Page 34 - Issue 112 May-June 2021

34 By knowing a learner’s style of learning, which either is conceptual or experiential (by seeing, by hearing, by doing, or a combination of some or all of these) the teacher/professional can use different strategies that will make learning easier. Brown, McDaniel and Roediger (2014) mentioned in their research that ‘good teaching’ would need to be tailored to learners’ learning style and to offer functional and meaningful situations for better retention and for consolidating memory. This gives us our starting point, the place from which the journey begins. This is where the creative brilliance of the teacher and teaching assistant comes in. These are the people, besides the parents and carers, who know the learner best, and who will be able to apply the use of technology, personal interests, passions and hobbies into a programme of motivational learning. But how can this be done? Harnessing interests Let us consider the lesson outcomes and how we can differentiate the way we teach our learners. Remember that they are real pupils, in a special needs school or on a special needs program. These learners have spikey ASD profiles. They have different hobbies and interests to the rest of us that motivate them to engage. They also experience anxiety and stress-related behaviours. The key to reduce this would be to build their interests into the curriculum. You would be surprised how engaged they can be if their interest is harnessed. If the learner is passionate about trains, build trains in every aspect of your teaching (e.g. teaching maths: how many trains depart, at what time, when they arrive). “How engaged they can be if their interest is harnessed” If the learner is passionate about football you can use football film footage to look at the emotional brain, and what the learner does when their emotional brain takes over. Then, talk about their anger manifestation such as becoming violent, breaking things or having self-harming behaviour. Being able to demonstrate and managing to detach themselves from the situation would already show a good level of understanding. This can be the start of their pathway to success. The look of delight on their faces when presented with a task sheet with hobbies that they are so passionate about will be a testament to the thoroughness of their profiling and mapping, and the willingness of their teachers to personalise their learning. It can also be the start of an inclusive journey helping everybody else along the way for what benefits them will also benefit their classmates. With everything that has been said and done, perhaps the future lies not so much in teaching content but in developing transferable skills in our learners, and in the process helping them learn how to learn. OCD Tourettes Bipolar Dyslexia Dyscalculia ADHD ADD Auditory Processing Autism Spectrum Disorder What is Neurodiversity? ODD Undiagnosed Dyspraxia DLD Epilepsy Anxiety ■ Recognising uniqueness. SEN112 senmagazine.co.uk Education