Engagement is a journey that connects a child and their environment (including people, ideas, materials and concepts) to enable learning and achievement.  Without engagement there is no deep learning, effective teaching, meaningful outcome, real attainment or quality progress. (Carpenter 2010)

 

Educators working with children & young people with Complex Learning Difficulties & Disabilities need to:

• work with children & young people to establish ‘learning readiness’.
   
• make knowledge, understanding & skills desirable to children & young people so that they have a thirst to learn and become engaged learners.
   
• increase their post-school life opportunities.

 

 

From September 2021 The Engagement Model is statutory for all primary aged students and schools will be required to:

• Use The Engagement Model alongside assessment models already in place.

At Endeavour this is MAPP2 (Mapping & Assessing Personal Progress) which enables us to track individual student’s progress against their curriculum Learning Intentions through class observations and multi-professional discussions.

• Report to the Department for Education (DfE) which primary aged students are being assessed using The Engagement Model. 

Nationally this is all primary students not engaged in subject specific learning (English, Geography, Science etc)

At Endeavour this is all our primary aged students as they have their personalised Endeavour Curriculum.

 

The Engagement for Learning Framework

Tools include:

Engagement Profile – used to describe a child’s “highest possible engagement for learning” behaviours during their “most absorbing” activity or activities.  This can be in any environment i.e. school, home, community.

Engagement Scale – allows assessment and documentation of a child’s progress on a journey from minimal engagement in a learning activity to high engagement as a result of adjustments made.

Engagement Ladder – helps educators identify a priority learning focus.

 

5 Areas of Engagement

Intent

By implementing The Engagement Model we aim to identify what it looks like when individual students are fully engaged in highly motivating activities and to implement strategies that will work towards achieving this level of engagement in other learning tasks. 

 

Implementation

Endeavour have the following decisions to make:

• How does The Engagement Model fit in with MAPP2 that is our current assessment tool?
   
• Who will have responsibility for carrying out initial assessment and completing Engagement Profile? – Class teacher and Assistant Principal
   
• How many assessments will be carried out each term / year? – one a term after initial assessment
   
• Who will have responsibility for carrying out the assessments? – Class teacher or link worker with support from Assistant Principal
   
• What evidence will be kept? – observations, ideally videos, to be uploaded to Evidence for Learning
   
• How will parents be included? – discussion at parents evening / EHCP and videos shared via Evidence for Learning.