Children Beyond Labels

Understanding Standardised Assessment and Managing Additional Learning Needs in Primary School

Rhian Spence

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429016370
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Children Beyond Labels is an accessible guide to understanding standardised assessment and managing high incidence additional learning needs in the primary school. It offers jargon-free insight into the results of formal assessments which are often used within professional reports and cuts to the core of how primary education professionals and parents can identify, understand and best meet children's needs.

Offering a range of practical and manageable strategies, the book provides clear explanations of commonly used labels which reflect three of the four areas described within the SEND Code of Practice (2015): Cognition and Learning; Communication and Interaction; and Social, Emotional and Mental Health. These categories are illustrated by 18 detailed case studies of children from the author's own case work, each with their unique profiles of strengths, weaknesses and traits that can sometimes transcend category boundaries. Examples of these traits include:

• Dyslexia
• Autism Spectrum Disorder
• Specific Language Impairment
• Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
• Developmental Co-ordination Difficulties
• Anxiety.

This is an invaluable guide to the range of different types of additional learning or special needs of children who are likely to be found in mainstream primary schools. It will be of interest to primary teachers, trainee teachers, teaching assistants, SENCOs, parents and anyone working to support the needs of young children.

Section 1
Cognition and Learning

Children present at school with varying aptitudes for learning and acquisition of knowledge, skills and understanding; both genetic and environmental factors influence these. They will usually demonstrate inherited patterns of learning strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes, other issues with development, from conception to birth and beyond, will override this.

Environmental influences can enhance or hinder progress or fall somewhere in between these two extremes. Levels of parental/carer interest, expectations, and capacity for providing incidental and enrichment learning opportunities can reduce or increase educational advantage. The environmental ethos within schools is also influential. Whilst a supportive environment provides children of all abilities with significant advantages, the degree of impact will, of course, depend on their levels of cognitive functioning.

Children with special/additional Cognition and Learning needs fall into two groups: those with Specific, and those with Generalised or Global Learning Difficulties/Delay.

Specific Learning Difficulties (SpLD) - insight

Sometimes parents seek the following labels as explanations of slow or slower than hoped for progress, even when school attainment is well within the average range. Such labels are often more acceptable to parents/carers than others. Perhaps they offer more hope and less stigma than labels associated with Generalised/Global Learning Difficulties, for example.

Children typically display some or all of the following signs:

• Low self-esteem/confidence/motivation
• Inconsistent performance with good days and bad
• Avoiding starting and/or rarely completing tasks
• Struggling to record (often good) ideas on paper
• Fatigue because of the extra effort required.

Dyslexia

The Rose Report (2009: 10) defines Dyslexia:

Dyslexia is a learning difficulty that primarily affects the skills involved in accurate and fluent word reading and spelling.

Dyslexia is an educational issue, not a medical diagnosis, and is often hereditary. Assessment profiles tend to be spikey with particular strengths, often in verbal and/or non-verbal ability, alongside marked weakness with reading and /or spelling accuracy.

Developmental Co-ordination Disorder (DCD)/Dyspraxia

Unlike Dyslexia, DCD requires a medical diagnosis but is not caused by a general medical condition such as cerebral palsy or muscular dystrophy.

It is characterised by specific difficulties with co-ordination, motor (movement) planning and control which can affect any or all movements, including those required for speech (Verbal Dyspraxia). Fine and/or gross motor skills can be affected. Fine motor skills involve use of the small muscles of the fingers, toes, wrists, lips and tongue, enabling small movements such as picking up small items and holding a spoon. Gross motor skills describe bigger movements, such as rolling over and sitting; these rely on the use of large muscles in the arms, legs, trunk or feet.

Such impairments in movement planning and in the development of motor co-ordination interfere with academic achievement and the activities of daily living.

Children with DCD are likely to have been late in reaching motor milestones.

There may be issues with handwriting (legibility and/or speed), drawing, copying tasks, visual tracking (required for reading lines of print), organisation, attention, dressing and undressing, eating tidily, deciding which hand to use, hopping, skipping, throwing and riding a bike. As with Dyslexia, assessment profiles of children with this diagnosis tend to be spikey with notable areas of strength.

It is not unusual for children to present with traits of both Dyslexia and DCD/Dyspraxia. It can be useful to think in terms of spectrums, with some experiencing mild traits, through to others facing persistent and substantial barriers.

Specific Learning Difficulties case examples (Evie, Owen, Matthew and David)

Evie

Evie presented with Dyslexia traits, identified at an early stage. We first met when she was four years, nine months and in a Reception class. We met again, for monitoring purposes, when she was in Year One and for a third time when she was in Year Two.

When Evie and I met for the first time, Reception Class Teacher had observed significant difficulties with the retention of phonics for reading. Class Teaching Assistant had noted inability to apply phonics for reading words and non-words, even when sounds were given.

Observation in class demonstrated good turn-taking and ability to follow collective instructions, effective cutting and sticking, ability to focus and work independently on self-selected, practical tasks. When older children arrived to facilitate book sharing with buddies, Evie showed minimal interest, causing her assigned buddy to give up. When reading with Teaching Assistant on a one-to- one basis, Evie recognized several high frequency words by sight. She required encouragement, yet tried hard, to decode other words. Evie recognized her limited success, commenting, Ί don't know many!'

During a whole class activity (high-frequency word/picture matching), where children were encouraged to sound words out in heads to support decoding, before raising hands to volunteer answers, Evie was often disengaged, fiddling with her fingers and head bowed. She volunteered occasional responses, decoding bus as bed, but reading fox correctly (her class group's name and probably recognised by sight).

One-to-one work with Evie highlighted good understanding of vocabulary (demonstrated below by scored outcome with the British Picture Vocabulary Scale) Her outcome score, at age equivalent five years, seven months and percentile eighty-three, fell at the very top end of the high average range for her chronological age.

Chronological Age:	4.09	Test Age	Centile
British Picture Vocabulary Scale - 3rd Edition		5.07	83

Evie shared with me that she liked school, but disliked reading and admitted to not practising at home - Ί say no to Mummy! ' She identified her favourite toy as 'a beautiful snuggly unicorn', demonstrating her effective use of expressive (spoken) language.

Evie knew she would be five in April and wrote her first name accurately, although entirely in capital letters. A left-hander, she applied a suitable pencil grip.

Informal assessment of ability to discriminate between sounds, without viewing lip actions, suggested some weakness, with Evie repeating let/net as net/net, pit/bit as bit/bit, pot/top as hot/top, shut/just as shut/dust, raw/war as war/war and in/on as on/in. Weakness with sound blending, again without viewing lip actions, was also evident. Evie was unable to blend the sounds provided to build the following words and non-words: c-a-t (said add), f-a-t (said fed), l-e-t (said lid), p-o-t (said hot), p-e-g (said beg), f-eet (said eat), d-u-p (said p ...), p-o-g (said pomp). She was successful with l-i-p, b-oa-t and sh-o-p.

My initial conclusions were that Evie's profile (good vocabulary and general ability, alongside weaknesses with acquisition and application of phonics for word-building) suggested a Specific Learning Difficulty (Dyslexia). At this early stage, however, it was not possible to forecast the degree of difficulties that Evie would experience in future. It was to the credit of Class Teacher and Teaching Assistant that her particular issues with phonics were identified at such an early stage in her school career. Early identification enabled the implementation of appropriate approaches sooner rather than later.

Evie and I met for the second time when she was five years, five months.

When we met again, eight months later, for monitoring purposes, Evie had transferred to Year One. Update assessment outcomes (see below) confirmed appropriate progress with vocabulary (British Picture Vocabulary Scale), alongside an age appropriate score for her drawing of a person (Goodenough Draw-a-Person)

Chronological Age:	5.05	Test Age	Centile
British Picture Vocabulary Scale - 3rd Edition		6.02 (+7 months over 8 months)	78
Goodenough Draw a Person Test (Aston Index)		5.09 (Not used before)	-

Evie's transition from Reception seemed to have been smooth. She identified writing, as a personal strength, and mentioned her enjoyment of reading. Socially, too, she seemed well integrated with many friends ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Glossary
• Introduction
• Section 1 - Cognition and Learning
• Section 2 - Communication and Interaction
• Section 3 - Social, Emotional and Mental Health
• Bibliography
• Appendices