Many children with autism struggle with reading comprehension abilities throughout their school years.
In language development, narrative skills are a pre-reading skill, such as retelling the events of a story in order and understanding how the parts of a story work together. Inference skills develop early in reading and include the ability to link the ideas in two sentences together.
For children with autism, challenges with these two early skills were linked strongly with reading comprehension challenges as they got older. (Grimm, McIntrye and Mundy, 2020)
The Reading Framework Report published by the Department of Education in July 2023 emphasises the value of reading comprehension in supporting SEN pupils. Their suggestions for mainstream classroom teaching adaptions include group or peer reading, utilising audio, visual aids such as picture books, graphic organisers, flow charts and diagrams; multi-sensory stimulation of several senses to help convey meaning and dedicating enough time for reading for pleasure at school and at home.
The Language, Literacy and Communication team have introduced an intervention this year to improve reading and language outcomes for children with Down Syndrome this year. We are using The Reading and Language Intervention for Children with Down Syndrome (RLI) developed by DSE UK.
The intervention is an evidenced-based teaching programme which supplements and supports regular teaching with daily 1:1 intervention sessions and is carefully targeted to the needs of each pupil.
We are currently working with 10 primary schools, and about 17 pupils, and we look forward to seeing how well they progress.
We offer 2 half day training days, as well as visiting schools before and after the intervention begins to provide support and guidance to the Teaching Assistants running the programme.
We hope to run the programme again in the Autumn term for any schools that did not take part in the first cohort.
Please note we are only currently offering this to Tower Hamlets Schools but if numbers allow, this may change.
World Book Day, Thursday March 7th, is about celebrating books and reading all year round.The best way you can support your child’s reading is by encouraging a love of reading, and spending time looking through books, talking about the pictures and story, and reading together each day
Children with SEND needs lots of repetition and over- learning of reading skills, both at school and at home. Reading is about much more than getting your child to read to you, it is just as beneficial for you to read to them, particularly early on.
Here is our latest powerpoint from our 5 minutes for inclusion series
‘What is the impact of Speech Language and Communication Needs (SLCN) on children’s mental health and well-being?’
This presentation looks at both the risk factors, the protective factors and the wider impact on mental health and well-being for young people with SLCN.
Josie worked as a Careers Advisor and librarian before starting the Home Ed Life blog. Her website is full of current advice, unpicks the legal requirements and points you in the direction of free resources to teach the way you want to, enrich your child’s learning but also prepare them for statutory examinations.
Give your child the chance to read each day (10 minutes is fine) Read stories to your child (three short stories before bedtime goes down a treat) Cook with your child (preparing a meal, operating the microwave or weighing and measuring are great opportunities for learning mathematics) Buy bread and milk (or other basics) on the way home from school. Doing this in person at the shop using loose change is great ‘real life’ mathematics Have fun. Playing games, taking turns, watching TV together and dressing up are great ways to support your child Write shopping lists, keep diaries, write letters and invitations to inspire you child to write.
There are lots of ideas on this 50 Ways to Learn poster that you could also use at home.
Anson Primary school has a great range of resources. Check their website:
Linda Hall and Tracey Grant from the Language, Literacy and Communication Team led training on Word Aware, a structured whole school approach to promote the vocabulary development of all children. Focused on whole class learning, the resource is of particular value for those who start at a disadvantage – including children with Developmental Language Disorder, Special Educational Needs and those who speak English as an additional language, but it will extend the word learning of all students.
Practical, inspiring and fun ideas were explored that can be easily applied by busy classroom practitioners to develop both spoken and written vocabulary.
Remi Atoyebi (Headteacher), Helen Vail and Tracey Grant (Language, Literacy and Communication Team Learning Advisory Service Advisory teacher for inclusion).
Contact linda.hall@towerhamlets.gov.uk for further information if you are interested in booking this training for your school.
Enjoy a light-hearted illustrated children’s book about climate change and caring for our animals that is perfect for inspiring the next Greta Thunberg or David Attenborough.
‘The 2023 analysis of Key Stage 2 SATs scores showed a correlation between levels of affluence and success on the tests. Schools in poorer areas did less well – an ongoing trend.This year, teachers and parents voiced concerns regarding the perceived unfairness and difficulty of the KS2 Reading test. These concerns centre on the length of the texts used, but some pointed out that the content reflected middle class experiences and language.
If the desire is to continue with an end-of-key stage reading test then greater thought needs to be given to the content of the texts used. One option would be to provide Year 6 teachers with a theme at the start of the academic year which will eventually be used in the SAT. This would create a more universal knowledge base, and also mitigate against teaching to the test to some extent.
Alternatively, topics should be chosen which a greater number of children are likely to have knowledge about. Over a million children in the last year have been supported by food banks. Perhaps texts about visiting food banks might reveal more about children’s actual reading ability than texts about visiting caves in Derbyshire.’
Immersive Reader is a powerful reading support tool built into many Microsoft programs, including Word, PowerPoint, OneNote, Teams and Edge. The tool provides a set of features that support reading that are particularly useful for people with literacy difficulties. Best of all, it’s bundled with 365 for free!
The features available within Immersive Reader varies between programs, and you can see them on the Microsoft Immersive Reader webpage. They generally fall into:
Text-to-Speech. The natural reading voices really are very good.
Coloured themes.
Different fonts, text sizes and spacing for text.
Line focus.
Picture support.
Turn on Immersive Reader
Click on “View” and then “Immersive Reader”
Access text preferences
Try the different text preferences.
Text size – between 14 and 96 point.
Increase spacing – between letters, words and lines of text
Font – choose between Calibri, Sitka and Comic Sans
Themes – change the background colour. Many learners find black on white text challenging.
Grammar options
And the grammar options…
Syllables – break words into syllables to aid decoding.
Parts of Speech – colour and/or label nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs.
Reading Preferences
Line Focus – You can highlight one, three of five lines of text. You can move the highlight up or down using the arrow keys on the keyboard.
Picture Dictionary – Use Boardmaker symbols when a word is clicked on. Also listen to any word in isolation.
Translate – Translate text into one of 100 languages.
As mentioned – Immersive Reader is available in all the office apps. It’s also within the Edge browser on websites that have enabled it. Look out for the Immersive Reader icon in the right-hand side of the address bar.
