Vlog: Enabling SEND learners to thrive
... How Shiplake College uses metacognitive visual tools for students with learning challenges.
Lorna Gardiner, sits down with Judit Coulehan, Director of Learning Development and SENCO at Shiplake College, to discuss how the Shiplake community utilises metacognitive visual tools with the college’s neurodiverse learners.
If you are looking for insights and inspiration on the use of Thinking Frames for those with learning challenges, as well as how to use them more widely across a school community – from informing parents around access arrangements to departmental curriculum planning – then the full video recording, with all the accompanying slides is available to Thinking SchoolsNetwork members in the webinar recordings tile in the Members Dashboard.
Extracts from the discussion are below (Spoiler Alert! This doesn’t include the John Nash style use of windows to visualise pupil’s thinking!):
If you or a colleague want to learn how to use Thinking Frames to support your SEN learners – our next online training cohort starts on 20th October, 2025. Discover more and sign up now …
If you ever have the pleasure of visiting the outstanding Shiplake College on the banks of the River Thames in Oxfordshire, you’ll know that they proudly live their values of ‘Inclusive, Individual and Inspirational’ – no more so, than in the inclusion of their students with learning challenges.
The school is renowned for the support it offers its range of learners and Judit believes that “good SEN teaching is good teaching and vice versa”. With the UK government’s drive for more neurodiverse learners to be included in mainstream settings going forward, that’s worth bearing in mind.
Blank page ‘paralysis’ or task initiation fear can be a big challenge for all learners, including those with SEND. Thinking Frames provide a starting point in these situations. Learners have a familiar structure that enables them to produce something. That something might not start being very detailed or elaborate but it gets them over that initial hump and that provides the confidence and motivation to then build on that start. This has the added advantage of reducing pupils’ reliance on teacher support.
Visual tools – whether they be pictures, videos or graphic organisers can help embed knowledge more effectively and make it more memorable, as can the use of colour. Thinking Frames have really helped Shiplake learners to simplify complex ideas, breaking down challenging concepts into manageable steps that make the learning more accessible for all pupils, not just pupils with SEND.
It shouldn’t be forgotten that where students are regularly moving from classroom to classroom, subject to subject and having to adapt to different teaching and delivery styles, significant extraneous cognitive load is being placed on them. It’s therefore crucial to minimise that in whatever way possible and common tools and language are an important component in that.
When you start using Thinking Frames in other contexts beyond the classroom (such as in assemblies, communications with parents and governors, or to plan out departmental schemes of work), then all that uniform use by staff ensures that pupils, parents, and all key stakeholders receive very clear and consistent messages. It helps to ensure that everybody understands why and when the tools are used and how they support students to discover how they learn best.
