Q&A with Georgina Durrant, SEND expert

Read Georgina Durrant‘s insights into SEND support and favourite resources.

Can you please introduce yourself?

I’m Georgina Durrant. I’m a former teacher/SENDCO. I’m director of Cheshire SEN Tutor Ltd, a private tuition service for children with special educational needs. I’m also founder of The SEN Resources Blog and author of ‘100 Ways Your Child Can Learn Through Play’ published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers. I used to be a teacher for many years and a SENDCO.

What is The SEN Resources Blog?

The SEN Resources Blog is a website for parents and teachers of children with Special Educational Needs. It’s packed full of learning activities that focus on developing key skills, such as fine motor skills, speech and language, gross motor skills, social skills etc. There’s a mix of activities as blog posts and activities on my YouTube channel as videos. The website also has lots of advice and recommendations of resources for almost any topic! I’ve sections on everything from the best books and resources for helping children understand emotions to the best dinosaur-themed sensory play activities!

How and why did you start the blog?

I started The SEN Resources Blog as a way of sharing my activity ideas and resource recommendations, initially just with the families of the children I was tutoring. It then grew into something a bit bigger than I was expecting!

Tell us a little bit about your book…

I’m so excited about my book! It’s called ‘100 Ways Your Child Can Learn Through Play’. It’s for parents and teachers of children with special educational needs. It’s full of fun, play-based learning activities that are not only great for keeping children entertained, but importantly, each activity helps children develop key skills. And, to help parents and teachers, I’ve put a box at the bottom of each activity to flag which skills each one can help develop. The idea is, that if for example you had a child who needed some extra support with fine motor skills, you could look through the book and pick out lots of activities that can help with this.

I also wanted to empower parents and teachers to feel confident that their children aren’t just playing, they are in fact developing a whole range of skills whilst having fun. The activities are split into chapters, so you can almost use it like a play recipe book. There are chapters such as ‘In the Garden’, ‘On a Walk’, ‘Sensory Play’ etc. One of my favourite chapters is ‘Sitting Still’ which is for all those tricky times when you really need some productive activities to keep children happy, when they’ve got to sit still, for example on a train, a long car journey or in a restaurant.

The book has also been endorsed by Carol Vorderman and Rob Delaney, who both wrote quotes for the back of the book!

Your top resources

What are your top resources for Maths?

I have a whole blog post on my top recommendations of resources for maths but just picking out a few of my favourites, Mathseeds is a brilliant online platform of games for young children. It’s fun and engaging. I also love Number Stacks, which make a fantastic intervention set. And I adore Learning Resources’ ‘Sum Swamp’ game for practising addition and subtraction.

What are your top resources for Literacy?

There’s a whole section of my favourite literacy resources in this blog post that I wrote during the first lockdown but again, to pick out a few… I’m a big fan of the DK reader books (they do lots of non-fiction as well as fiction, making them more engaging). I also love Orchard Toy’s ‘Match and Spell’ game.

What resources would you recommend for STEM?

My latest blog post on my favourite STEM resources can be found here but my top two resources for STEM would be Magformers and Lego.

What are some key tools educators can use to ensure their lessons are accessible?

When trying to ensure lessons are accessible, I believe the most important thing is to get to know the children in the class and find out what will work for them. Parents are the experts on their children and speaking to parents of children with special educational needs as the SENDCO before inheriting a new class is imperative. Find out what has worked previously, what hasn’t worked and what you need to do to ensure your lessons and classroom are accessible to all the children in the class.

What advice would you give pupils or parents in supporting children to use their imagination?

Playing imaginatively can be really difficult for some children and it’s important to recognise this and not force it. The best thing you can do in my opinion, is to allow opportunities for imaginative play. Have resources that are engaging and suitable for small world play and role play that enable children to choose it as part of any free play. You can also help support by joining in and being playful!

What are some tips and resources you would recommend to support the wellbeing of pupils with SEN?

Children’s wellbeing and happiness is really important to me and consequently a lot of the blog posts on The SEN Resources Blog touch on wellbeing, mental health and understanding emotions. This link takes you to all of them. There’s not a ‘one size fits all’ approach but lots of resources to try. And as always, it’s important to make sure that, if you’re concerned about a child’s wellbeing, ensure you speak to the designated member of staff at school and the child’s family – or, if you’re a parent, an appropriate health care professional.

Tell us about how COVID has impacted on pupils with SEN and how teachers can help…

COVID has had an impact on all children, but perhaps more so some children with special educational needs. And it’s not just academically, children have missed out on play which may sound trivial, but it’s really not.

Play is imperative for children’s wellbeing and development.

I really hope that my book can help in some way in this area. It’s also important to remember that children have also missed or had delays with referrals, extra support from external professionals (such as Speech and Language Therapy, Occupational Therapy etc.) Teachers can help by ‘meeting children at where they are’, not putting pressure on them to ‘catch up’ and allowing that important time to be children and play with their friends! Children may find social situations more difficult after the disruption to school and talking through common problems such as falling out with friends, teasing, bullying etc. as a class can be really helpful. There are also some wonderful resources to support conversations on this.