Supporting learners with SEND & English as an additional language

This case study from Abbeyfield Primary School details the approaches taken to ensure students with special educational needs and English as an additional language can achieve in computing lessons.

Abbeyfield Primary Academy in Sheffield serves an area of high social disadvantage and has a high of proportion children with English as an additional language (around 60%). Approximately 20% of pupils have SEN support, and the school has recently opened a PRU (pupil referral unit) for pupils with social, emotional and mental health (SEMH) needs.

Barriers to learning

The first thing to acknowledge is that computing is incredibly popular with all of our learners at Abbeyfield, including those with SEND, due to its accessible nature. The cause-and-effect nature of activities with instant feedback can be incredibly motivating for children. The main barrier faced by learners in the school is around language – whether that is due to English not being the first language of the child, or a pupil having additional learning needs. Many pupils struggle to understand specific concepts, but also the language used in instructions. In addition, we have some learners that, for many reasons, can hyper-fixate on digital technology. For this group, the transition from computing time to another subject that doesn’t use the technology can be very difficult in terms of emotional regulation. We have had to ensure that we have clear time limits and boundaries with these learners, and use devices in short bursts.

Routine is very important for learners who struggle with emotional regulation around the use of computers. Computing lessons are taught at the same time every week and transitions are managed carefully to manage expectations. We teach about healthy routines where boundaries may be missing at home around digital wellbeing. At the same time, the aim is to get hands-on with technology as often as possible in computing lessons, to practise key skills and help reduce the digital divide between those who have access to devices at home and those that don’t – which often includes pupils with SEND.

There is a school-wide focus on vocabulary, and this is just as important in computing. When pre-teaching vocabulary, there is a focus on a specific term and it is activated using the Word Aware STAR approach – for example putting it in a sentence, practising the definition or using an image alongside the word. It is then revisited several times during the lesson. The school uses an image-supported glossary of key computing terms that includes a simple definition for learners, and this ensures that teachers can use the definitions and terms confidently and consistently.

Learning is carefully sequenced using the Teach Computing Curriculum, and it is broken down into in small steps to support comprehension of the key learning. Teachers use low-stakes quizzing at the start of lessons to activate the key information into long-term memory. This can also help teachers to understand any gaps in knowledge, which is particularly important with a transient school population, as we have many learners who may have accessed very different curricula (some from other countries) before arriving with us.

Making computing impactful

A key approach across school is modelling, and this works particularly well in a practical subject like computing, where teachers can model the steps in using a piece of software or how to build up the elements of a program in, for example, Scratch.

The PRIMM framework is very useful for this as it provides different ways for children to interact with code, rather than just copying what the teacher does. The children have the opportunity to predict what a program does first, then they can run and investigate code. They can then modify working programs, which reduces the risk of failure for learners, before making their own programs. This framework also gives pupils a specific task to complete that can help with focus. Parson’s Problems, where you put mixed up code into the right order to create a working program, are incredibly helpful for children that can get dysregulated if the level of challenge is perceived to be too high - for example some autistic learners or those with specific SEMH needs. Having a go at a Parson’s Problem or investigating working code feels more achievable as all the components are already provided, and it sits in their zone of proximal development.

Unplugged activities are regularly used to help learners begin to understand a concept or for demonstrating a concept in more detail. They help to develop the idea that computing doesn’t have to take place just on a laptop, and that debugging and prediction are approaches that are used computing, but that also work in terms of their reading, for example. You are also then using the language of computing in lots of different contexts, which helps learners to unpack and repack what those core concepts mean. This links back to the glossaries and the consistent definitions that they will meet repeatedly as they move through school.

The children really enjoy programming, specifically any projects with Scratch, as it’s such an engaging piece of software: it's very colourful, it's very intuitive, it makes sense. They also enjoy using the micro:bits - writing the code and then seeing the output physically in real life has been quite mind-blowing for them. Children have a real sense of achievement and can celebrate successful outcomes.

In key stage 1 they love the Bee Bots. Pupils can quickly see the input turned into output, and can achieve success in such a short period of time. Physical computing devices like this also put all learners on a level playing field, because even if they can't yet communicate fully in spoken English, they can express themselves effectively by drawing the arrows or putting the code cards in order. Pupils also particularly love the Bee-bot activity where they make their own story, create their own grids and program the Bee-bot to move from one place to another. This is an example of all children having the same objective, but it's tailored to their specific interests.

A sense of belonging

Computing levels the field for our young people, as they don’t need to be able to speak in full sentences or write paragraphs to demonstrate what they know. It also fosters a positive classroom culture, because children will often be working together collaboratively, for example, if they're sharing a laptop. We use the pair programming approach where they have the specific roles of driver and navigator, and this also helps children to learn how to self-regulate and self-monitor these kind of interactions between people, and how to communicate better with a partner. Specific rules of collaboration are important for our learners, plus they have clear boundaries around the amount of time before swapping over with the time is displayed on the board. We also provide sentence stems to support learners in discussions, which the teacher will model first.

We make sure that we're including key vocabulary at the start of lessons, then activate and review it over time. We break down the lessons into much smaller chunks, as there's often a lot of content to get through and a lot of language that can be quite overwhelming for many of our children. We try to minimise the cognitive load for some of our children, particularly those with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), by reducing the amount of information on a slide as well.