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OAIP

Accessing the curriculum

What is accessing the curriculum?

Accessing the curriculum relates to the impact of literacy difficulties on a child or young person’s progress within and access to the wider curriculum, and their feelings about themselves as a learner.

  • Identification – what you may see in the child or young person

    • Doesn’t enjoy reading or avoids reading.
    • Is reluctant to read aloud in class.
    • Is not able to read the text needed to access the wider curriculum.
    • Their difficulties with literacy are impacting on their self-esteem.
    • Their written output doesn’t match their oral output – in terms of quality and/or quantity.
    • Can’t read back their own writing.
    • Their writing can’t be read by others.
    • May be anxious about writing, reluctant to write, or may avoid writing altogether.

  • Planned provision in school

    Based on need, some of this provision will be effective.

    • Support reading aloud. Check in advance whether the child or young person is comfortable reading aloud in front of their peers – don’t put them on the spot. If they volunteer to read aloud try to ensure that they can read the text easily.
    • Be flexible about homework expectations. Responding to individual needs and circumstances, and liaising with parents about reading at home and homework can help this be a positive experience for the child or young person.
    • Provide access to audiobooks, ideally with ‘Immersive Reading’ options so the child or young person can follow the text as they listen to it being read with good prosody.
    • Support independent reading. If a child or young person is not able to read a piece of text independently, scaffold via pre-teaching, reading it to them, or allowing them to work with a supportive peer.
    • Provide a reading pen to support independence, keeping in mind that reading pens are best used to help a child or young person read ‘the odd word’ that they cannot decode independently, rather than for reading out whole sentences or paragraphs.
    • Increase opportunities to record and share ideas in different ways, not just via print – for example;
      • recording onto tape
      • pictures and diagrams (for example timelines, tables, posters, flow charts)
      • Book Creator
      • mind maps and supporting software (for example, Kidspiration)
      • storyboards
      • bullet-pointed lists
      • PowerPoint presentations
      • oral presentations
    • Scribe where appropriate – ideally with the adult typing alongside the child or young person rather than writing for them, so they can play a more active role in the process.
    • Provide extra time or adjust expectations regarding quantity for writing tasks, so that the child or young person can finish in the time available.
    • Eliminate unnecessary writing tasks, such as writing the learning objective, title or full date. Minimise ‘copying’, and if it is required, then provide prompts on the child or young person’s table, rather than on the IWB or wall.
    • Use ICT to support reading and recording. Teach children and young people to use this as independently as possible:
      • text-to-speech functions (for example, Microsoft’s Immersive Reader)
      • voice-to-text functions
      • typing
      • Clicker
    • Provide regular keyboard fluency sessions. Ensure that you establish a baseline typing speed so that progress can be monitored. The following programmes are free to use:
    • Mark work positively, with a focus on content. Identify one success, provide one tip or suggest one target. Write comments above, below or beside the body of the text, not all over the child or young person own writing.
    • Provide access arrangements for tests as needed.
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