How Can I Make Rockerbox Reading Ladders Accessible for All My Students?

Rockerbox Reading Ladders can be adapted to ensure that it is accessible to all of your learners. This article has just a few best practices that will help you to support all of your pupils.

This article was added by Tom Boast, Product development lead for Rockerbox Reading Ladders

As you know, there is a vast range of learning and physical needs that our pupils may have. It is very challenging to find materials that can be accessed by all. However, we believe that with a few simple ideas, Rockerbox Reading Ladders can be accessed by all learners regardless of their needs. Read on for our advice on how you can adapt Rockerbox Reading Ladder for some of the more common barriers to learning.

If you don't find what you're looking for, please contact your school success manager. We would be happy to talk through the challenges you are facing and help you find solutions.

Non-verbal pupils

Trying to gain an understanding of the functional skills and reading skills of non-verbal pupils can be a real challenge as, quite simply, they can't verbalise what it is they're reading or answer questions verbally about a text. To help overcome this, we are collaborating with Widgit and will be providing versions of texts and questions with symbols at our copper level. If symbolised versions of other levels would be of interest to you, please do contact the support team. 

In your weekly lesson plan, we reference communication a lot as it is one of the key skills that we want to develop. Please make use of Widgit symbols, Makaton or any other communication device that each individual feels comfortable communicating with. It doesn't matter how they communicate, just that they are given the opportunity and feel confident doing so.

Good word readers, poor comprehension skills

There will be pupils who are able to read the texts at a high level but aren't able to comprehend what they have read or find key information. Our lesson plan structure will give you plenty of opportunities to teach these skills. If however, you find that the questions matching the text level are too challenging for your pupils, you have got access to all questions so you can build the comprehension skills up more gradually. 

Audio recordings

Some pupils will respond better to recordings of the texts. These are part of the planning folder and can be downloaded and added to devices as you so wish. This will provide pupils with the chance to listen as many times as they like and pause the text whenever they need to. All recordings are produced by British actors with standard accents. If you don't know where to find them, please read, 'Rockerbox Reading Ladders Pilot Materials'.