EPISODE NOTES
In this episode, Claire talks with Helene Cohen: an experienced teacher and special educational needs expert.
Helene talks about how her own first-hand experience of special educational needs – growing up with dyslexia without realising it – has given her unique perspectives on ways to make education and teaching as inclusive as possible. For a significant period of her life Helene labelled herself as ‘stupid’ seeing her classmates and others around her seemingly reading and understanding things much more quickly. While her dyslexia  created (and continues to create) additional challenges, Helene qualified as a teacher, became a Special Educational Needs coordinator, and eventually undertook a doctorate.
Helene discusses how, as a part of her own journey becoming a teacher and gaining her doctorate, she discovered her own dyslexia and moved into working as a tutor, consultant and INSET speaker for special educational needs.
Throughout the podcast, Helene shares a wide range of ideas for including those with additional needs: involving children in activities or discussions where they cannot verbalise their thoughts, how to include children with dyslexia in English lessons where there can be anxieties around being involved, and ideas for how to make resources more accessible.
 
KEY TAKEAWAYS

Keep as many people as possible in a school up-to-date with SEN.Ensuring that everyone in school is involved with developments in special educational needs issues can be crucial. Depending on the children and individual cases, it can be incredibly beneficial to make sure that all who might come into contact with certain children are aware of the specific children, their needs, and how to interact with them. For example, with situational mutism, it is not just the class teacher that needs to know about the condition and who is affected; all teachers, dinner-staff and office workers who might need to interact with the child could also need to be aware. While there could well be cases where widespread knowledge is not appropriate, whole-school awareness could apply to a range of other SEN issues as well.
Look for ways to make sure that those with SEN are as included as possible.Children who have special educational needs will, likely, be aware that they find things more challenging than others and can feel very anxious about how they are perceived. Taking this worry out of lessons by thinking about how children might participate can mean that children are more engaged with what’s happening. For example, allowing children to take different roles in group or class discussions rather than expecting everyone to contribute to writing or reading could mean that a dyslexic child, who can verbalise their thoughts very eloquently, would not be worried about having to write anything. Equally, a child with situational mutism could be solely responsible for scribing their thoughts and what others say rather than feeling on-the-spot about having to verbalise their opinion.
Making resources as accessible as possible.Try to make sure that resources in class are not ‘overloaded’ in terms of how much there is to read or take in. For reading resources, using images that tell a story alongside the text can be really beneficial. Colour coding (such as alternating colours on lists of bullet pointed items) can help to segment the points and make them easier to distinguish. Taking care with the layout can also make resources more accessible such as being consistent with the placement of things that appear on multiple ‘slides’. In particular, not varying these for autistic children who might struggle to focus if elements move.The language we use can also be something to be mindful of. An example would be that asking a child to ‘think’ about something is not the same as asking them for an answer.

 
BEST MOMENTS
“That's something I'm getting really fed up with at the moment: the pressure to catch up because children have missed a few months of schooling.