Introduction
Would you like to make your teaching more inclusive in just 2 minutes a day? Sounds impossible but attractive? Hear me out. I will share how you can take bite sized chunks from resources that will help you understand the challenges that young people with SEND face, and implement simple strategies to make your PE lessons more inclusive.
Too Busy?
I imagine you are reading this blog post because you want to make your lessons more inclusive, and you need to make your lessons more inclusive. If you have a ‘typical’ class, at least 17% of your students have Special Educational Needs and Disabilities.
If you’ve got time to read my book in one sitting : ) or watch a whole film about SEND – great! But if you don’t have lots of time, don’t let that stop you.
I bet you are busy. Really busy, and the thought of learning lots of new things and completely changing your practice is overwhelming.
The good news is that you don’t always have to learn or implement a lot to see big changes.
You can do really simple things like changing the colours on your visuals so it’s readable for students with colour blindness, or providing advance notice of what you will be covering that term to reduce uncertainty. These things can make all the difference as the story below illustrates:
“Lack of timely communication caused my family a lot of stress. My son’s school told us on a Thursday that my son would start swimming lessons on the following Monday. We weren’t prepared for this, as the previous year, swimming took place much later in the year. This meant we only had four days to come up with a plan and communicate it with school, as we knew our son would struggle with several elements. This tight timescale meant the information wasn’t passed on to the right staff. The plan stated our son can’t tolerate showers. However, staff were unaware of this and made our son shower before and after swimming. He came home very distressed and said he was never ever going to go swimming again. If they had informed us about the swimming lessons earlier, all this could have been avoided.”
If a teacher had told us a few weeks earlier it would have made all the difference. Just a 2 minute conversation or sending a message on the app would have really helped.
Marginal Gains
Are you familiar with the concept of marginal gains? James Clear writes about how the British Cycling team made loads of tiny improvements to completely transform their game.
If you start making some tiny changes, these will add up to make your lessons more and more inclusive.
So what are you waiting for?
Below are some resources that take 2 minutes or less to watch or read. Once you’ve done it use the tag #2minSEND and let us know what you’ve learnt and what action you are going to take.
Resources To Understand The Challenges
(Watch from 2.09-4 minutes)
What’s it like having DCD / Dsypraxia and playing sports
(Watch first 2 minutes)
The impact of Colour Blindness on playing football
(Watch start – 1.50 mins)
(Read pages 95-97)
(Read pages 201-203)
More #2MinSEND resources will be shared here and on X.
I can’t wait to see what difference that 2 minutes can make! Don’t forget share on X/Twitter using #2minSEND