Effective strategies to support learners in the classroom

By Victoria Branagan

Reports and how to use them in the classroom

Objectives

•Brief overview of free writing•Try a test •Understand some parts of a report•Know some techniques to use

Free writing

• What are we looking for when we mark the free writing?*

• Mark for vocabulary • Punctuation and grammar• Spelling• Hand-writing

• How can this help you?

Assessment and tests

• What goes on in an assessment?• Questions• Tests

• Assessments that we generally do here are for access arrangements ONLY (eg extra time) – do not diagnose dyslexia

Digit span test

• Have a go in pairs• Marking it –• Percentile – if you test 100 people, same age same test, where you would be –

• Standard score – a scale that we can use to compare performances - 84 or below concern

• 84=15th percentile

Reports

•What types of reports are there?

•Access arrangements reports•More detailed reports

Look at report*• What can it tell you?

• Some comments about the student at the start of the report – support application for access arrangements and tell you weaknesses

• X indicates a difficulty – scores can help

• What difficulties does this student have and what difficulties does he not have?

List difficulties picked up in a report -

techniques to use to address them*

Senses

• Try to use two or more senses – eg sound as well as look

• Try making something rather than writing it down – make a tree with leaves on it, each leaf with a piece of information on something soft, rough, lined etc, put on board – touch each leaf

• Smells are good – be creative

3 types of difficulties• Visual• Auditory• Motor

• Not going to know from basic report

• But if you have long report, take note of type of difficulty – so if visual strengths and auditory difficulty don’t choose sounding out spelling strategy

Most things you do for students with dyslexia will probably help everyone else!