Secondary Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND)

Adaptive Teaching Leaders

 COST: £500 + VAT per school for 3 people (once you have booked 1 colleague from your school, please email cpdadmin@hackney.gov.uk with the emails and names of your other 2 colleagues)

Free for schools who have bought into the package.

In order for a school to attend, this course requires a senior leader, middle leader and classroom teacher to be in attendance. 

---

 In Hackney’s current context of rising SEND demands, supporting school staff with Adaptive Teaching strategies is crucial. Amid school closures in London, we are increasingly seeing children with complex needs transition to unfamiliar settings, underscoring the need for adaptive expertise across all levels of your school community. Creating a supportive and responsive learning environment helps students build confidence, resilience, and a positive self-concept, while also fostering a more equitable learning experience for all.

Building on the work from our previous adaptive teaching cohort and adapted to Hackney schools, this new programme will target both leadership and pedagogy to ensure a more sustainable long-term impact on learners, namely through curriculum development. 

Much of the material will continue to prioritise evidence-based learning, alongside exploring models and techniques for their efficient implementation, whether through school-wide initiatives or classroom-centred methods. A deeper exploration of adaptive expertise will permeate all stages of the programme. This would encompass aspects like adaptive mindset, cognitive and metacognitive habits, adaptive problem-solving, as well as teacher-to-teacher collaborative learning and coaching. 

The programme will run from November 2024 through to the end of the summer term 2025 and is punctuated by training followed by school action, coaching and school implementation and development. The Adaptive Teaching Leader roadmap is laid out chronologically steps 1-8 below.

Engagement: 

3 members from each school who need to attend this training will become Adaptive Teaching Leaders:

1. School leaders who have oversight of school improvement (headteacher / assistant headteacher / SENCo) 

2. Middle leader

3. Classroom Teacher

Programme Outline

Reviewing Current Practice

Step 1	Wednesday, 4th Dec 9.30am to 12.30pm The Tomlinson Centre		Face to Face half day training of Adaptive Teaching Leaders Introduction to the programme:  Towards adaptive expertise: Adaptive mindset; Cognitive and metacognitive habits; Adaptive problem-solving; Teacher-to-teacher collaborative learning and coaching.	Adaptive Teaching Leaders
Step 2	Autumn 2 - Spring 1		Quality of teaching and learning for inclusion Reviews: Evidence collected by Adaptive Teaching Leaders and involving as many stakeholders as possible and added to your T&L for Inclusion Review tool. Set a date for an Audit visit with a member of Hackney's SEND team involved in the programme to visit and work with Adaptive Teaching Leaders to triangulate the evidence collected. This involves a day visit. Expert reviewers will act as a critical friend and support the process of evidence collection and identifying priorities for change. An example timetable for the day will be found on the padlet.	Adaptive Teaching Leaders

Adaptive Teaching Action Planning

Step 3	Monday, 27th Jan 4.00pm to 5.00pm Online	Twilight Workshop to reflect on the evidence collected in the review and session will support SEND Champions to identify strengths & 3 priority actions for improvement.	Adaptive Teaching Leaders
Step 4	Monday 3rd - 14th Feb Online via Invitation per school	Coaching session.  Individual 30 min session for each school	Adaptive Teaching Leaders – bring additional relevant staff you want to involve in the process e.g. Teaching & Learning lead / Headteacher

Implementation of Adaptive Teaching Action Plan

Step 5	Wednesday 5th Mar 8.30am to 10.30am The Tomlinson Centre	Second face to face half day training for senior leaders.  Evidence informed approaches to implementing action plans.	Senior Leaders
Step 6	Tuesday, 18th Mar 4.00pm to 5.00pm Online	Capacity building twilight and mobilising middle leadership/Adaptive teaching	Middle leaders
Step 7	Tuesday, 25th Mar 4.00pm to 5.00pm Online individual sessions  28th Apr - 5th May	Online twilight to prepare for coaching session   Coaching for sustainability – embedding into every day practices	Adaptive Teaching Leaders

Review of Progress & Professional Learning Community Development

Step 8

Monday, 9th Jun 9.30am to 12.30pm The Tomlinson Centre

Final face to face half day training for Adaptive Teaching Leaders.  Systemic change to support adaptive practice

Agents of ongoing change

• Target audience:
• Primary
• Post 16
• Early Years
• Secondary

• Included in package:
• Primary

Making sense of Autism - Primary and Secondary

Gain a better understanding and awareness of autism and the way it affects children in schools.

Who is this training for?
This is a raising awareness module for anyone working in schools. This includes teaching and support staff, office and ancillary staff, caterers, caretakers, transport staff and governors.

What will you learn?

• Enhance your understanding and awareness of autism and how autism can affect children in schools
• Know the importance of understanding the individual child and their profile of strengths and needs
• Identify potential barriers to learning for autistic children
• Begin to make reasonable adjustments in the way you support autistic children
• Reflect on the information you need to collect for creating a one-page profile

 

Dates

Friday, 29th November 2024, 1.30 - 3.00pm

Monday, 10th March 2025, 1.30 - 3.00pm

Wednesday, 4th June 2025, 1.30 - 3.00pm

 

Book your training here (Google form)

• Target audience:
• Primary
• Secondary

SEND Conference

 

Hackney’s annual SEND Conference will be merging this year with Wellbeing and Mental Health in Schools (WAMHS) to host our first Inclusion and Mental Health Conference on Wednesday, June 18th, 2025.

Venue:  Teeside University, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, Here East, Press Centre, 14 E Bay Ln, London E15 2GW

 

A joint SEND and WAMHS conference to explore the complexities and importance of inclusion in order to better support our practice around mental health in Hackney schools.

Key note speakers and a series of workshops that will provide you with:
- Practical interventions and effective tools you can bring back into your practice
- Exploration around the challenges to inclusion
- Collaborative approaches across Education and Health

 

£120 +VAT per school.

We encourage SENCOs and Mental Health leads to jointly attend; please place a booking for one member of staff and email cpdadmin@hackney.gov.uk with the names of any additional delegates.

 

Confirmed Keynote Speakers:

• Amanda Allard, Council for Disabled Children: Offering a national perspective on SEND and SEMH
• Liz Cracknell, Anna Freud Centre: Presenting on Adaptive Mentalization Based Integrative Treatment

 

Workshops (choice of two):

• Understanding and exploring the impact of self- advocacy on learning and wellbeing for pupils with SEND. Learning from pupil, parent and teacher perspectives.

Learning to self- advocate is important to pupils' learning and well being so how do we help our pupils to self- advocate successfully?  This workshop will review key findings and insights from Hackney's current Self- Advocacy pilot, including successes and challenges. Attendees will be able to identify the essential skills, environment and resources needed in their schools to get started.

 

• Regulation in the classroom (learning from the Partnership for Inclusion of Neurodiversity in Schools (PINS) project

How we talk about and to children about regulation impacts significantly on their progress and experience of learning.  Autistic and ADHD children regulate differently, and an understanding and acceptance of what this looks like can help our teachers to manage their own expectations of their classroom and, in turn, regulate their stress.

 

• Reflective practice in schools in the context of supporting children with SEMH needs

An introduction to reflection and reflective practice, what it is, why it is important in the context of supporting CYP with social, emotional and mental health needs. Models of reflection that can be used by teachers. An introduction to solution circles as a model of group supervision

 

• Supporting boys' emotional development

The workshop will invite participants to discuss 'boys talking' and explore the barriers. It will be an experiential space to open up a discussion around how boys talk about their feelings through a structured discussion. We will be thinking about how boys are socialised, the impact of social media and who should be addressing this. An opportunity to reflect on some of the issues facing boys and how we are supporting them.

 

• Creative therapeutic approaches to inclusion in the classroom and beyond

School staff and CAMHS Practitioners who would like ideas to support creative engagement with young people who may struggle to engage with traditional therapeutic/teaching approaches which rely more on verbal communication. Workshop will be experiential and  provide attendees with exercises that can be applied individually and within a group/classroom setting.

 

 

• Joining the Dots: early intervention pathways for autistic children in schools

This workshop will explore how we can stay curious about the reasons for a child's presentation and be responsive to individual strengths and needs when we suspect possible autism. What does good practice look like in terms of early conversations with parents and class based intervention? CAMHS will also share emerging practice around their new Hub and Spoke diagnostic model.

 

• How Hackney services can successfully collaborate with schools to support children and young people with EBSNA

This workshop will involve sharing of learning, resources and best practice from the EBSNA pilot, alongside an opportunity for schools and clinicians to share their own experiences of what works well and what the barriers are.

 

• CALM at All Saints Catholic High School: A Whole-School-Approach to Self-Regulation and Emotional Wellbeing

This workshop will explore a whole-school-approach project aimed at fostering a culture of emotional awareness, resilience, and self-regulation among secondary school students, the All Saint's Catholic High School's CALM approach. You will gain: an understanding of the core principles of CALM, insight into how CALM fosters a culture of and resilience for all students, practical tools and approaches to support self-regulation and reduce dysregulation, evidence of successful implementation and opportunities to reflect on how the approach can be adapted and embedded within their own professional settings.

• Bereavement

This workshop will provide attendees with some best practice research for schools and practitioners when supporting children and families following bereavement, as well as sharing some initial themes from a scoping audit into bereavement practices in Hackney. Attendees will have the opportunity to reflect together about how this might inform practice in their own settings

 

• Target audience:
• Primary
• Secondary
• Early Years