23 October 1998

Sue Palmer opens up the literacy hour to pupils with learning difficulties.

The Government's literacy strategy aims to reduce that "long tail of under-achievement" which has bedevilled primary education for so long, and ensure that fewer children end up on the special needs register. In the meantime, teachers still have to cater for many children with reading difficulties.

Shared text work
Most teachers I have talked to feel special needs children benefit from this part of the hour. Watching the teacher demonstrate literacy skills helps them develop a range of strategies, rather than relying on their traditional "minimal phonics plus maximum guesswork" technique. Support from the teacher and others also allows them to join in studying texts they couldn't read independently.....

Group time
There's a danger that, while the teacher is working with other pupils, the low-ability group will be kept busy with low-level "holding activities". To avoid this, the class teacher and the special educational needs co-ordinators (SENCOs) can create a group education plan (GEP), subsuming the requirements of group members' IEPs. Directed independent work can then be planned in two ways: As a 20-minute follow-up to the shared work in class, homing in on an aspect of the GEP.

As a longer-term task (perhaps related to a published special needs programme, and perhaps supervised by a classroom assistant), set on Monday to be completed through the week. Some schools are also using this 20 minutes for a structured intervention programme, such as Catch-Up or THRASS. These programmes often involve withdrawal from the classroom to work with trained assistants. They should, however, be for a specified time, and children's progress should be carefully monitored.....

THRASS (01829 741413)

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