Learners with Educational Health and Care plans are increasingly being included within mainstream settings across the UK. Gov.uk suggests that 52.7% of learners with an EHCp attend mainstream education. These statistics must lead us to challenge the perception that learners with Special Education Needs (SEN) cannot thrive in a mainstream setting. Rather, the focus now should be providing settings with evidence-based strategies designed to enhance learners’ proficiency in various areas, including self-management, daily living skills, academics, play and social skills, with a key focus on communication.

An evidence-based strategy with significant effects on communication, social skills, and positive behaviour is the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS)1. Speech and Language Therapists, Early Intervention Specialists, and Behaviour Analysts commonly endorse PECS in mainstream settings. The query then arises: How can this strategy be implemented in a class of 30 children?

Preparation of Materials

Start enriching the environment by offering choices within activities. Choices could be offered within the materials available for example have teddy bears, blocks and Numicon as options for counting. Choices could also be offered within the activity itself; when playing football in P.E., there is a choice to kick the ball between one another, kick the ball into the goal or kick the ball with the teacher.

Another suggestion to ensure you capture all communication opportunities across the day is to have blank pictures at hand that can be drawn on during incidental communication opportunities. Later these can be replaced with the standardised symbol; perhaps every couple of weeks staff can get together to print and laminate these, we recommend doing this with pizza and drinks!

Lesson Extension Activities

Most lessons usually have planned extension activities, something that learners can do if they finish the structured work sooner than the end of the lesson. Make your extension activities play based facilitating students playing alongside a PECS user. This is beneficial to both, the learner using PECS who can acquire social communication skills and the other students who learn how to include a range of peers in their games.

Gather Your Little Helpers

There are perceived social barriers and common misconceptions about learners with SEN in mainstream education. For example, learners with SEN avoid their peers, peers choose not to interact with learners with SEN and parents thinking that their children are missing out by spending time helping a learner with SEN. These misconceptions and fears can be squashed by setting small but regular teaching opportunities2 and by creating an open dialogue with families.

Differentiation

Typically developing children can learn from well-established teaching methods in mainstream education due to core skills such as imitation, matching, responding to questions, listening to instructions and an ability to connect vast concepts. A learner with SEN may not be able to do this, for example they could tell you a cat is a type of animal when asked, what is a type of animal? But when asked what a cat is, they may not answer a type of animal.

With more SEN learners in a classroom, the teacher must consider more methods of differentiating learning than they may have done previously. A learner can show  understanding through a variety of pathways, as shown in the table below.

Lesson Concept

1

2

3

4
Body Parts Labelling body parts in a worksheet Point to body parts on their body Picking up the body parts of Mr Potato Head when asked ‘Can I have his nose’ Asking for a certain body part to be ticked e.g., tickle arm

 

Incorporating small changes coupled with evidence-based strategies holds the potential to bring about significant improvements in the learning environment.

As the numbers of learners with SEN accessing mainstream education rises, it’s imperative to reassess the system enabling the creation of an inclusive and effective learning environment for all.
If you would like to discuss your challenges, hear potential solutions and learn more, sign up for our new talk Picture Exchange Communication in Mainstream Education which takes a deeper dive into the topics discussed here.

References
1. Bondy, A. S. and Frost, L. A., 1998, The Picture Exchange Communication System. Seminars in Speech and Language, 19, 373–389

2. Thiemann-Bourque K. (2012). Peer-Mediated AAC Instruction for Young Children with Autism and other Developmental Disabilities. Perspectives on augmentative and alternative communication, 21(4), 10.1044/aac21.4.159. https://doi.org/10.1044/aac21.4.159

By Grace Payne, MSC, BCBA