Building Understanding

Changes and Transitions (Secondary)

Reading together: 'This Is Me'

Comprehension & recounting Stories: 'This Is Me'

Writing: 'This Is Me' (A Portrait/Avatar)

Composition: 'This Is Me' (Autobiography)

Celebrations and Festivals (Secondary)

Comprehension: Scrooge from Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol'

Writing: Festive cards

Reading and composition: Festive food recipes

Speaking skills: Party conversation

Clothes and Fashion (Secondary)

Reading together: 'My Mum and Dad Make Me Laugh'

Key verbs and positional language: Fashion show!

Key verbs and positional language: Upcycling clothing

Writing for a purpose: Fashion show posters

Seasons (Secondary)

Comprehension: 'Autumn Fires'

Reading and writing: Combining two words

Composition: The weather forecast

Writing and performing: Poem

Our World (Secondary)

Comprehension: 'The Drum', a tale from India

Reading and writing: The Leader Says...

Exploring other cultures

Descriptive writing: Drums

Holidays (Secondary)

Reading together: 'The Beach'

Positional language: Packing for a holiday (Role Play)

Composition and writing: Packing for a holiday

Storytelling: 'My Day Out'

Changes and Transitions (Primary)

Text sharing: Growing Up

Story recall

Matching symbols and objects

Making a photo album

Celebrations and Festivals (Primary)

Instructional Texts: Creating a Card

Following a recipe

Turn taking skills

Clothes and Fashion (Primary)

Text sharing: Dressing up

Using puppets to stimulate conversation

Making a sock puppet

Sequencing simple instructions when making your sock puppet

Seasons (Primary)

Text sharing rhyming books: 'Up, Down, Around'

Instructional texts: Planting seeds

Writing and performing: A simple colour poem

Our World (Primary)

Language comprehension and sharing chants: 'We're Going on a Lion Hunt', a sensory story

Matching symbols to sequence story

Following symbol and verbal directions

Holidays (Primary)

Story time and travel

Packing for a holiday

Writing for a purpose: Lists

Story telling: A day out

﻿My name's Alison. And I'm the subject lead for the specialist communication and language department here at Oak National Academy. I am delighted to be able to introduce to you the work of our department. Myself and eight special teachers have worked tirelessly to pull together a series of lessons to support schools and families with further learning opportunities. This is particularly important at a time when you may find that you're spending more extended periods of time learning in the home environment. Teaching pupils with special educational needs is extremely personalised and one size does not fit all. Therefore, what we have produced for you is a starting point. You know your child best, and therefore, you may find it necessary to adapt some of the content and the communication styles to match your child's needs. I'm now going to take you through our subject content. The Units. We have divided the curriculum into six units. Changes and Transitions, Celebrations and Festivals, Clothes and Fashion, Seasons, Our World, Holidays. These are our suggested order of units. However, you may wish to change them to match your school's own themes or topics. Early development. For each unit we are going to be delivering two lessons, a video lesson and a PowerPoint resource lesson. In our video lesson, our teachers will be sharing with you a sensory story to start the topic off. They will provide demonstrations on how to deliver a sensory story, the questions you should use and the activities you may want to include. The PowerPoint resource lesson will be fully downloadable so that you will be able to adapt this, to meet the needs of your specific learners. Each lesson will also look at the areas of engagement, initiation, persistence, exploration, anticipation, and realisation, building understanding, and applying learning. We provide secondary and primary-specific content. Each unit begins with a suggested text and the teacher will take you through the story or poem and includes support on how to use questioning and recall. The other lessons will cover content relating to sequencing, grapheme and phoneme correspondence, following instructions written and verbal, positional language, writing for a purpose, one and two level word understanding, descriptive language and recount. Each unit is split into four lessons. Lessons 1 and 2 are video lessons. Here the teacher will be visible on screen to talk you through and guide you with the lesson. Lessons 3 and 4 are PowerPoint lessons. These lessons a resource pack that take you through an activity step-by-step. These will be available to view on screen, download as a PowerPoint, so that you can adapt, and many of these will also be accompanied by downloads with principal resources. All of our lessons are accompanied by symbols. With each lesson, please use your child's preferred communication method. The Levels. The Early Development level is for pupils who are engaged in non-subject-specific study, working below pre-K stage standard 1. The pupils working at this level, the most important aspect is to ensure that they're engaged in their learning. in order to gain engagement with your child, it is essential that you use activities and stimuli that will engage and motivate your child. Engagement can be observed as five different areas. These are initiation, persistence, exploration, anticipation, and realisation. To provide you an example of what these might look like, for initiation, does your child investigate a stimulus or activity to bring about a desired outcome? Persistence. Does your child sustain their interest in a stimulus or activity? Exploration. Does your child show interest and curiosity in an activity? Anticipation. Does your child predict or associate different stimuli with activities or events? And Realisation. When your child interacts with stimuli and activities, do they show excitement, delight, or possibly fear? Pupils working at Early Development level should be given opportunities to do two different actions in a sequence, demonstrate understanding of cause and effect, make purposeful actions on their everyday environment and begin to participate with an adult in reciprocal games, begin to notice and react to a range of sensory stimuli and respond to environmental changes and to briefly focus on activities and experiences and demonstrate simple reflex responses to high contrast sensory cues. Pupils working at the building understanding level will be engaged in subject-specific content and maybe beginning to work within or working at pre-key stage standard 1. This slide provides some examples of the things your child may be able to do or is working towards. Language comprehension. They may be following single keyword instructions. Be able to indicate characters or objects in familiar text by responding to "Where is...?" questions. Show anticipation, join in with some familiar actions and words when prompted, and communicate, "Yes" and "No", In their preferred method of communication. They may also be able to demonstrate single word understanding, by answering "Who, where and what?" questions. Join in with predictable phrases, follow simple two keyword instructions, differentiate by colour, and respond to questions about immediate events. Composition. Pupils may be able to say, sign and select symbols, complete sentences. They may be able to repeat, copy and imitate single words signs or phrases, or use single words, signs and symbols for familiar objects. Pupils may also be able to say a clause to complete a sentence that's said aloud, combine two key ideas and repair communication breakdowns in their preferred method of communication. Transcription. Your pupil may be able to draw lines or shapes, give meaning to their emerging writing and understand that marks and symbols convey meaning. They may also be able to form correctly or recognise 10-plus lowercase letters and identify or write these graphemes on hearing the corresponding phonemes. They may also be using their letter knowledge in emergent writing. And for word reading, pupils will be listening and responding to familiar rhymes and stories. They'll be handling books in appropriate ways, holding them the right way up and turning pages. They may also be matching the photos. Pupils should also be given opportunities to say single sounds for the 10-plus graphemes that they know, read words by blending known graphemes with help, match and choose symbols and ask simple questions. Following on from Building Understanding, we have Applying Learning. This level would be appropriate for pupils who are working beyond pre-K stage standard 1. This slide provides some examples of what your child may already be able to do or what they are working towards. Language comprehension. Pupils will be responding to questions that require simple recall, recount a short sequence events and follow requests and instructions, with three keywords, pupils should also be given opportunities to talk about events in stories, retell some of the story and engage in role-play, responding to questions, including "Why and how?" questions. Composition. Pupils may be making up their own phrases or short sentences, writing captions or short phrases using the graphemes that they know and communicating about ideas about the past, present and future events. Pupils should also be given opportunities to make up their own sentences, say them aloud in their preferred method of communication, write down sentences and use possessives and conjunctions. Transcription. Pupils will be forming correctly lowercase letters, spelling words with known graphemes, producing their own free writing in their preferred method of communication and writing separate words. Pupils should also be given opportunities to form their lowercase letters correctly, write or identify 40-plus graphemes, spell words, identifying phonemes, spell a few common exception words, write for a range of purposes. This may include letters, lists, or stories, and begin to use upper and lowercase letters. Word reading. Pupils will be saying a single sound for graphemes, reading accurately and predicting elements of narrative. They should be able to distinguish between print and pictures in text and understand the conventions of reading, moving from left to right, top to bottom on a page. Pupils should also be given opportunities to say sounds for 40-plus graphemes, reading accurately by blending sounds in words, read some common exception words, begin to read aloud books that are consistent with their phonic knowledge and associate sounds with patterns and rhymes, with syllables and with words or symbols. You may find that your child sits between levels. This is normal development. And it may be appropriate for you to look at lesson content across the levels. If you're unsure which level to focus on, ask your child's teacher and they will be able to support you. As a parent, always speak to your child's class teacher to find out which levels and which activities would be most suitable for you to use. As a teacher, you may want to download our PowerPoint lessons and adapt these for the specific needs to your class. We hope you find all of our content of views over this next coming academic year. Sharing pupil's work with Oak National. We'd appreciate it, if you could encourage your parents and carers to share their child's work on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter by tagging @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.

Communication and Language

BU Communication and Language (Secondary)

Specialist

UNIT

In this lesson, we will explore a new book together and stop along the way to ask some questions about the text.

﻿Hello, everybody. It's good to see you all. Well, are you ready to read a story? Grade ups today, we are going to take a look at a book called "My Mum and Dad Make Me Laugh" by Nick Sharratt. And we are going to be looking at the clothing patterns that mum and dad like. So we're focusing on some keywords, spots and stripes, and we're focusing on a particular way of questioning for understandings or to guide understanding, but also to check for understanding of the text. And this is a comprehension lesson. We will use a book. It will be on the screen for you. So before we go any further, let's take a look at anything else we might need. For this lesson you will need some finger paint or motivating, messy stimulus for making spots and stripes. Those are the keywords that we're looking at in relation to the clothing that the mum and dad in the book like to wear. So before we read the book, we're going to take the opportunity to explore what spots and stripes are, and a way of doing that would be through mark making. It would also be useful to get any relevant symbols and signs ready. We will be asking questions that begin with who, what, where. We may also ask what colour or how many. So if you have symbols, signs, photographs, images that might be useful for your child, make sure that you have those as well. Next, let's take a look at how to get the room ready. Getting the room ready for learning. I would recommend reducing distractions within the room. That might mean closing the curtains so that we can't see the street outside. It may mean turning off a fan. It may mean turning off an overhead light or the television, but as well as preparing the room, we must prepare the children to be ready for learning as well. Some children will require a run around outside first to exercise their hands maybe to begin. Perhaps a snack, perhaps an opportunity to change position, to take splints off, whatever is the best position for them to be learning. You will know that best. Really important to create some interest, that curiosity and anticipation for the child by sharing the resources that you've gathered together, talking about what might happen, show the excitement. If you model how excited you are to begin, then that will be infectious. And the child will be really interested in the lesson coming up. So press pause while you get the room ready, make sure that you take the opportunity to prepare yourself as well. And we'll begin very shortly. It's time to begin. So let's get ready. Look, listen, and let's learn together. Here we go. Because the keywords in this book are descriptive words, I know the, I know the nouns, but they're describing the clothing that the grownups are wearing. This is a next step home, really. So it, it can be quite challenging for children to identify spots and stripes when it's spots on an animal, spots on clothing, spots on the floor, as opposed to just being one item that you could easily identify. So before you go any further, it's really important to check that your children know what spots are, what stripes are if I'm going to be asking to find the spots or find the stripes, or if we're going to be using that language a lot in the story. So one of the ways I would recommend doing this is through mark making. If the child has a limited, intentional even unlimited range of motion, then we can do spots creating spots together. It may just be supporting the elbow is all it takes. You can explore spotty textures with raised bumps, by using fabric paint, and various other things, or in the PE cupboard they might have those big round plastic spots that you use for standing on. So if a child is quite physically quite ambulant, quite mobile, that it might be nice to be able to stand on those spots or to play with them on a table, creating patterns. Mark making and spots, finger paints are great. You can dip your fingers in paints and then create spotty patterns by pitter-pattering with your fingers. Also a pen or a dabber with this kind of motion creates lovely spots as well. Stripes, lovely sweep motions, always nice for a back massage or a limb massage doing stripes, long motions. Again, it's something that you can do physically by placing your whole arm on the table to create stripy patterns that don't have to be parallel lines. You could also, again, using paper and use a paintbrush to create long streaks and therefore long stripes, lots of different ways of exploring and a gate or a chair that has like the chair that I'm on right now, has a stripey pattern that could be physically explored through putting hands in as well. So before you go any further with this book, it'd be really nice just to take some time to explore the concept of spots and stripes. So I hope that gives you some ideas, but let's take a look at the questions that we will be asking when we read the book as well. So the questions that we will use, well, both structure understanding for the child to guide them through, but also will help us check and assess whether or not the children understand the key words that we're using, but also the qualities of the items as well. So type number one question that I've listed down here, we'll ask the child to identify and name something. So on a very simple level, we're using nouns mostly or object words, and we're going to say to the child, can you find such and such, or where is, or you might say, what is and point to it and see if the child can generate the word, or you might say, what is, and then give the child a choice of two objects, signs, symbols, to use, to identify. The second type of question is going to ask them to understand the quality of a thing. So with the spots and the stripes that we use in this story, the spots and the stripes are qualities of other objects. So we're looking at spotty t-shirts, spotty towels, spotty wallpaper, and the same with the stripes. It's always a quality of another item. So it might be useful here to use the second level of questioning as well, which asks what colour. It also asks about categories of things. And we might say, find animal on the page or how many, so numeracy skills as well. So as we go through at the story, I will model how we're going to ask those questions. And I will show you how to leave that space and anticipate and build a bit of drama. So the children will then give you a response. So let's take a look. Here's the story. "My Mum and Dad Make Me Laugh" by Nick Sharratt. My mum and dad make me laugh. One likes spots and the other likes stripes. Find the boy. There he is in the bath. My mum likes spots in winter, and spots in summer. Find book. Find book. Yes, there it is. How many books? 1, 2, 3, 3 books. Next page. My dad like stripes on weekdays. Find the animal. Find animal. Yes. It's a cat, cat with stripes and stripes at weekends. Last week, we went to the safari park. My mum put on her spottiest dress and earrings and my dad put on his stripiest suit and tie. I put on my grey top and trousers. "You do like funny clothes," said my mum and dad. Find spots. Find spots. Very good. See mum's dress. Spots. On the way we stopped for something to eat. My mum had spotty pizza and my dad had stripey ice cream. Hmm. Find pizza. Yes. Mum eats pizza. I had a bun. "You do like funny food," said my mum and dad. Can you find food? Find food? Yes. Pizza, ice cream, bun. Mm. The safari park was very exciting. My mum liked the big cats best. "Those are splendid spots," she said, "and I should know." How many big cats, how many? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5 big cats. Dad liked the zebras best. "Those are super stripes," he said, "and I should know." Find stripes. Yes. On the zebras. How many zebras? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5 zebras. But the animals that I liked best didn't have spots or stripes. They were big and grey and eating their tea. "Those are really good elephants," I said. What colour elephants? What colour? Grey, grey elephants. What colour boy's clothing? What colour the boy's clothes? Grey, it's the same. I should know. Lots of elephants. How many? Lots? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5,6, 7, 8.9, 10. There are lots and lots of elephants. The end. The challenge here is that the basic element of this lesson relies on the students' understanding what a spot or what spots are and what stripes are. So if you are going to simplify it, strip away that focus and focus only perhaps on the word mum and dad. That means that, and of course, those will be very familiar words to a child, but that means that you can focus on those very basic questions to identify on each page. And you're just talking about mum and dad. That's two words, two nouns. Now that should be very familiar and should be more accessible. Of course, repetition always helps. Drama always helps. And presenting two options always helps. If you're going to actually make this more challenging and the student already understands the descriptors that categorise or qualify an object, then keep your questions open-ended. check in a few whys and hows and ask your child to tell you the using the pictures. Of course you can always apply these questioning methods to other storybooks, poems, nonfiction texts, the variety of texts that the child accesses is really, really important. But of course, there's lots of fun to be had here with us as well with spots and stripes. But why don't you also focus on the fashion side of things. Choose your own outfits. Explore the colours and the patterns and the things that are in your wardrobe. Maybe even design your own clothing or upcycle some of the materials that you have at home. So thank you very much for joining me. I've very much enjoyed having you and hopefully we should see each other again. Good luck. Thank you all very much for joining me. It's been great to have you. I hope that you do take some of the challenges that will help extend the learning with this book. I do hope that you enjoy them. So for me, for now, goodbye. If you would like to share photos and videos of your child's work with us, then please share them via Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, and tag us at Oak National and hashtag learn with Oak.

In this lesson, we will use positional language, consider the movements used in fashion shows and then try them for ourselves.

﻿Hello, everybody. It's good to see you all. My name is Rae and today we're going to be doing a fashion show. Isn't that exciting? Grownups, the purpose for today is to explore some positional language such as on, under, next to, and also some key verbs, stop, go, walk, turn, et cetera. We will do that by taking a look at some videos of fashion shows and the way that people move up and down the catwalk, you will then play some games using your bodies, mimicking those motions, and eventually perhaps put it into action as a real fashion show, either yourselves or using toys to role play what that would look like. So before we do anything, before we watch those videos and think about how that's going to work, let's just take a look at things that we might need. For this lesson, you will need the screen. There's some videos that I'm going to share with you and some symbols on the screen which might be helpful. If you have got some relevant symbols and signs at home that your child will use, then please do prepare those in advance. We'll be looking at key verbs like spin, walk, copy, and certain positional language like together, behind, and in. I'll give you a list of all the keywords very, very shortly. I'd also recommend that you have some dolls or figures or favoured toys, perhaps with a change of outfit, for role play at the end, which definitely would be recommended. Once we've explored these motions and positions with our own bodies, it's always nice to them reinforce that with some role play. So press pause while you get things ready, and next we'll take a look at how to get the room ready. Getting the room ready for learning. I would recommend reducing distractions within the room. That might mean closing the curtains so that we can't see the street outside. It may mean turning off a fan. It may mean turning off an overhead light or the television. But as well as repairing the room, we must prepare the children to be ready for learning as well. Some children will require a run around outside first, to exercise their hands maybe to begin, perhaps a snack, perhaps an opportunity to change position, to take splints off, whatever is the best position for them to be learning. You will know that best. Really important to create some interest, that curiosity and anticipation for the child, by sharing the resources that you've gathered together, talking about what might happen. Show the excitement. If you model how excited you are to begin, then that will be infectious and the child will be really interested in the lesson coming up. So press pause while you get the room ready. Make sure that you take the opportunity to prepare yourself as well. And we'll begin very shortly. Very shortly we're going to look at some videos of fashion shows. I'll just talk you through, before we get to that point, what we're going to do with them. First of all, the key language that we're focusing on today, let's go through that. So positional language. We're looking at in, on, under, behind, next to, through, above, together. The key action words or verbs will be walk, spin, run, turn, stop, go, copy. That is a lot of language. So my top tip here is work from what your child knows. If this language is already familiar, you think that some of it might be familiar, then give it a go, but scale it back and introduce those unfamiliar words just one at a time. Use lots and lots of repetition and take it slow. So step one here is going to be for you guys to watch the videos together and mimic or copy the movements that the people on screen are doing. The first video is quite simple. The second one is a little bit more complex. The adult's job here is to introduce the positional language to the child. So as the people on the fashion show catwalk are walking next to each other, we can use that language. If they are behind each other, we can use that language. If they are walking together, we use that language. Feel free to put the action and the position together so that you are using two-word phrases. If that's inappropriate for your child and you want to keep it simple, then just stick to one or the other. Okay, step two. Watch the videos again. After that initial go round when you're articulating the different language for the child, encourage them to join in and mimic or copy the movements. And if there's something that's particularly motivating, then just pause the video, indulge in it, and repeat it and enjoy it together. Name it, do it together, elaborate on it. But of course there's always the risk that the child isn't engaging with those videos. Either that, or if you're working with a child who has a visual impairment or some limited physical mobility or both, then work on copying the movements first before attempting to motivate any other change. So if the child is moving their arms and doing a wriggle or kicking, then copy their movements, name their movements, and introduce the positional language afterwards. It might be important as well to be quite physically close if you can do that appropriately. If the child has visual impairments, that you can use touch in order to motivate. First of all copy them, of course, but then motivate them to move in a slightly different way. So step three will be your role play. So together you will explore the videos, copy the movements, do them for yourselves, and then to concrete these words and actions and positional language later on, you then recreate the fashion show either with your own bodies, so the child can direct you, you can direct them, or they can manipulate toys and dolls in order to create a role play, and you will use the keywords together. So let's take a look at the videos. One of them is the Great Ethiopia Fashion Show part one from Tilet TV in 2019. These are all licenced within Creative Commons. The other video that I'll show you is, Charm's Def Night Fashion Show video by Poppory from the Poppory Fashion Blog. Again, both of these are sourced from YouTube and licenced within Creative Commons. So let's take a look. So using these videos, this is the first example, and is all black and white imagery, which I thought might be quite appealing, particularly if students have some minor visual impairments as well. We've got lots of spots and stripes to look at. Lots of different fabrics. But, of course, lots of different movements as well. So the majority of what we have here is linear movement. So we've got walk and wait... and turn. Or spin. Walk. Next to. Walk and... Spin. Walk behind. Walk in front. As you're watching the video with your child, then verbalise what's happening there. So say out loud the action and also the positional language. Whether we are in front or behind or next to or on top or under. The next video, you won't see me, but you will see the video, and alongside the video I will put the symbols that will indicate the keywords that will be used there. And hopefully that will help structure it for you and for your child so that you can then develop a game out of this later on. Now that you've watched the videos, now that you've got your body's moving, and now the child is engaged, this is your opportunity for some role play. To recreate a fashion show, get your body's moving. Either recreate this with the toys and the dolls and manipulating the toys around the room or around the table. Use those key words. Or you can let the child direct and instruct you, and you get to be on the catwalk. Have fun and enjoy. Thank you, everybody, for joining me for this lesson. It's been a joy and pleasure. I hope that you've had fun and I hope that you've learned a few things along the way. I'll look forward to seeing you next time, but until then, goodbye from me. There is significant scope already for differentiation within this lesson. I've provided a huge amount of vocabulary, which is probably too much for the children in one go. However, I've also provided the opportunity for two-word phrases, single-word phrases, stripping it down to simple verbs, using only simple positioning language. And of course, you've got the opportunity to stack those things on top of each other. One other way of making it additionally challenging, if that is appropriate, is to combine descriptors with the key language as well. So you've got your key action words or your verbs. You've got your key positional language or your prepositions. And now you've got your descriptors, that would be your adjectives that go along with it. I would suggest things like fast and slow so you're looking at opposites so it's really easy to see the distinction and guarantee that the child is understanding what's being said there. One way of making it easier really is to strip back that language and to just repeat over and over the same activity in slightly different ways so that you're keeping the child engaged, and just focusing on simple language, maybe just two words. Drama, drama, drama will keep them engaged too. More ideas for this lesson. Apply this method of play to other performances that you find online. It might be cross country races or horse racing maybe, or you might apply it to some opera or musical theatre or ballet. You could also take the sort of fashion angle of this lesson and create patterns with spots and stripes on fabric or paper, maybe choose outfits, explore colours, patterns, logos. Maybe you could design your own clothing before you take it out on the catwalk and model it. There are lots of ideas there. I hope you have fun with all of them. Thank you from me.

If you would like to share photos and videos of your child's work with us, then please share them via Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, and tag us @OakNational and #LearnwithOak.

This is a resource to guide adults through a lesson to create designs or upcycle some clothing. Children will explore common verbs such as 'press', 'push' or 'squeeze' and begin to use the language themselves.

This is a resource to guide adults to support children to create a poster for their fashion show. Children will choose from a selection of magazine cut outs (or digital images), symbols and key words and letters, and arrange them on a page.

Unit: Clothes and Fashion (Secondary)

Lessons:

Reading together: 'My Mum and Dad Make Me Laugh'

Key verbs and positional language: Fashion show!

Key verbs and positional language: Upcycling clothing

Writing for a purpose: Fashion show posters