English at KS3 and physical impairment

Key stages

The National Curriculum for English is statutory in all maintained, mainstream schools up to and including key stage 4. An appropriate version of the curriculum is used in maintained special schools. Key Stage 3 (KS3) covers years 7-9, children aged 12-14 years.

As the pupil moves to secondary school they may have established an effective means of using technology and adapted resources to enable them to access learning. Supportive technology has become more practical with the development of touch-screen computers but ensure the pupil has time to record what is needed. Give hand-outs for clarity. Read the general points about helping physically disabled pupils in the transition to secondary school.

You can:

• Think creatively about how the pupil can record their work to enable assessment of understanding but with the easiest possible physical input from the student: this will be determined by their physical requirements but for a pupil that has reduced hand and arm function it is important to give time and support fro them to record their responses. Options include recording verbal responses on a digital recorder and making computer files of these, which can easily be saved; using pre-populated worksheets which require minimal input, such as using Cloze procedure or word webs, mind-mapping which is similar to word-webs but includes causality (the reason for events or facts) and is a very useful revision technique. It may be helpful to have a dedicated member of staff to scribe for the pupil but this can be disempowering and might be best used only for exams where there is a time limit. Allow more time for any assessments which involve recording answers, for the pupil with a physical impairment.