Staff Interest and Training

Target audience: Professionals supporting children and young people 

The child who copies another’s work. The pupil who gets their head down and looks busy, but produces very little output. The student who nods along during your instructions, and maybe even says “yes” when asked if they understand what they are supposed to do… only for them to do something quite different. What ties these different behaviours together? They could all be forms of camouflaging an unrecognised language needs, especially for children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), a common but under-recognised neurodevelopmental condition that affects children’s language development. 

You might have come across ideas about “masking” or “camouflaging” in relation to autism. The terms capture what happens when a neurodivergent person changes their behaviour to minimise their differences. While the result may be that autistic people “pass” as neurotypical, masking all day is exhausting, detrimental to mental health, and disruptive to a person’s sense of identity.

This is a training event on masking and camouflaging for professionals, considering both DLD and autism, for a “transdiagnostic” approach to masking. Please register here to join us at York Explore Library, 1.30-4pm, 3rd July.

Target audience: Secondary school leaders, teachers, and practitioners

As the national curriculum focus shifts towards oracy, how do we ensure that secondary school students have the vocabulary they need to make high-quality spoken language a reality? Many schools have already laid the groundwork, and we are calling for secondary school teachers to help us take stock of that progress, share what is actually working, and identify where more support is needed. You can help by:

(1) Completing a short 15-20 minute survey on current practice in your school (open to all UK secondary school teachers); and 

(2) Joining us in York for a one-day workshop on Wednesday 8th July to bridge the gap between research evidence and the daily reality of the classroom. 

Target audience: Primary teachers; Secondary teachers; Educational psychologists; Career advisors 

This is a short talk (30 minutes) on the psychology and neuroscience of learning and memory and their implications for classroom learning from the perspective of academics involved in fundamental research but who still thinks teachers know best. The idea is to prompt discussion (e.g., 30 minutes) on what neuroscience can and can't tell us and where we should look for answers. 

This is an in-person session available to SUNRAY schools upon request.