Trainee thinks about supporting SEND students purely in terms of structuring or adapting tasks

Bea Somerton thinks about supporting students with
special education needs purely in terms of structuring
or adapting tasks, with no consideration of how the
questions asked might be made more meaningful.

Bea Somerton is a highly organised history trainee who places a strong emphasis on knowing exactly what she is meant to be doing at each point in the lesson. She tends to script her lessons quite tightly, partly as a reassurance mechanism, so that she is confident about the explanations and instructions that she will be giving.

This approach has allowed her to make a strong start in her first school, and her mentor was quickly impressed by the fact that she had her plans and resources
ready well in advance of each lesson. It has become apparent, however, that her commitment to scripting what she is going to say has tended to result in quite a formulaic delivery. Although she considers her explanations quite carefully in advance, she tends to be more concerned with the technical accuracy of her definitions, rather than thinking about how accessible the concepts actually are to the young people that she is teaching. Having formulated her explanations, she becomes closely wedded to the phrases that she has prepared and struggles to adapt or expand on them within the lesson. When she recognises that a student cannot answer a particular question, she usually points them to the precise point where the information can be found in the text or source that they are using and/or repeats her previous explanations and definitions in exactly the same terms...