sen kids are children who have a special educational need or disability. This may be because they have difficulty thinking and understanding, such as with reading or spelling. It could also be that they have emotional or behavioral difficulties, or that they struggle to fit in with other people. Alternatively, they may have physical or sensory difficulties such as sight or hearing impairments.

It is possible that a child with SEN will have an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP), or may need additional support from their local authority under the new system of ‘Alternative Provision’. The school should meet with parents and the child at regular intervals to assess progress and agree future outcomes and targets.

Creating a Supportive Learning Environment for SEN Kids

Many teaching strategies can be used in schools to help all children, regardless of whether they have SEN or not. This includes using a range of different methods to present information, organising work into smaller chunks, and providing regular opportunities for revisiting or over learning. However, teachers who have SEN pupils should take care to review the effectiveness of their interventions and teaching approaches on a regular basis.

This is especially important as something that works well one term might not be effective the next. This is why the statutory guidance recommends that the Assess, Plan, Do, Review cycle of evaluation and modification should be applied to SEN interventions as well as teaching in general. A creative teacher in the US has been using video-screen avatar software to connect with her pupils with a variety of disabilities, including deafness, DS and autism. This software offers varied animals, robots and stick people as characters. It can be customised to include speech and text captioning.