A lesson taught Prior to the activity taking place, I planned a lesson with the aim of helping children practice mark making skill, and then use these skills to write lowercase and uppercase ‘Aa’. I created a powerpoint which included sound effects for each different mark making slide. Next I imported Communication Print text to the slides so instructions were available on slides in both written and symbolised form, making them accessible to all the children (Standard 5 – know when and how to differentiate appropriately, using approaches which enable pupils to be taught effectively). Also, I made multi-sensory resources (sensory bags – ziptie bags with different sensory materials e.g. paint, shaving foam in them), allowing children to mark make and form letters without having to use pen and paper (Standard 4 – contribute to the design and provision of an engaging curriculum within the relevant subject area(s)). On the morning of the lesson, I spoke to the support staff within my class about which children, what I wanted them and the children to do and what the aim of the lesson was. At the start of the lesson children came into the classroom and sat in their groups. I then explained to the children what we were going to be doing in the lesson. After explaining the lesson to the children, I went around the room with the sensory bags, allowing children to choose the resources they wanted to use to complete their mark making. These resources made the children curious with children commenting “ohhh slimy” and “no way” when they selected and felt the materials (Standard 4 – promote love of learning and children’s intellectual curiosity). All the children fully engaged with the powerpoint and attempted each different mark making slide. The sound effects within the powerpoint helped children know when the type of mark making they were doing had changed. Within the class, some children struggle with their fine motor skills and therefore, struggle to grip a pencil correctly, inhibiting their ability to form letters correctly and write effectively. Therefore, using the sensory bags allowed all children to engage and participate in creating letter ‘a’ and ‘A’ using correct letter formation thus, helping to improve all children’s writing skills without fine motor difficulties negatively impacting their ability to participate effectively and achieve in the activity (Standard 5 – demonstrate an awareness of the physical, social and intellectual development of children, and how to adapt teaching to support pupils’ education at different stages of development). After the mark making had finished there was a slide on the powerpoint introducing the letter ‘a’. I asked children what letter it was, and they said “a” (letter sound). I then extended their learning by saying “yes, that is the letter sound, what is the letter name?” Child J correctly identified the letter name. This questioning stretched the more able students, and allowed all children to further develop their knowledge of letter sounds and letter names. Two children in the class are non-verbal therefore, I provided them with a choice of two letter cards (letter ‘a’ and letter ‘h’) and asked them “which one is the letter ‘a’ [letter sound]?” When asking these two children I only used the letter sound as they are lower ability children and currently are only learning letter sounds (Standard 5 – have a clear understanding of the needs of all pupils, including those with special educational needs; those of high ability; those with English as an additional language; those with disabilities; and be able to use and evaluate distinctive teaching approaches to engage and support them). After this, I put on the Youtube video ‘Let’s get squiggling letter A’. Once the letter introduction in the video had played I paused the video and asked the more able children to name an object beginning with ‘a’ (letter name) therefore, further extending the activity to challenge all pupils. All children were able to make an attempt to copy the video and form a letter ‘a’ using correct letter formation, with less able children receiving hand over hand support to achieve this, whilst more able children completed this independently (Standard 5 – know when and how to differentiate appropriately, using approaches which enable pupils to be taught effectively). When the video had finished I asked the children “what kind of ‘a’ [letter name] would we use for a person’s name?” Child J identified it would be a capital ‘A’ (letter name) (Standard 4 – impart knowledge and develop understanding through effective use of lesson time). I then reloaded the powerpoint and showed the last slide, which demonstrated to children how to form a capital ‘A’. More able children were able to follow the visual demonstration on the powerpoint. During this demonstration I also verbalised the steps to correctly forming a capital ‘A’ thus, helping all kinds of learners (visual, auditory and kinaesthetic) engage and achieve in writing ‘A’. Less able students were provided with a worksheet to follow dots to form lower case letter ‘a’, as these children were not yet at a stage to be learning about lower and upper case letters (Standard 5 – have a clear understanding of the needs of all pupils, including those with special educational needs; those of high ability; those with English as an additional language; those with disabilities; and be able to use and evaluate distinctive teaching approaches to engage and support them). Unfortunately, despite speaking to support staff prior to the lesson, one member of staff continued to use hand over hand support for the worksheet, meaning child S did not get the opportunity to independently practice letter formation. Since I noticed this when I received the worksheets back I did not have chance to intervene during the lesson and encourage child S to develop this attempt this independently. However, noticing this has meant that in future lessons I will ensure I observe the whole class during the lesson, even if a child has 1:1 support from other staff (Standard 4 – reflect systematically on the effectiveness of lessons and approaches to teaching). Overall, the lesson was positive, with all children being engaged within the lesson and progressing in either their letter formation for letter ‘a’ and ‘A’ or their ability to recognise letters. However, some children were not greatly challenged during the activity. This was partly because child S received physical hand over hand support to form his letter ‘a’ thus, not allowing him the opportunity to independently attempt this skill. Additionally, child J was not stretched enough as he already had the ability to identify both letter name and letter sound of letters and identify words beginning with letter names. Although, child J did struggle prior to the lesson to form letter ’a’ correctly, therefore, this activity did help develop his letter formation, I feel I could have extended this activity further to further challenge more able students. For example, I could have asked more able students to draw a picture or write words beginning with ‘a’ as well as words ending in ‘a’. Also, although I asked children verbally to identify words beginning with ‘a’, many children said the same word therefore, it was unclear whether they independently identified this word, or just repeated what their peers had said. Asking children to draw/write words beginning with ‘a’ would allow children to show their individual knowledge therefore, aiding assessment. Focused next steps: When teaching observe all groups during the lesson (even children with 1:1 support) to help progression of all children and advise staff if they are not doing teaching as I planned. Get children to individually show knowledge by writing/drawing things beginning with focus letter before sharing with the class. Extend activity for more able students by getting them to identify words/object ending in ‘a’, by writing or drawing these things. All Stories