: What Schools Need To Know About What The Curriculum Review And The New Ofsted Framework Say About Inclusion

The key thing you need to be aware of with regards to the final report from the government-commissioned Curriculum and Assessment Review is right there in the title: Building a world-class curriculum for all. The writers of the review are at pains to communicate that the biggest change that needs to happen is with regard to inclusivity - a curriculum which works for all children. This, by the way, tallies with Ofsted's latest inspection framework that has specific headings an

Nov 17, 20254 min read

Rethinking Differentiation: The Mixing Desk Model for Responsive, Inclusive Teaching

The Challenge of Meeting Every Child’s Needs You know that the children in your class(es) have needs which are many and varied. You want to meet those needs. But meeting all the different needs is difficult, time-consuming and draining. But it's got to be done. What Is the Mixing Desk Model? The Mixing Desk Model is a practical approach to adaptive teaching and differentiation. Rather than giving different pupils different tasks, teachers adjust the level of support they prov

Nov 4, 20257 min read

The 6 Profiles Of Children Working At Greater Depth

Way back in the 80s when I was a mere child and some of you weren't even born, George T. Betts and Maureen Neihart were thinking about gifted and talented children, and realising that they weren't just one homogenous group. They could see, just as we can today, that one child considered to be gifted and/or talented could be quite different to another. So they set about finding out whether or not there were any sub-categories of gifted and talented child. According to them, it

Oct 13, 20256 min read

Continuous Provision in KS2: FAQs

This blog explores how KS2 continuous provision - based on EYFS principles - can foster independence, creativity, and deep learning. It addresses common questions on adapting the approach to meet curriculum demands, setting up purposeful provision areas, ensuring progression and challenge, integrating effective assessment, and managing behaviour. Grounded in careful planning and adult guidance, it offers practical steps for implementation.

KS2 Continuous Provision

Jun 24, 20257 min read

Wondering What To Do About Greater Depth?

Your curriculum is great. You meet the needs of your pupils with SEND. But you know you could be doing more for those working at Greater Depth. But what? I have the answers.

Jun 9, 20253 min read

Greater Depth: Pupil Pen Portraits and Personalised Challenge

Recently I worked with two schools within a trust on their identification of pupils who are working at greater depth. This is a piece of work I'm doing in varying ways with different schools. At the moment, the schools who are doing something about this are ahead of the curve and are doing things that eventually other schools will want to catch up with. I'm trying to share lots of elements of the work we do together to help you and your school to do just that. How to assess p

Mar 24, 20255 min read

From SEND To Greater Depth: Taking Everyone On The Journey (And Getting Them All To The Destination)

Imagine your next unit of work as a journey into a city centre. In this post I'll use a journey into the centre of London because it was when working with a school there that I started to use this analogy. You want all your pupils to experience a visit to Buckingham Palace, so you plan a route on the tube. You plan the best route - its economical, its efficient, and, after checking the tube map for stops with wheelchair access, its accessible to all pupils. But you know there

Dec 10, 20245 min read

Developing A Greater Depth Toolkit To Aid Task Design

Having written a few blog posts over the years about working with pupils of greater depth, I occasionally get requests to work with schools on their greater depth provision. One such request recently caused me to revisit this toolkit that I had worked on previously with a couple of other schools. The focus of this toolkit came from one of the general principles of challenge for greater depth that I wrote about in this blog post: Provide Opportunities For Children To Demonstra

Oct 1, 20246 min read

Why Should Teachers Complete Tasks Before Pupils Do?

One of the things I advocate for when training teachers on planning is that teachers should have a go at the work they are going to be asking the pupils to complete. There are several reasons for this: So that they understand the potential difficulties that children might encounter The 'curse of knowledge' strikes when you know a lot about something but find it difficult to imagine how hard it might be for someone less knowledgable to understand it. Usually we don't eveb real

Teaching

Jul 16, 20243 min read

SEND Provision Across The Curriculum: Start and End Points

“All pupils should have access to a broad and balanced curriculum. The National Curriculum Inclusion Statement states that teachers should set high expectations for every pupil, whatever their prior attainment... In many cases, such planning will mean that pupils with SEN and disabilities will be able to study the full national curriculum.” - 6.12, The SEND Code of Practice "Schools should know precisely where children and young people with SEN are in their learning and deve

Jan 30, 20246 min read

Subject Leadership and Support for Pupils With SEND

Subject leadership can be a minefield at the best of times, and for many teachers and leaders looking at it through the SEND lens is potentially even more difficult. This blog post contains a number of starting points for subject leaders who want to improve teaching and learning opportunities in their subject for pupils with SEND. Each of these should be engaged with critically, with leaders thinking not of children with specific conditions or diagnoses, but thinking of those

Subject Leadership