ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses children with complex needs and global learning difficulties. It illustrates the kinds of problems they may encounter in the Literacy Hour. The chapter provides an account of how one teacher worked with her class to overcome the problems. This example may be particularly useful for teachers in mainstream schools who are teaching pupils in withdrawal groups, special classes or resource bases. The label 'complex needs' covers a range and combination of needs that are cognitive, physical, social and emotional in origin. However, in the context of the Literacy Hour the children share a number of common needs: language and communication; attention and concentration; spatial coordination and fine motor skills. Most of the children have a restricted vocabulary and poor auditory skills: discrimination, memory, and sequencing. Most of the children are very distractible, especially in a group, and especially in situations where the main medium of communication is speech.
