Masha Andrievich - Why can't they just sit and be quiet?

In this talk, Masha introduces some of the strategies she has used to develop a clearer understanding of SEN in her classroom practice.

Teaching For Success Online Conference 5-9 October 2016

About the webinar

This talk draws on experience and looks to address some of the questions from the young learner classroom:

  • Does it have to be so noisy in this class?
  • What do I do with ADHD learners who won't sit still?
  • How do I teach vocabulary for “Wild animals” to a blind boy?
  • Will I ever get to teach for 30 minutes straight without wasting time on behaviour management? 

Masha looks at some of the things that helped her and led to making connections to her classroom practice to establish a list of 10 principles:

  • Reading non-ELT related materials on child psychology (mostly popular child psychology books like “How children learn”, “Your child’s brain”, “How to talk to children”, etc and some in Russian) and special needs learners (learning about emotional/behavioral difficulties, etc)
  • Talking to specialists (insights from a conversation with a school psychologist about having realistic expectations from different learners)
  • Online courses (Coursera’s “Supporting children with difficulties in reading and writing”)

She looks at how to learn more about your learners' psychology and translate this information into your teaching context and provides ideas and activities she uses with her inclusive class to establish that learning more about psychology of special needs learners, talking to colleagues, researching particular issues that come up in your classroom and constantly trying out various ideas will gradually bring your teaching in an inclusive context to the next level and bring you a clearer vision of how beautiful inclusive learning really is.

About the speaker 

Masha Andrievich, Cambridge Delta, MA TEFL (in progress). Masha is a language teacher and teacher trainer from Moscow, Russia. She has been teaching for about 10 years and currently combines teaching in a state school with freelance. Professionally, Masha is into everything young learners, CPD, lexical approach, demand high teaching, textploitation and SEN.

Research and insight

Browse fascinating case studies, research papers, publications and books by researchers and ELT experts from around the world.

See our publications, research and insight