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Working Memory Rating Scale (WMRS) helps identify children with poor working memory skills

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EEF Guidance - Improving Literacy at KS2

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EEF Guidance - Improving Literacy at KS2

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EEF Improving Literacy in Secondary Schools

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EEF Improving Literacy in Secondary Schools

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Understanding neurodiversity - a guide to SpLD

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EEF Teaching Reading Comprehension Skills

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EEF Teaching Reading Comprehension Skills

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Explore the rooms to access resources to support the different skills underpinning reading comprehension.

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This guidance sets out the statutory requirements for using the engagement model to assess pupils who are working below the standard of the national curriculum assessments and not engaged in subject-specific study at key stage 2 (KS2). It describes best practice on how to use the engagement model, to support teachers and staff involved in assessing the progress of these pupils and can be used by schools from September 2020. Schools will be required to use the engagement model from the academic year 2021 to 2022 onwards.

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New Group Spelling Test (NGST) is an adaptive assessment which allows termly monitoring of spelling skills, benchmarked against the national average. When combined with our New Group Reading Test (NGRT) you can assess reading and spelling together in under an hour.
Questions are delivered via audio and the assessment is adaptive - meaning that questions change based on pupil's responses, so more able pupils can be challenged while weaker pupils are kept engaged. The reports provide the Standard Age Score (SAS), allowing you to compare each pupil's performance with other children of the same age, and track progress. Reports also provide customised implications for teaching and learning as well as offer practical help with next steps in the classroom.

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New Group Spelling Test (NGST) is an adaptive assessment which allows termly monitoring of spelling skills, benchmarked against the national average. When combined with our New Group Reading Test (NGRT) you can assess reading and spelling together in under an hour.

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Salford Reading and Comprehension Assessment

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Salford Reading and Comprehension Assessment

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Recommended by Catch Up

Catch Up is a not-for-profit charity set up to help learners who struggle with literacy and numeracy.

Download the Brochure

If you would like to learn about use cases for SSRCT, please download our brochure today.

Download

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salford sentence reading and comprehension test

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Salford Sentence Reading and Comprehension Test

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Learn more about Salford Sentence Reading and Comprehension Test, Hodder Education's standardised diagnostic tool for reading.

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Delayed language skills lead to under-performance later in life, yet many primary school children have unidentified speech and language difficulties. WellComm can help you to turn this around.
Both the Early Years and the Primary toolkits enable you to quickly and easily identify children needing support. They're quick and simple to use (requiring no speech and language expertise), and the traffic light scoring format of the instant reports makes them quick to interpret.

Both toolkits come with an age-appropriate Big Book of Ideas providing a total of over 150 instant, play-based activities so you can take appropriate action straight away. Activities can be used with parents at home too, so that support is provided whether or not a child is referred to a speech and language therapist

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Both the Early Years and the Primary toolkits enable you to quickly and easily identify children needing support.

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Teaching phonological awareness using onset and rime

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Teaching phonological awareness using onset and rime

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If a child appears to be struggling with spelling, reading, writing or numeracy, how do you know whether these difficulties are potential indications of dyslexia?

There are some obvious signs such as a 'spiky' profile which means that a child has areas of strong ability alongside areas of weakness. You may also have other family members with similar weaknesses. Remember that not all dyslexic children will display the same weaknesses and abilities.

General signs to look for are:

Speed of processing: slow spoken and/or written language

Poor concentration

Difficulty following instructions

Forgetting words

Written work

Poor standard of written work compared with oral ability

Produces messy work with many crossings out and words tried several times, e.g. wippe, wype, wiep, wipe

Confused by letters which look similar, particularly b/d, p/g, p/q, n/u, m/w

Poor handwriting with many 'reversals' and badly formed letters

Spells a word several different ways in one piece of writing

Makes anagrams of words, e.g. tired for tried, bread for beard

Produces badly set-out written work, doesn't stay close to the margin

Poor pencil grip

Produces phonetic and bizarre spelling: not age/ability appropriate

Uses unusual sequencing of letters or words

Reading

Slow reading progress

Finds it difficult to blend letters together

Has difficulty in establishing syllable division or knowing the beginnings and endings of words

Unusual pronunciation of words

No expression in reading, and poor comprehension

Hesitant and laboured reading, especially when reading aloud

Misses out words when reading, or adds extra words

Fails to recognise familiar words

Loses the point of a story being read or written

Has difficulty in picking out the most important points from a passage

Numeracy

Confusion with place value e.g. units, tens, hundreds

Confused by symbols such as + and x signs

Difficulty remembering anything in a sequential order, e.g. tables, days of the week, the alphabet

Time

Has difficulty learning to tell the time

Poor time keeping

Poor personal organisation

Difficulty remembering what day of the week it is, their birth date, seasons of the year, months of the year

Difficulty with concepts - yesterday, today, tomorrow

Skills

Poor motor skills, leading to weaknesses in speed, control and accuracy of the pencil

Memory difficulties e.g. for daily routines, self-organisation, rote learning

Confused by the difference between left and right, up and down, east and west

Indeterminate hand preference

Performs unevenly from day to day

Behaviour

Uses work avoidance tactics, such as sharpening pencils and looking for books

Seems 'dreamy', does not seem to listen

Easily distracted

Is the class clown or is disruptive or withdrawn

Is excessively tired due to amount of concentration and effort required

A cluster of these indicators alongside areas of ability may suggest dyslexia and further investigation may be required.

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Signs of dyslexia (Primary school age) - British Dyslexia Association

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If a child appears to be struggling with spelling, reading, writing or numeracy, how do you know whether these difficulties are potential indications of...

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Using worked examples to support pupils' mathematical problem-solving

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Sequences and behaviour to enable mathematical thinking in the classroom - by Craig Barton @mrbartonmaths

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Knowledge Organiser Maths - Churchfields Junior School

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The Five Big Ideas at Primary - Representation and Structure

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Discover how to use representation and structure – one of the Five Big Ideas in teaching for mastery – to improve maths teaching.

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Screen small groups or individual pupils who show difficulty with numbers and arithmetic calculation using standardised assessment that ensures accurate benchmarks.

Gauge pupils' abilities to understand number size, and simple addition and multiplication. Strengths and challenges are revealed, with Standard Age Scores provided.

Activities and strategies to support learners following the screener are available via the Dyscalculia Guidance Handbook (available to purchase separately). Activities, which include photocopiable materials, are based on real classroom experiences and grouped into specific areas of mathematics. This helps you structure teaching plans, building knowledge vital for pupils' progress, covering each education stage, from pre-school through to university.

Dyscalculia Screener and Dyscalculia Guidance FAQs

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Dyscalculia Screener and Dyscalculia Guidance

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An initial screener for teachers concerned about a pupil's numeracy progress and skills application.

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Dyscalculia is a specific and persistent difficulty in understanding numbers which can lead to a diverse range of difficulties with mathematics. It will be unexpected in relation to age, level of education and experience and occurs across all ages and abilities.

Mathematics difficulties are best thought of as a continuum, not a distinct category, and they have many causal factors. Dyscalculia falls at one end of the spectrum and will be distinguishable from other maths issues due to the severity of difficulties with number sense, including subitising, symbolic and non-symbolic magnitude comparison, and ordering. It can occur singly but often co-occurs with other specific learning difficulties, mathematics anxiety and medical conditions.

(BDA Definition)

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Dyscalculia - British Dyslexia Association

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What is Dyscalculia? Dyscalculia is a specific and persistent difficulty in understanding numbers which can lead to a diverse range of difficulties with...

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What Is It? One of the brain's executive functions, working memory is the ability to hold new information in the short term whilst it is needed for a task.

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Dr Olga Bogdashina, author, practitioner and lecturer gives her Top 5 Tips for managing sensory differences for autistic people. This article aims to provide an overview of practical tips for professionals when working with autistic people who have sensory differences.
A brief introduction to sensory processing differences

There is a continuum of sensory perceptual differences for autistic people. Some children have significant sensory differences while others less so. Understanding each autistic child's distinct sensory differences is essential to effectively teach and support them.

Often autistic children are unable to cope with the demands of the world they are not equipped to deal with, this can result in certain distressed behaviours, such as self-injury, aggression, avoidance, rigidity, high anxiety, and panic attacks.

Top 5 Tips

1. Protect from sensory overload

Many autistic people are very vulnerable to sensory overload. They may become overloaded in situations that wouldn't bother other people. Overload happens when autistic people find it difficult to process certain sensory sensations - such as loud music or bright lights.

Learning to recognise sensory overload is very important. It is better to prevent it than to 'deal with the consequences'. As soon as you notice early signs of becoming overloaded with sensory differences (which are different for different individuals), stop activity and provide time and space to recover, for example, invite the person to get into a quiet place or outside. It is useful to teach the individual how to recognise the internal signs of the overload, and ask for help or use different strategies, for example, relaxation.

2. Create a 'sensorily safe' environment

The sensory environment is very important for autistic people. Autistic people can find it difficult to adjust to sensory assaults other people accept as normal. If we accommodate it and try to 'keep it clean' in order to meet their needs, it can make navigating the world easier. With sensory needs met, stress and anxiety can be lowered.

Many 'behaviours' that interfere with learning and social interaction are, in fact, protective or sensory defensive responses of the person to 'sensory pollution' in the environment. It is impossible for children to learn if they are bombarded with painful and confusing stimuli.

Monitor a number of simultaneous stimuli, reduce all irrelevant stimuli.

Structure and routines make the environment predictable and easier to control. Routine and rituals help to facilitate understanding of what is going on and what is going to happen next.

Introduce any change slowly and always explain beforehand what is happening differently and why.

3. Hypersensitivity

Identify which stimuli the child finds difficult and either reduce or eliminate them (for example, use natural lighting instead of fluorescent lights) or, if impossible, provide the child with 'sensory aids' (tinted glasses, earplugs, etc...)

Be aware of the colours and patterns of the clothes you are wearing and your perfume

Remember, what we think is enjoyable (for example, fireworks) may be fearful or overwhelming to an autistic child

Always warn a child about the possibility of the stimulus they are fearful of and show the source of it. Often it is not the stimulus itself that can trigger but rather the inability to control or predict it.

Depending on the sensitivity, try to desensitise the child's ability to tolerate the stimuli via sensory diets.

4. Work with, and not against it

Autistic people seem to develop (voluntarily or involuntarily) the ability to control their awareness of incoming sensory stimuli in order to survive in the world bombarding them with extraneous information.

Mono-processing (using one sense at a time):

A person with mono-processing may have problems with multiple stimuli. Find out which channel 'is open' at the moment and reduce all irrelevant stimuli.

Always present information in the person's preferred modality/sense. If you are not sure what it is or which sense 'is on' at the moment (in the case of fluctuation), use multi-sensory presentation and watch which sense 'works'. Remember, though, that these channels could switch.

Some autistic people actually hear and understand) you better when they are not looking at you. Some autistic people seem to be hypersensitive when they are approached directly by other people. For some, if they are looked directly, they may feel it as 'a touch' - a sort of 'distant touching' with actual experience.

Autistic people can understand things better by attending to them directly, for example, by looking or listening periphery (such as out of the corner of one's eye or by looking at or listening to something else). The same is true for other senses if they are hypersensitives: indirect perception of smell or touch are often defensive mechanisms to avoid overload.

Never force eye contact.

When hypersensitivity of the affected sense is addressed and lessened, the direct perception becomes easier.

5. Adjust the way you interact with the child

Autistic people can learn better with concrete information, whether it is visual, auditory, tactile, etc...

Let the person use their preferred ways to explore the world. In many ways 'autistic perception' is superior to that of non-autistics. Autistic individuals with their heightened senses often can appreciate colours, sounds, textures, smells, tastes to a much higher degree than people around them. This should be nurtured and not ignored, as it is sadly often the case.

Now, when we know that autistic individuals have problems with verbal information, there is a great emphasis on using pictures to help. However, not all autistic people are 'visual thinkers'. That is why, it is important to choose the methods to match the child's preferred approach, for example, tactile aids for 'tactile thinkers', etc...

To identify the preferred interaction style for the person - direct or indirect communication.

To identify the preferred sensory channel used by the child and to select the preferred communication approach - not all autistic children are visual thinkers/think in pictures.

Give time to process information and respond. Be aware that autistic people often require more time that others to process and move between different sensory stimuli and can find it extremely difficult to follow rapidly changing social instructions.

These top 5 tips are meant only as a very general guide to what to think about.

Further reading

Grandin, T. The Way I See It. Future Horizons. (2008)

Williams, D. Autism: An Inside-Out Approach. Jessica Kingsley Publishers. (1996)

Bogdashina, O. Sensory Perceptual Issues in Autism and Asperger Syndrome. Jessica Kingsley Publishers. (2003)

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Top 5 autism tips: managing sensory differences

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Dr Olga Bogdashina gives her Top 5 Tips for managing sensory differences

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I have included this topic because maths anxiety is getting attention in connection with dyscalculia and ....
One of the most serious outcomes of maths anxiety is withdrawal from further attempt to learn. My informal survey of teachers who attend my lectures suggests that there is a significant number of children who effectively with draw from involvement in maths lessons at 7 years old.
This is quite a wordy section on the website, but you can focus in on specific topics, maybe using parts for background information and parts to guide intervention.

There have been books, research and articles on maths anxiety for many decades, so it is certainly not a newly recognised phenomenon. It's this close link to dyscalculia that is new. For example, Prof Daniel Ansari (2017) explained the two issues and the potential links in a You Tube video for Understood.org. I did my own research on maths anxiety in 11 - 15 year old students back in 2012 ('Mathematics anxiety in secondary students in England' DYSLEXIA. 15, 61-68).

The learning, thinking side of maths is the cognitive domain. The emotional side, which includes anxiety and self-esteem, is the affective domain. When teaching maths we need to address the influences of both domains.

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I have included this topic because maths anxiety is getting attention in connection with dyscalculia and .... One of the most serious outcomes of maths anxiety is withdrawal from further attempt to learn. My informal survey of teachers who attend my lectures suggests that there is a significant number of children who effectively with draw from involvement in maths lessons at 7 years old.

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Sefton EP Service - Suppoting learners with Dyscalculia

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Sefton EP Service - Suppoting learners with Dyscalculia

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Plan for helping children with Maths difficulties

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Sefton EP Service - Literacy Difficulties Overview

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Sefton EP Service - Literacy Difficulties Overview