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I spoke to the classroom teacher
about the lowest-ability children in the class
and I wanted to see who would benefit the most
from me working with that person.
And I decided to choose to work with Anna because she was in my class
and it meant that I could sort of use the work I'm doing with her
when I was differentiating in usual class room tasks.
So in English, maths and science I'd think,
right, I need Anna to be working at this level
so if I base my low-ability work on what Anna's doing,
roughly everyone around that sort of ability
should be able to cope with the work.
Anna's strength is that she's a very happy child,
she's very motivated to work
and she takes great pleasure in praise and doing well in work
and she's very good at art and very good at socialising as well
because she's so happy.
Her spelling isn't particularly great and her maths work as well,
she struggles a little bit with that.
I think when it's to do with memory, she struggles with memorising.
So with the three times table she has to work it out with her fingers,
she can't think 2 x 3 is 6,
she has to have it physically in front of her.
It's about her correcting her own work.
So that when we segment and blend together the words,
she's listening and she's thinking herself
so that when we do the spelling, she writes it out.
She can then go over, like we did with 'bank',
she can herself sound out the letters and actually correct it
which she's started to improve on a lot.
Her spelling has actually improved quite a lot
as well as her handwriting as her confidence in writing's improved.
I looked at her IAP and decided what work I was going to do.
At the moment, anyway, the school's working with the *** with her anyway
so I just decided to follow that on
and make sure I did it on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday.
So instead of her going to assembly
we'd stay behind, we'd have half an hour to work on things like this
so it's consistent.
How many times a week would this be?
It's three times a week and it's for about a month.
For her she's very proud of this folder.
She's quite keen on Winnie the Pooh, so she quite happily walks around
and she's not self-conscious of the fact that everyone knows
that she stays behind to do work.
She's quite happy to do it and she's proud of the work she's done.
From that I feel rather than before when she wasn't confident enough to say,
'I need to do this,' or 'Can I have some help?'
Whereas now she'll just get on with the task, she'll just do it.
And so from that point of view she's become a lot more independent
because she's more confident that she can do it, she's able to.
Her spelling's come on in leaps and bounds
and even her maths work as well.
Just from doing simple times tables,
it just helps her to connect, and also operations.
Before she wasn't very good with choosing what symbols
would go with which operation and things like that.
From my point of view because I have quite a lot of SEN background anyway,
it's quite nice to see someone who I consider to be MLD,
as opposed to SLD which is severe learning difficulties,
included within a class.
And also to see how low the low ability goes,
rather than just thinking this is about a medium
so it's been quite nice from a differentiation point of view.
It's shown me how much of a difference one-to-one work is.
But it's also made me think if it can do this for low ability,
it must be able to do this for medium and high ability as well.
And so the importance of one-to-one
or even group work with children can help.
I've been teaching that class anyway but I think the class teacher
just feels that the extra support Anna's had this term
has been good, and also talking to parents as well.
It's been quite nice to know that she's been given extra help
to boost her work.
Can you remember what we were doing, that game that we played?
Let's turn them all over and tell me what words they are.
So let's get these out for you.
So we have some tricky ones and some easy ones.
Let's move this out of the way.
And I'd like you to turn them and put them into easy, tricky and hard ones for you.
Say it again.
Have a look at the letters. Sound them out.
- Bank. - Good girl.
So what would you put that in? Is it easy, tricky or medium tricky?
- Or is it hard? - Medium.
Medium. So put that one there.
Next one.
- White. - So is that easy... Good.
Bone.
What are the first three letters?
- Bond. - Good girl.
Where would you put that? Is that hard or medium?
Okay.
- Bend. - Good girl.
- Drink. - Let's have a look.
- Trunk. - Not trunk.
- Junk. - Good girl. Was that hard?
It's one we've been struggling with for a while.
Duck.
- Bench. - What's the sound of the letters?
- Tent. - Good girl.
Would you say that was quite hard or medium?
Okay.
- Six. - Good girl.
Now I'm going to put out two more
and we'll finish this task.
Lit.
Sound out all your letters for me.
Lit.
Can you remember that?
- List. - Good.
So was that quite hard or was that medium?
Medium. Okay, good girl.
- Lost. - Good girl. So where does it go?
Fantastic.
I'd like to do a bit of reading from the reading book for me now.
Have you been reading it with your mum?
Good, okay.
Harry's class was going to visit a farm.
'What animals will we see on the farm?'
asked their teacher, Miss Brown, as they got on the school minibus.
'We'll see lambs,' said Lucy.
Good girl.
'We'll see ducks...
- Not ducks. - Ducklings,' said Ray.
Good girl. Not Ray. This is a tricky one.
What's the last letter?
- Raj. - Good. That was a tricky one.
'We'll see piglets,' said the twins, Polly and Vaughan.
But Harry had other ideas. 'We'll see tigers,' he said.
'Don't be silly, Harry,' said Miss Brown.
'Tigers don't live on farms.'
Harry made a grumpy face. He liked tigers.
Good girl. Let's stop there for a second.
I'm now going to ask you to spell some words for me.
Okay? Good. So do you want to close your book, for me?
Fantastic.
We're going to write on the back of this paper.
So can you spell for me the word...
rock.
Good girl. Well done.
And tent.
Good girl, excellent.
And slip.
Good. And one more. Bank.