Page 69 - SEN115 - November/December 2021

Literacy
About the author
Hannah Rix is a SEND English teacher and has been teaching in both secondary and SEND schools for over 8 years. This experience led to co-founding Readingmate Ltd.
readingmate.co.uk @readingmateapp
@readingmateapp
“Find reading very challenging and almost scary.”
Working in a SEND school, I’m lucky enough to have some wonderful support assistants. Making use of the adults in your classroom is vital. I genuinely feel that the most valuable asset in every school is its staff. Briefing staff properly about the activity with clear and simple instructions is essential to making the learning experience enjoyable.
How can you inspire a love of reading
and make it a habit?
Reading is a passion of mine and has been for as long as I can remember. Personally and professionally, I feel it’s one of the most undervalued skills and hobbies to have. For all children it’s a chance to escape from difficulties in their life, engage with the story, empathise with the characters and (most importantly) reflect on their own thoughts, feelings, and emotions.
Unfortunately, some children with SEN can find reading very challenging and almost scary. This is especially prevalent when it comes to phonics (blending and segmenting words) as well as being able to decode the text and comprehend the story. As a teacher, I take these skills very much for granted. For some children reading and understanding the story is a tricky skill to master.
Methods I’ve found helpful with my students:
1. Children with SEN, including those with autism, ADHD and dyslexia are often visual learners. During the early stages of reading, I would start with large picture books and discuss the images to support their understanding. Forget about the words on the page and explain to them you’re going to tell the story with the pictures. What’s happening on this page? Who do you think this character is? Where is this set? How are they feeling? How do you know?
2. If your child is ready to read, scan through the text and see which digraphs (2 letter sounds ‘ea’ and ‘oo’) or trigraphs (3 letter sounds ‘igh’, ‘air’) and sound these out together before reading. Also, underline any complex words that are repeated so you can introduce them but will help the child to remember how to pronounce them later in the text.
3. Highlight punctuation throughout the story. Some students get very focussed on the words and forget about the full stops and commas. Discussing and modelling the role of these punctuation marks is helpful. When the student comes across the highlighted punctuation mark, it will remind them of what to do.
■ Inspire a love of reading.
4. Treat books like treasure. This is helpful for all children but especially those with SEN. Demonstrating a love for all books and sharing your excitement and respect towards them will influence your student’s opinions of them too.
5. Model the reading. The best way for students to enjoy the reading experience overall is for you to model how to read in an engaging way so they can practise and also learn from you.
6. Praise, praise, and praise some more. Celebrating every milestone (no matter how small) with your students
is integral to their desire to read more. You can never celebrate your student’s achievements enough.
7. Offer a variety of books. Some children with SEN have favourite books or stories that they will go to time and time again. To widen their reading circle, introduce a new story and use their ‘favourite’ as a reward for after. Equally, if you feel a book isn’t working, change it. Life’s too short to read books we don’t enjoy!
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