ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on how the inclusion project team developed schemes of work suitable for pupils with severe, profound and multiple learning needs. The writing of schemes of work can be an emotive subject. Teachers are all too aware of the hours devoted to planning schemes of work – some of which have operated for one school year only – the only blessing being that if you write the scheme yourself you really understand it. Experience of working on curriculum planning in a wide range of schools tells us that, no matter how original, unique or locality-focused the activities in our medium-term plans are, the bulk of ideas will be very similar to those planned by our colleagues in previous years, in a school down the road or in another part of the country. So there has to be a happy medium to be found between writing schemes every year so that we understand them and the merits of an accepted set of medium-term plans upon which colleagues in a school can base their short-term plans for their specific class, knowing that units of work build on previous experiences taught by colleagues in preceding years. The national schemes of work produced by QCA (1998, 2000a, 2000b) reinforce the principle that long-term plans show how units of work may be distributed throughout a key stage to provide continuity of experience and progression in learning. Medium-term plans exist for the medium term; they are there as a framework to be modified, developed and personalised to a school's needs – a continuous process of refining until major National Curriculum changes shift the goal posts. Short-term planning is exactly that – for the short term. Teachers adapt medium-term plans to suit an individual, group or class for one lesson or a series of lessons within a unit of work. Short-term planning formats and processes are co-ordinated at an individual school level.