The SENDcast

A classroom can be a terrifying place for a child with autism, but you might not know this and instead witness a child that's aggressive, defiant, and disruptive or a child that's passive and not engaging. Anxiety and Autism go hand in hand. Helping an autistic child understand what is happening in their body helps them gain self-control and self-awareness. Working with your own heartbeat rhythms can reduce anxiety for you and your pupil as your energy levels can directly affect them. This week my guest is Tessa Morton, a founder of Act for Autism and is the passionate mum of an autistic boy. She has spent over 15 years supporting autistic children in her community through drama workshops. Tessa talks about autism and anxiety and how to help children to self-regulate. Listen to this episode to discover the power of the heartbeat as a therapeutic approach to support your pupils and find out how to enable them to thrive in an educational setting. Resources Connecting and Communicating with Your Autistic Child For more podcast episodes from the SENDcast click below… https://sendcast.wpengine.com/sendcast-episodes/ Contact Tessa Morton: Website: Act for Autism Twitter: https://twitter.com/actforautism1

We enjoy listening to and telling stories, they often reflect our own experiences or emotions and we use metaphors to express ourselves. Particularly so in young children, it's almost as though metaphor is their natural language. Very young children tend to imitate the adults around them and they try to make sense of their experience through their make believe play. Pupils with social, emotional and mental health difficulties need to be able to share their personal narrative in a safe way in order to make sense of their experiences. Story metaphor is ideal for doing this whilst supporting the pupils' literacy skills. During today's episode I discuss the use of metaphors within stories to support emotional literacy with my guest Dr Trisha Waters. Trisha is an educational therapist who began her career supporting pupils with emotional and behavioural difficulties. After that she led the MA in SEN & Inclusion at the University of Chichester and is now a director of the Centre for Therapeutic Storywriting. Listen to find out how you can support your pupils' emotional literacy and wellbeing through story metaphors. Resources: storylinkstraining.co.uk (video on home page) Therapeutic Storywriting: A Practical Guide to Developing Emotional Literacy in Primary Schools by Trisha Waters Research papers: https://www.therapeuticstorywriting.co.uk/research/research-story-links Video: Introducing Therapeutic Storywriting Groups - https://therapeuticstorywritingtraining.co.uk (video on home page) 'Therapeutic Storywriting: A Practical Guide to Developing Emotional Literacy in Primary Schools' by Trisha Waters - https://www.therapeuticstorywriting.co.uk/book Therapeutic Storywriting Research Papers - https://www.therapeuticstorywriting.co.uk/research/research-tsw-groups Contact Trisha: Website: www.therapeuticstorywriting.co.uk Twitter: @TherapyStoryhttps://twitter.com/therapystory Facebook: Centre for Therapeutic Storywriting

Joining Dale today is Ginny Bootman. Ginny is currently a SENCO of 2 Primary schools, but has been a teacher for a very long time (in her own words), a senior manager and headteacher. She has also found time to write articles for TES and speak at a number of events. There is often a huge divide between how a child with additional needs presents themselves at school compared to how they are at home. This discussion looks at this 'seesaw' situation. Too often there is a breakdown of communications between home and school as the child is presenting themselves so differently in these different environments. Resources: Alis Rowe - The girl with the curly hair - Aspergers and Me. Emma Kendall - Helping you to identify and understand autism masking Dr Andrew Curran - The Little Book of Big Stuff About the Brain Contact Ginny Bootman Website – www.ginnybootman.com Twitter – @sencogirl

Did you know that our brain is actually a kind of prediction making machine? We essentially see the world by guessing it. What we're constantly trying to do is to stay one step ahead and the sensory information we're going to receive. We do this in order to conserve energy so this predictive processing takes less effort. The moment where learning happens is when you come across a prediction error, when you're surprised by something you weren't expecting – this is uncertainty. We don't like it because we don't know what to do and over the past 18 months we have all lived through uncertainty with the pandemic and all the new challenges this has brought us. In this week's episode we're discussing whether we need to support every pupil in every need differently, or are there approaches that support everyone? My guests this week are Clare Ward and Dr Jamie Galpin. Clare has worked in the world of SEN for the last 30 years in a variety of roles and Jamie also has a long career in SEN. They talk about a growing move towards transdiagnostic approaches to mental health and SEN and their development of a new model to support all children and young people. Resources: The Anxiety Workbook for Supporting Teens Who Learn Differently – published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers 21st April 2021.

Neurodiversity is a term which describes conditions such as Dyslexia, Autism and ADHD as variations or differences of the human brain, not deficits or disorders. Neurodiversity is a term that everybody in the school community should be aware of, not just the teachers but the students and the parents as well. There can be a lot of misunderstanding, because the wider community is unaware and this can cause issues, such as bullying. Our guest this week is Fintan O'Regan. Fintan is one of the leading Behaviour and Learning specialists in the UK. He is currently an ADHD, Neurodiversity and Behaviour Consultant for number of schools and organisations and an associate lecturer for Leicester University, the National Association of Special Needs, The Helen Arkell Charity and the Institute of Education. Listen to this podcast to find out how to open up conversations and create awareness of how and why students think and act differently. By creating an open minded, more tolerant and understanding school for neurodiversity, you will improve learning and socialisation. Fintan is a regular here in our studios, he has recorded a number of episodes of the SENDcast, he is a regular speaker at our Virtual SEND Conferences and has recorded a training course for us around Exclusion. Find out more about the CPD certified sessions Fintan has hosted with us: Virtual SEND Conference 5 - www.trainingforeducation.com/product/virtual-send-conference-5 Session - Neurodiversity 'traits' for children and adolescents with learning, behaviour and socialisation – challenges and opportunities Managing Behaviour and Reducing the Risk of Exclusion Training Course - www.trainingforeducation.com/product/managing-behaviour-and-reducing-the-risk-of-exclusion Is Persistent Disruptive Behaviour causing problems for staff and pupils at your school? Behaviour expert, Fintan has a proven strategy to manage PDB in the classroom. His online course explains this strategy and how to implement it at your school. This course is CPD certified. It includes 4 videos specifically tailored for different groups at your school: - Senior Leadership Teams - Teachers and support staff - Parents and Carers - School Governors

Children always write stories and poems, but have you thought about songwriting? It can be a fantastic activity to enhance speech and language skills, communication and literacy. It makes a great alternative to creative writing as it's more inclusive and collaborative. Singing songs and music in school engages children in a different way. It levels the playing field with children with different abilities and is a really accessible way to get into a topic. Al Start is a singer-songwriter who specialises in music for children and schools through her company Go Kid Music. Al joins Dale Pickles to show us how you can write songs for your own topics and class to reinforce concepts, behaviours and learn basic skills.

In this week's podcast, Dale Pickles from B Squared is joined by Dr Trisha Waters. Trisha is an educational therapist who began her career supporting pupils with emotional and behavioural difficulties, after that she led the MA in SEN & Inclusion at the University of Chichester and is now the director of the Centre for Therapeutic Storywriting. Story Links is a parent partnership intervention to support vulnerable pupils at risk of exclusion. It uses therapeutic storywriting to address emotional and behaviour issues and, in particular, supports pupils with attachment difficulties and improves pupils' reading. It encourages parents' to think in story metaphor about their child's emotional concerns and to engage in regular sessions with their child. The needs of pupils with attachment anxiety can be hard to address in the school environment. By engaging parents in this solution-focused intervention that uses stories co-created by pupil and parent, pupils feel more settled and develop their reading skills. Resources: storylinkstraining.co.uk (video on home page) Therapeutic Storywriting: A Practical Guide to Developing Emotional Literacy in Primary Schools by Trisha Waters Research papers: https://www.therapeuticstorywriting.co.uk/research/research-story-links Video: Introducing Therapeutic Storywriting Groups - https://therapeuticstorywritingtraining.co.uk (video on home page) 'Therapeutic Storywriting: A Practical Guide to Developing Emotional Literacy in Primary Schools' by Trisha Waters - https://www.therapeuticstorywriting.co.uk/book Therapeutic Storywriting Research Papers - https://www.therapeuticstorywriting.co.uk/research/research-tsw-groups Contact Trisha: Website: www.therapeuticstorywriting.co.uk Twitter: @TherapyStoryhttps://twitter.com/therapystory Facebook: Centre for Therapeutic Storywriting

In this week's podcast, Dale Pickles from B Squared is joined by Tessa Morton, one of the founders of Act for Autism, to discuss an approach she uses to help you connect and communicate with your autistic students. Tessa is the passionate mum of an autistic boy, and before founding Act for Autism, she had spent over 15 years supporting autistic kids in her community through drama workshops. Tessa is a trained counsellor, and has been supporting parents of autistic kids, helping them to manage their emotions and anxieties. Resources Connecting and Communicating with Your Autistic Child For more podcast episodes from the SENDcast click below… https://sendcast.wpengine.com/sendcast-episodes/ www.trainingforeducation.com Contact Tessa Morton: Website: Act for Autism Twitter: https://twitter.com/actforautism1

Joining Dale today is Ginny Bootman. Ginny is currently a SENCO of 2 Primary schools, but has been a teacher for a very long time (in her own words), a senior manager and headteacher. She has also found time to write articles for TES and speak at a number of events. It is so easy in our busy world of schools to forget to find time to have the important conversations with parents of children with additional needs. In this episode, Ginny and Dale talk through simple, effective strategies to use to improve communication between home and school, such as checking in with parents, or a quick email or phone call that can mean so much and take so little of our time. Resources: Brene Brown - Her work on empathy - https://twentyonetoys.com/blogs/teaching-empathy/brene-brown-empathy-vs-sympathy Jamil Zaki - The War for kindness , building empathy in a fractured world - https://www.amazon.co.uk/War-Kindness-Building-Empathy-Fractured/dp/0451499247 Sir John Jones - The Magic Weaving Business Peter Bazalgette - The Empathy Instinct logos, ethos, pathos - The rhetorical triangle How these can be used to understand the view of the parent during meetings - https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/RhetoricalTriangle.htm Contact Ginny Bootman Website – www.ginnybootman.com Twitter – @sencogirl For more podcast episodes from the SENDcast click below… https://sendcast.wpengine.com/sendcast-episodes/

Welcome to the SENDcast. The phrase 'Every teacher is teacher of SEND' is currently an ideal, not a reality. We created the SENDcast to try and help solve that problem, to help make schools more inclusive and to help teachers be teachers of SEND. The SENDCast is also a great way to get the same information to parents and other people working with young people with SEND. Dale's guest this week is Alison Knowles. Alison is an emotional therapist, she supports emotional resilience. In this episode Dale and Alison discuss grief. Grief is so much more than losing a loved one. It's a traumatic emotion experienced at the loss of or perceived loss of something innately important to an individual. Useful Links https://www.facebook.com/OllieandhisSuperPowers https://twitter.com/bemoreollie https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWDj-PRjboIg2cu-KZsEMVA https://www.instagram.com/ollie_and_his_super_powers https://www.ollieandhissuperpowers.com/