SEND Checklists: How to Present Information

This checklist poster comes from Peps Mccrae: download it here.

There are things we might add to this list.

• Use diagrams and dual coding where possible.

• Reread the same text more than once, with the students.

• Read the text aloud to your students before they have to struggle with it themselves.

• Ask students to underline any words they don’t understand.

• Teach two strategies for students to decode those words:

  • Get rid of the word and write over it a word that makes sense in the sentence.

  • Think of any words with a similar root or beginning and ask if they would fit in the sentence.

• Teach from a booklet, not a PPT unless you are focusing on visuals or video.

Is It Just Me?

I always try to remember to test my assumptions.

This is an example of dual coding which Peps Mccrae includes in his paper on SEND here.

I look at this and I wonder where to start.

I find the picture confusing - the dots seem to need to form a pattern, though I suspect they are random.

The arrows don’t always go somewhere, and they are sometimes grey and sometimes black, sometimes dotted, sometimes dashed. That’s a lot to pay attention to.

And then there’s a broccoli cum atomic structure growing out of a head.

And the title is at the bottom.

And the numbers go around like a clock, but instead of starting at the top, like a clock, or left to right as we read, they start at the bottom.

How is this better than a sequential list, 1-7?

Does it only make sense in the mind of someone doing dual coding? Or is it also this other reason:

Teachers prefer ideas with pictures.