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Special Educational Needs (SEN) Strategic Leadership Conversation Series for School Leaders – Creating and Sustaining a Community of Support Within and Beyond Schools for students with SEN and their families

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Special Educational Needs (SEN) Strategic Leadership Conversation Series for School Leaders – Creating and Sustaining a Community of Support Within and Beyond Schools for students with SEN and their families

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1) My takeaway(s) from the PD session I attended

The presentation shared good practices by several schools on building partnerships with both students with SEN and their families. These include:
• Understanding how students' behaviours may be a result of their unmet needs
• Proactive problem-solving, rather than reactive
• Polarity mapping as a way of supporting parents of SEN children
• Application of 5 Steps SMALL Process to map and assess the polarity of the issue

2) How I can apply what I have learnt to my work as a DC.

Through the sharings by various school leaders on their best practices, I gained a better understanding of the current structures put in place by schools and their considerations when supporting students with SEN and their families. From the HQ perspective, this opens possibilities for consideration on our communications to schools on parent engagement (e.g., deck on parent engagement, how SDR teachers can better support parents of children with SEN).

Li Hsing

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Engaging Learners in Assessment: Strengthening Metacognition and Triangulating Learning Evidence Presented by Sandra Herbst

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Engaging Learners in Assessment: Strengthening Metacognition and Triangulating Learning Evidence Presented by Sandra Herbst

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Key learning points from keynote speaker:

1.      Students tend to be very anxious when they are sitting for a test or assessment. What can we as teachers do to change this mindset in our students?

2.      As reflected in the Singapore Curriculum Philosophy of the Singapore Teaching Practice (STP), we believe that all students want to learn and can learn, hence it is important to customise metacognition and triangulating evidence of learning across different student profiles.

3.      Students can monitor their thinking and learning, and we can help them in doing so by role modelling the process.

4.      Gathering evidence of learning from various sources will help to inform the teachers to make future instructional decisions and thus improve their professional judgement.

5.      Through collection of evidence of learning that centres triangulation, this helps to increase the reliability and validity of teachers’ instructions.

6.      Self-regulating strategies can also be used to monitor and guide the students’ learning process. For example in revising a writing to make it better for our reader, we could focus on the following:

·       What counts?

·       What matters?

·       What is important?

7.       Metacognition is a powerful tool that allows students to be confident learners and can better formulate and articulate their thoughts. it can be taught to students across all abilities and profiles. For example, Sandra Herbst shared that one of her students with autism spectrum was guided by his teachers to share his experience in reading, and also the way he monitors his reading. Similarly, younger students can also develop metacognitive thinking when teachers guide them by modelling metacognitive thinking in the classroom teaching.

8.      To access(assidere-Latin) is to "sit beside", thus in engaging learners in their learning, we need to be closely beside him like a partner, while strengthening the metacognition and triangulating the learning evidence, this should be a complementary process.

9.       Triangulation-products, observations, conversations increase the validity and reliability of the assessment.

10.       7 Actions of Assessment for Learning:

1.      Have a clear learning destination

2.      Use samples to understand quality and development

3.      Participate in the co-construction of criteria

4.      Are involved in feedback cycles to feed the learning forward, including self and peer assessment

5.      Collect evidence to prove that they have learned

6.      Set goals for next learning steps

7.      Communicate their learning to others, both formally and informally

Reflections
How is it applicable to our work since assessment is a key component of making curriculum accessible? What are some things we could consider when designing PD?

(School)

I think in school we need to have a common vision of triangulation of learning evidence and developing metacognition. School could set a common understanding that it is not something extra that teachers are doing in terms of assessment/above the limited curriculum time. It is an approach that will make learning meaningful both for the learners and the teachers, especially when we wanted to inculcate the values of lifelong learning and self- directed learners.

(Classroom)

STP-Believe that all students want to and can learn. In the classroom teaching, teachers could make a concerted effort in role-modelling metacognition for students in areas that are instructional significant. Make it a routine to do so and to be explicit in the metacognition process.

(Tasks)

In collecting the evidence of learning, teachers must be clear as to what to observe, what to pay attention to, what verbal details need to be captured while the students are engaged on tasks. By triangulate specific learning evidence in a particular learning task, this would help to support teachers in their teaching practice, and also involve students in their learning.

Concurrent Session:
Deepening School-Wide Assessment Practices: Utilising Technology for Involving Students in Oasis Primary School

Key learning points:
1.      Using technology to enhance students’ learning

2.      Involving students in the assessment process by making thinking visible through collection of data via SLS Portal

3.      Triangulate and analyse assessment data and evidence of students’ learning captured before, during and after lessons. This measure helps to exercise DI, close students learning gaps and promote metacognition.Showcase how e-AfL is facilitated through Art and Maths lessons in order to develop the students to be reflective and self -directed learners.

Sharing by joyce:)

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The Head, Heart and Hands of Feedback: Making Feedback Work for All Students

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The Head, Heart and Hands of Feedback: Making Feedback Work for All Students

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Takeaways:

Providing effective feedback facilitates students in identifying and addressing their learning gaps. It raises students’ metacognitive awareness and helps them develop into self-regulated learners, capable of sustainable learning. Besides creating developmentally appropriate lessons that engage students, teachers should focus on how they can develop students’ dispositions towards learning and receiving feedback. This presentation considered how diverse learners could be supported with feedback pedagogy (Tay et al., 2021) and differentiated feedback to help students move ahead with their learning.

Considerations for effective feedback
Students:

·       Possess a positive disposition toward learning and receiving feedback. Feedback need not always be from the teacher. It could also be from the students’ peers, engaging themselves to extend their learning independently.

·       Own the feedback and have to make sense of it.

Teachers:
·       Use child-friendly language for students to understand
the lesson objectives and the success criteria for a
given task.

·       Differentiate tasks to cater to students’ readiness levels.

·       Create opportunities for students to give feedback to
their peers, apart from teachers’ feedback.

·       Offer other ways of giving feedback besides the written
form and comment on other aspects such as
collaboration, and participation.

Application of learning:

We need to explore ways to develop in SDR students feedback literacy that enables them to attempt to listen to, understand and internalise information they receive from various sources and use it to enhance their work or learning strategies (Carless & Boud, 2018).

During SDR lessons, teachers can guide their students to reflect on areas they have done well, and teachers can provide specific feedback that helps move students forward in their learning. Students can be activated as learning resources for one another, e.g., during DI.

As a coach, I can guide teachers to provide feedback to their students on a continuum from directive to facilitative feedback to help learners move forward, taking into consideration the following aspects:

·       students’ engagement with feedback (uptake of feedback) (behavioural dimension)

·       students’ feelings about the feedback given (who, how, and why) (affective dimension)

·       students’ interpretation of feedback (cognitive dimension)

We aspire to grow our SDR students from requiring close guidance in attempting tasks to ones who can proactively and independently engage in decision-making about their own learning.

Jeya

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There's no one size fits all curriculum, but heartening to see the efforts in place to support students, and good to be reminded about other aspects of literacy (e.g., viewing and representing) instead of just reading and writing. However, as Learning Character Through the Ethos of the School: A Critical Reflection (1 Jun) keynote speaker shared, 50% of UK teachers quit after 5 years due to disillusion than issues with pay. How can SDR teachers be supported and encouraged to see this role as an opportunity rather than a burden?

Realising 'Multiliteracies' in English Language Classrooms in Singapore (30 May)
Saw one use of story mountain chart and thought it may be more intuitive than our current P4 graphic organiser, and potentially help students with their compo writing in class (main idea could still come in).

A Needs-Based Approach to Customising Support Programmes for High-Needs Students (31 May)
In another sharing, school (sec) had a largely student-led initiative where they plan and execute programmes for one another/ take charge of the space allocated to them. If students are able to do it, was thinking if teachers/ schools can take more control of their own training/ mentoring too (like how ownership of JIT is now passed on to schools). However, SL of the sec school said that it took time for this to take off (i.e., he waited for the right time, with the right group of teachers and students before launching the initiative), to ensure it started well, and continues running on its own subsequently.