Time to think about engagement vs data
How much time have you given to thinking about the engagement of your students in activities? Or have we become obsessed with data collection and analysing our children with special educational needs. More often than not, data collection is formed from a desire to ‘correct’ a child and take them to a place where they should be. But who is to say where they should be? Have we gone too far? But how do we meet the learning needs of all children?
I was introduced to an alternative way to plan for children in my classroom. When doing so I gained further understanding about how my children were learning in the classroom. To me, this is the key to teaching children with autism and special needs. We can all set targets and create a pathway to take them from A to B. But what if their destination was D and was never going to be B? How many missed opportunities are we ignoring?
Are your students engaged in learning?
If you work with primary children with special educational needs, you have no doubt exhausted all alternative methods to teach phonics. However I find, even after delivering hundreds of hours worth of phonics lessons and using every Pinterest method out there, that some children are just not interested. Note: they are not lazy, stubborn or disrespectful. This learning is simply not happening for them at this moment in time.
The learning opportunities are not relevant to them at this time. You have to pull apart the content of what you are trying to teach and think deeper. In the mind of some children a voice says, “Why should I care if 4+1=5?”. Our children with autism are often honest in their classroom presence. If I cannot see the point of it all then I might switch off. I can see no relevance to it.
Sometimes in teaching, strategies just feel wrong. They don’t work. Is there anything wrong in learning to site read rather than use phonics? How many adults know the grapheme ‘ow’ has more than one sound? Couldn’t a directed autism curriculum address these gaps in our provision?
Humour a teacher!
You see, neurotypical children humour us teachers all day long with their finely tuned social skills. They will sit and listen attentively to the teacher, however boring they may be. Have you ever wondered why more children don’t get up and leave your sessions? There are subtle non-verbal, social communication cues taking place. The children paying attention to you may be copying the behavior of those around them. That behavior may be being reinforced by a parent at home. They also might be encouraging themselves to earn a well done sticker. These are 3 immediate cues that children with autism are not buying into due to difficulties with interpreting social communication. (There are many more social and environmental impacts – too many for this blog!)
Your child with autism in the classroom will be honest – and that’s not always a bad thing!
It got me thinking; if a child shows no interest in naming colors or reciting phonics, should we push on through because our curriculum says we have to deliver a phonics session each day? Or could we do something else more productive with our time? With their time? After all, childhood is a finite period for everyone.
Do you need inspiration for engagement planning?
If you are ever stuck in teaching of where to go for inspiration, head to reception / kindergarten classrooms. This is where you will find learning in the raw. It doesn’t matter if you work with babies through to young adults, the routes to learning can be found in these rooms. You’ll find discovery and curiosity, oozing from every corner.
- Child led learning
- Person centered approach
- Put the child first
“Engagement is the single best predictor of successful learning for children with learning disabilities.” (Iovannone et al., 2003). “Without engagement, there is no deep learning.” (Hargreaves, 2006), “effective teaching, meaningful outcome, real attainment or quality progress.” (Carpenter, 2010).
Engagement Profile and Scale
My classroom inspiration, when planning and creating a curriculum for children with autism and special educational needs, comes from the Rochford Report. It concluded that engagement was key to learning for children with special educational needs. 7 aspects of engagement were recognised:
- responsiveness
- curiosity
- discovery
- anticipation
- persistence
- initiation
- investigation
You can gain a deeper understanding in an easy to read format for your classroom HERE.
We have created an environment where neuro-typical children can flourish. So why not create these type of learning environments for our neurodiverse children too?
thinking differently
The Autism Junction