Dyslexia - Inclusion in the primary classroom - Clip 1

Croxteth Primary School in Liverpool has worked hard to achieve dyslexia-friendly status. In this video we see Doreen, a learning mentor, using dyslexia-friendly strategies in a lesson on SEAL, the social and emotional aspects of learning. She's with a group of Year 4 children. I want you to shut your eyes and I want you to have a little think. Everybody shut their eyes. Try and imagine what it was like when you were in Year 3. You were all little tiny people in Year 3. You were over in the other side of the building in Year 3. Try and remember what it was like being you then. Now, bring your minds forward to today. Can you see how many things have changed? I want you to open your eyes, I want you to have a think and I'd like you to put your hands up, and without shouting out I would like every single one of us to think of a change that's happened from Year 3 to now. In this lesson we began by recapping on ideas we had previously discussed with the children. We'd already given them the idea to think about change, how change is imposed upon them within school, the timetable, dinner times, whether they go to do PE, whether it rains, indeed, and we don't get a playtime at all. And we also talked generally about the changes that happen to ourselves as physical beings. So at the beginning of the lesson we recapped on all of that information simply to provide a basis for further thought and further development of the idea. Then each of the children sat and listened once again to the story and each of the children then had an opportunity to talk about the changes that had occurred in the Year 4 class. Obviously they were very different. All children have very different experiences of school, in Year 4 in particular. And then we decided that each group would concentrate on one aspect of the story and work on that one aspect and use their partners to get down their ideas and then we would share those ideas with the group and recap and reinforce the message and then give an opportunity to think about the subject that we're going to talk about next week, which is discussing change. Mary, what's changed from Year 3 to here? - The classroom. - The classroom has changed. Where was your old classroom? - Down in the Infants. - The Infants. And what else is different about this room? - It's got different kinds of colour in. - It has, indeed. It has. - What about you, Kelsey? - Different teacher. You've got a different teacher. - Different play yards. - A different play yard. - Emma? - The work. The work. Has the work changed? - Has it got harder? - Yeah. - How about you, Joseph? - Better at football. You're better at football now than you were in Year 3? - Yeah. - Great stuff. - Different people. - Different people. Was that an easy change to make or a hard change? - A hard one. - A hard change to make. Now, we were talking before about all the different types of change that we can have. Can anybody remember the word we used that means we didn't choose to change? What sort of change is that? It's an "I" sound at the beginning. - Imposed. - Well done. An imposed change. What I want you to do is, on the sheet of paper you've got in front of you, we're all supporting each other to do a whole pile of work about changes. OK? Now, I'm going to ask you if you would like some plain paper for those of us who find it much easier to do sketches than it is for us to write. Can I ask you to give paper out to everybody, please, Kelsey? Everybody's to have a piece of plain paper and this paper is for us to jot down our ideas and to practise our spellings.