The role of the teacher in planning and organisation
The role of the teacher in planning and organizing for pupils’ progression has changed considerably over the past twenty years. While the teacher once had much more control and decision regarding both curriculum and how that curriculum was implemented, national standards now guide both local authorities (LEAs) and individual teachers in their planning and organisation (Bage, Grosvernor and Williams 1999).
This has produced both benefits and drawbacks. Many teachers plan more thoroughly and a standardisation has occurred from school to school and class to class through the national guidelines. The National Curriculum is divided into teachable segments, with teachers responsible for planning and teaching each segment in a way best suited to their students and teaching style (DfES 2005). However, government and educational authorities often advocate teachers produce linear, formulaic lesson plans and student progress plans, in which pre-ordained objectives for children’s learning are dominant (Bage, Grosvernor and Williams 1999, 50).
Teachers need to allow for flexibility in their planning, so they can respond to the children’s interests and any unpredicted learning needs presenting during the lesson. How an individual teacher plans and responds to pupils during a lesson, therefore, is and should be variable. Bage, Grosvernor, and Williams, in their study of primary teacher’s planning and the National Curriculum, found teacher planning remains a complex, variable and necessarily individualised activity (1999, 49).
As the DfES Special Educational Needs Code of Practice acknowledges, At the heart of the work of every primary school class is a continuous cycle of planning, teaching and assessing which takes account of the wide range of abilities aptitudes and interests of children (2001, 44). With current inclusion policies, this planning and organisation becomes even more vital to the individual teacher, as does the roles of the special needs coordinator and learning support assistant. Special needs students with emotional, behavioural, mental, or physical disability are now often mainstreamed for at least part of their school day. Gifted children are also often in the same classroom and also need support, but a different kind (DfES 2004). This makes planning lessons that service all pupils a complex and often difficult task. The teaching is also one that could rarely be performed effectively by only one instructor (Bage, Grosvernor and Williams 1999). Hence, all three adults must work together to ensure pupils’ progress at an appropriate rate, balancing the special needs pupil’s entitlement and the needs of the broader class.
All mainstream schools are required to appoint a special needs coordinator from amongst their staff. The coordinator ensures the school’s special education needs policy (SEN policy) is properly carried out, and acts as a liaison between pupils, parents, school staff, and any external agencies that may be involved (DfES 2005). In addition, the coordinator often acts as an advocate for special needs students, aiding in both their empowerment and success in the academic community (Parker 2000).
The special needs coordinator can be an aide to the classroom teacher in planning lessons that include all the students in that particular classroom. First, the coordinator is well versed in the school’s SEN policy, and able to direct the classroom teacher on how to be sure each student receives his or her full entitlement. The coordinator has access to full test and assessment results for an individual student and can explain these to the teacher, who may have less background in special needs students. This is particularly important for children whose difficulties may be less visible, such as those who learn slowly or are emotionally vulnerable (DfES 2005). This enables the teacher and coordinator to work together on implementing individual education plans (IEPs), application of the LEA’s behavioural support plan (BSP), and similar inclusion activities (DfES 2005).
DfES guidelines call for the special needs coordinator, classroom teacher, and head teacher to work together to service a special needs child starting primary school. This includes identifying areas where the child needs support, developing starting points based on the child’s past educational experience, administering curricular and baseline assessments and providing for ongoing assessment, using the outcomes of these assessments to plan the child’s learning programme, and involving the parents, if possible, to ensure proper support at home of the child’s learning programme (DfES 2001).
Most importantly, the special needs coordinator can assist the teacher in planning a balanced teaching plan, allowing for both the special needs students and regular students in a particular class to have maximum learning opportunity. For example, suppose a young boy is constantly acting out and disrupting classroom activities. The special needs coordinator could discuss the situation with the teacher and parents, and arrange for the boy to have a behavioural assessment. The coordinator could then explain results of the assessment to both the parents and teacher, and to some extent to the child if appropriate.
The coordinator could then assist the teacher and parents in drafting a plan to deal with the boy’s behavioural issues, including classroom management, activities the parents could implement at home, and possibly involvement of external agencies. This allows both the boy to receive the help he needs, and the other students in the class to have a non-disruptive educational experience where their teacher can provide them with the learning opportunities they deserve. The coordinator is vital to both the teacher being able to properly plan learning activities with such a student in his or her class, and to the student receiving all the inclusion and support to which he is entitled (DfES 2005).
While instrumental in the planning, assessment, and referral processes, the special needs coordinator rarely participates in the execution of these plans and learning activities, however, as he or she is responsible for policy implementation across the entire school (DfES 2005). Much of the implementation of inclusion planning, therefore, falls on the learning support assistant or assistants within the individual classroom.
The learning support assistant supports the teacher, pupil, and school in the individual classroom (DfES 2004). They may support the teacher by helping to prepare or execute a lesson, The learning assistant is often called upon to provide individual attention for a student unable to keep pace on his or her own with the rest of the class. The LSA also assists students in behavioural management and similar issues (Woolfson and Truswell 2005). These activities contribute to the overall effectiveness of the school, enabling it to provide appropriate and quality educational opportunities for all its students.
While the learning support assistant is typically more involved in the execution of a learning plan rather than its creation, many classroom teachers involve their LSAs in creating their lesson and learning plans (Woolfson and Truswell 2005). The planning process varies from teacher to teacher, with no overall guidelines for LSA’s involvement. Even when learning support assistants are not directly involved, however, their feedback can and should be used by the teacher in creating lesson plans and the teacher(s) and special needs coordinator in developing individual education plans. This feedback is a result of observation, another important function of the learning support assistant (DfES 2004). In a class of often thirty or more students, one teacher cannot always observe and provide feedback for every student during an activity. The learning support assistant can provide feedback to both the pupil and the teacher regarding the pupil’s strengths, weaknesses, and overall progress. Learning support assistant observation offers dependable evidence of the pupil’s progress on a given component of the curriculum, enabling the teacher, special needs coordinator, and others involved to properly amend or update the pupil’s individual learning plan (DfES 2004). This information becomes vital to the overall planning process.
Although the impact of the addition of learning support assistant varies, most were found to benefit pupils’ progress in the classroom. They were also effective in assisting students with social and personal difficulties in the classroom setting (Woolfson and Truswell 2005). In the hypothetical case of the boy with behavioural problems described above, the learning support assistant could provide feedback, for example, when the boy was starting to evidence behavioural issues and thereby assist the child in addressing the events leading to his outbursts and controlling his response to them. How he or she would accomplish this would be laid out in the plan developed by the teacher and special needs coordinator (DfES 2004). In another example, a learning support assistant could work one-on-one with a student or group of students behind the rest of the class in reading skills. A recent study showed that LSAs could be used effectively in phonic interventions, allowing struggling students to improve decoding and reading skills, and be returned to mainstream classroom activities (Savage and Carless 2005).
In conclusion, the complexity of today’s classroom makes it almost impossible for a single teacher to provide optimum learning opportunities for the wide range of students he or she teaches. The special needs coordinator and learning support assistant play a vital role in both assisting the teacher in planning and implementing classroom activities, and in providing special needs children within the class with the full inclusion to which they are entitled.
Tags: aptitudes, lesson plans, national curriculum, pupils, special needs, standardisation, student progress, teachers
