[senco-forum] inclusion and whole school approaches without labelling

From paragraph 2 below is a response I sent to a forum member as they asked

>From paragraph 2 below is a response I sent to a forum member as they asked
how Ruth Miskin Literacy is going at our school (British curriculum, 1000
pupils from age 3 to 11ish).  It seems to me, on the brief bits I have just
read of a newly acquired book by Jean Gross, Special Educational Needs in
the Primary School - a practical guide - where Jean strongly makes the point
that labelling of SEN can be divisive when good quality teaching with
practical strategies for all more hits the spot - that the stuff on RML at
our school copied below is probably good inclusive practice in action... at
least for reading (though if done well this has an impact on all basic
literacy skills that persist at least up to Y6 as the Clakkmannanshire study
evidenced).  Solity's position (heard at the 2003 BDA conference and quoted
again in Jean's book) - that good teaching of literacy only leaves a 2 or 3%
level of underachievers in reading - seems very acceptable.  SEN SMART
teaching is best directed more intensively at such a statistic... has this
kind of thing not been a goal of LEAs for some time?  To cut back SEN
provision to about 2%?

We trialled RML for two terms last academic year in year 2 with about 40
children.  I trained the TAs to deliver it to small groups withdrawn from
the classroom... partly because we only had a few books and partly because
people wished to be convinced before they ordered more.  The feedback was
positive so we have gone with moving to RML as our main reading scheme and
are blending it with our previous teaching of synthetic phonics which I set
up throughout the school along the same lines as are given in Dyslexia
Guidance.

So teachers are on board and are set to go.  Before half term the head of
literacy and I (titled the head of inclusion) presented RML to year 1 & Year
2 parents.   Most parents heard what we were saying about how good RML is,
some were sceptical and two wrote specially to thank me.  We're sending a
page home with the new books next week explaining the scheme and how to
optimise its use so that all parents receive the information. We are also
trialling it in one Y3 classroom with the RML reading entry points used to
determine who still needs to be on the scheme.

We are using Fresh Start - learned about on this forum - with year 5 & 6
underachievers in literacy.  RML reading books are being used with small
groups of underachievers in years 2 & 3.  I have Get Writing standing by for
Y2 & 3 children for terms 2 & 3.

Do you have any useful comments please?

Philippa

PS - am 99.9% happy with RML reading books but find the way the splitting of
some words into syllables has been done a bit strange as, being dyslexia
trained, am used to teaching open and closed syllables.  mo/tor and not
mot/or for example.  However, it seems to work at Kobi Nazrul and other
schools so guess this level of detail doesn't matter too much in the
mainstream since these kids should learn with ease given the basic tools.
It could matter to a dyslexic student though I think.