High-Quality Teaching: The ‘Five-a-Day Principle’

Introduction

Back in 2005, Wendy Davies started the Learning Support Department at St Albans School with the enduring aim of putting pupil needs first. Based above the Geography office, Wendy calmly supported pupils with specific differences such as dyslexia and managed their access arrangements. Emily Taylor then took over as Head of Department, expanding the provision to all year groups and developing information systems and INSET, while I screened and supported KS3 pupils. Following Emily’s untimely passing in 2018 and a period of transition, I took over as Head of Learning Support (SENDCO). Since then, the whole-school community has moved through several phases of our long-term development plan, accelerated by significant changes in government legislation and educational research on SEND.  Overall, a lot has changed in the last two decades concerning the School's provision for SEND; for example, we now have a designated Learning Support Centre (LSC) at the top of School House staffed by specialist colleagues who provide 1:1 and small group interventions, as well as managing the entire access arrangements process. However, despite these developments, Wendy’s aim of putting pupil needs first remains a core tenet of our approach.

One development that has become more apparent is that if all pupils are to achieve - including those with SEND – everyone must be responsible, and not just the Learning Support Departments within schools. As the SEND Code of Practice advocates:

“Every teacher is a teacher of SEND”

If this were not the case, evidence highlights a risk of de-skilling school leaders and classroom teachers who can subsequently lose confidence in supporting pupils with SEND (EEF, 2022). As such, our collective focus has perhaps shifted from supporting pupils with SEND to supporting teachers to support pupils.  It is one of the reasons why I recently started the government-backed NPQ-SENCO course, overseen by UCL, so I could offer further support to staff in championing and supporting SEND pupils in their classrooms. As the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) explains:

“Supporting pupils with special educational needs should be part of a proactive approach to supporting all pupils - it is not an ‘add-on’. It means understanding the specific barriers pupils face to learning and what they need in order to thrive so that they can be included in all that the school has to offer.” (EEF, 2020).

This blog post should therefore provide you with some tools to enhance your existing high-quality adaptive classroom teaching. Many of the skills required are those you already have and are constantly developing in your teaching for all pupils. Ultimately, by working together we can improve our pupils’ mindset, academic attainment and enjoyment of school.

Guidance

In 2020, the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) published a research-led guidance report on Special Educational Needs. They reiterated that pupils with SEND have the greatest need for excellent teaching and are entitled to provision that supports achievement at, and enjoyment of, school. This means that teachers must understand the needs of individual pupils and weave specific approaches into everyday high-quality classroom teaching – lessons must be inclusive by design, not as an afterthought. It also means using carefully implemented interventions and working effectively with Learning Support/SEND Departments, who offer additional support where needed. The report offers five evidence-based recommendations to support pupils with SEND, and this has not only provided us with a starting point for reviewing our current approach, but also offered practical ideas that we can implement in school. The EEF made the following recommendations:

1. Create a positive and supportive environment for all pupils, without exception.
2. ​Build an ongoing, holistic understanding of your pupils and their needs. (Use the graduated approach - assess, plan, do, review).
3. Ensure all pupils have access to high-quality teaching.
4. ​Complement high-quality teaching with carefully selected small-group and one-to-one interventions (initially through clinics for any pupil, then the Learning Support / SEND Department for specialist support).
5. Work effectively with teaching assistants (not currently applicable at our school).

The overriding message from the report is a positive one - the evidence tells us that teachers should prioritise familiar but powerful strategies, like scaffolding and explicit instruction, to support their pupils with SEND.

The EEF goes on to say that there are five adaptive approaches – a ‘Five-a-Day’ – that teachers should use for pupils with SEND, which is helpfully set out in a poster. Again, staff will see that these strategies support the learning of all pupils, not just those with SEND, and this reflects the shift in the rhetoric concerning differentiation and adaptive teaching – what benefits SEND pupils, will benefit all. These strategies should build on your existing daily repertoire and be used flexibly in response to individual needs. To reiterate this concept further, I have created this checklist of classroom strategies to use in lesson plans and during observations.

CLASSROOM STRATEGIES CHECKLIST

Recommendations

'Reflecting on Your Practice' template

In short, the ‘five-a-day’ principle is not about adding more to an already full workload, but about sharpening what we do every day so that it works for every pupil, every time. By embedding these small, evidence-informed adjustments consistently, we can make our classrooms more inclusive, more responsive, and ultimately more effective for all learners.

So, what next? In your next department meeting, you could use this framework to reflect on how consistently you embed these ‘Five-a-Day’ strategies into your teaching practice. 

Alternatively, you could consider working on this area as part of your Review & Development, or drop into the Learning Support/SEND office one Thursday morning break to discuss in more detail. You can contact us at: learningsupport@st-albans.herts.sch.uk 

The following link provides further details on how to put the ‘five-a-day’ approach into practice and support adaptive teaching, while the video below provides a summary of the principle.