Research School Network: A balanced diet in the classroom: implementing the ‘Five-a-day’ principle to support SEND students The Five-a-day principle
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A balanced diet in the classroom: implementing the ‘Five-a-day’ principle to support SEND students
The Five-a-day principle
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by Lincolnshire Research School
on the
Chris Bugh
Assistant Headteacher
Chris Bugh is the Assistant Headteacher of Brookvale Groby Learning Campus, where he has the responsibility for Teaching and Learning as well as Reading and Literacy.
Ever heard the one about doctors and teachers? It compares a doctor treating one patient at a time to a teacher managing 30‘patients’ simultaneously — a skewed analogy, perhaps, but it highlights the challenge. Teaching a diverse group of students, each with unique needs, moods, and ambitions, can be overwhelming. Within this complexity are our SEND students, whose needs often span multiple dimensions. As a parent to a dyslexic child with additional SEMH struggles, I’ve seen first-hand how layered these challenges can be — and even as an involved parent, I don’t always have the answers. So the pressing question is: how do we help teachers support SEND students effectively when they’re already juggling so much?
Not an easy question to answer which is why the ‘Five-a-day’ principle from the EEF’s guidance Special Educational Needs in Mainstream Schools caught my attention. It’s a simplified model for guiding high-quality classroom practice, with a particular benefit for our SEND students. But in fact, applied well, what is good for our SEND students is good for everyone.
The growing need at SEND level has meant that our school (and probably many others) has made SEND a core feature of our CPD offer. Equipping our staff with the best evidence-based approaches to supporting SEND has been a key priority on our School Improvement Plan for a significant number of years.
A Reflective Tool
In recent times, we have planned and sequenced a series of CPD sessions drawing upon the ‘Five-a-day’ toolkit, dissecting the principles and reflecting on current and good practice. Have you ever considered how easy it is for your words to be misinterpreted? How many times have you had to explain something again, and in a different format? How often have you had to recover from “choppy time”, that hubbub which can ensue from a poor sequencing of instructions? Explicit instruction is complex. And what about your classroom environment and all those distractors, such as animations on slides, which can impact cognitive load and metacognition.
Another way we have enhanced our CPD offer on this front is through the use of video footage. I have always felt that CPD is stronger when we tell and show, as opposed to just telling. The 4th principle of the approach, Flexible Grouping, spurned us to think about how we, as teachers, might deploy LSAs and TAs effectively. We captured a series of videos which supported reflection on some pertinent questions:
How should an LSA move around the classroom? Do they always need to work 1:2:1 for the whole lesson? What sorts of interactions should they have? What props do they need?
One vital message we wanted to communicate was that LSAs are not a substitute for the teachers themselves, a crucial recommendation in the recently published Deployment of Teaching Assistants Guidance report.
A really useful aid to support this work is the new EEF ‘Effective teacher – Teaching Assistant partnerships’ discussion tool. We have found that offering a clear set of principles for how we want our LSAs to operate within the classroom has helped to lay solid foundations for effective partnerships.
Spin-offs
Initial professional conversations surrounding the ‘Five-a-day’ led to CPD ‘spin-offs’. For example, having reflected on the fifth principle, Using Technology, it became clear that staff were mostly under skilled in the use of Reader Pens, a piece of technology for which approximately 35 of our pupils use, a number which is likely to grow in the years to come. Subsequently, we designed CPD on the subject of Reader Pens where staff were able to spend dedicated hands-on time getting to grips (pardon the pun!) with how they worked.
To further embed the qualities of the ‘Five-a-day’ principle we created a tool for supporting lesson visits. Quality Assurance, I hear you say…? Well, yes, a bit. Yet, the spirit is not punitive, rather supportive, enabling reflective dialogue. As a leader, this mechanism has been useful for capturing best practice.
Final Thoughts
There is, of course, no magic bullet here. However, as leaders and teachers it is essential we use accurate diagnosis and support learning through quality tools, such as the ‘Five-a-day’ approach, and real-life exemplification of their application as part of CPD to share and develop best practice across our setting.
