Product reviews for The Teacher's Guide to SEN

As an inclusion leader, I have used The Teacher's Guide to SEN as the foundation for our school's professional development for teachers and teaching assistants. The opening chapters have helped to crystallise staff understanding about what Special Educational Needs are and how high-quality teaching is the most powerful tool for all learners - this is a key message in the book and comes across clearly and succinctly.

In our training, we focused specifically on the -˜cognition and learning' section of the book as this is the most represented need across the school. The -˜try it' and -˜classroom strategies' to support needs such as dyslexia have been instantly embedded in practice. For example, one teacher now consistently uses pastel backgrounds and the fonts/text sizes recommended in the book. The book has also been an effective resource for teachers working with types of SEN that they haven't yet experienced, for example, the case study describing strategies in use for a young child with ASD has provided practical guidance that has been tried in our classrooms.

The beauty of The Teacher's Guide to SEN is that it is designed for teachers, not specialists. The book's accessible style means that our school staff do not require a bank of existing knowledge to understand it, nor do they need a dictionary on hand to define the language. The list of abbreviations, professionals and SEN glossary at the back of the book have helped to demystify SEN, which can all too often be a very -˜jargon heavy' area of education.



The Teacher's Guide to SEN has empowered classroom practitioners to reflect and make achievable, sustainable and significant changes to practice. These refinements have not come at any financial cost (the book is very well priced and provides excellent value for money) and most importantly have contributed to making all classrooms more inclusive for all learners.