Facilitate learning activities in smaller and targeted groups, in limited distraction environments where possible.

Awareness of learners who may benefit from additional support at the acquisition and fluency stages of the learning hierarchy (e.g. strategies such as pre-teaching of key concepts/vocabulary and increased repetition and over-learning with opportunities to revisit concepts more frequently). See Getting Advice column.

Individual and/or small group interventions with appropriate pre- and post-measures to evaluate progress.  Good starting points for finding out about evidence-based interventions, programmes and approaches are:

• Education Endowment Foundation.

• What Works for Children and Young People with Literacy Difficulties.

• Evidence 4 Impact – an independent service that supports educators in using evidence-based practice to improve outcomes for leaners.

• The Early Intervention Foundation guidebook – provides information about early intervention programmes that have been evaluated and shown to improve outcomes for young people.

Different young people will require different types, levels, and intensity of adult mediation (approaches and strategies used to support during tasks and activities) to maximise their learning of specific skills and to promote increased levels of independence. The focus of mediation may include:

• Regulation of behaviour (finding out what helps the young person to manage behaviours associated with learning such as attention, impulsivity and distraction);

• Rule teaching (helping and encouraging the young person to find and apply rules);

• Insight (helping the young person to use ‘what works’ and apply these tactics to new and novel situations - generalising); or

• Sequencing (helping the young person to respond in an organised and sequenced way).

Modes of mediation may include:

• Focusing (directing and maintaining attention to a task using prompts such as gesture or verbal and visual cues);

• Motor (drawing, moving objects into the young person’s line of sight, hand over hand guidance);

• Verbal (using instructions to guide and direct through questions, step-by-step instructions, and feedback on what has gone well).

• Mediation should begin at the lowest level needed for the young person; some will need to begin at a higher level than others. Mediation progresses from higher to lower levels as follows:

• Hand over hand guidance.

• Modelling with initial guidance which is gradually faded.

• Modelling the task using specific examples of rules, concepts, and strategies.

• Pointing out general characteristics (but not task-specific).

• Asking for further applications of previously used strategies.

• Teaching how to select appropriate strategies using previous input from mediation.

• Young person applies previous strategies and rules with increasing flexibility.

• Previous mediation internalised and fully self-regulating.