NIHR
University of Exeter
Tools for Schools
Equal contributions



Equal contributions

Key Points

This strategy is to give you ideas about how you can build in contributions from a lot of different students with different needs so that everyone’s voice is heard and your classroom is as inclusive as it can be. It’s about promoting and modelling positive socially inclusive behaviour, and supporting children with individual differences to be an equal peer contributor

How is this tweaked for flex?

Whilst you may already have strategies to ensure everyone's voice is heard, if you use the same strategy over and over with some children, they may get bored or disengage with it. This strategy gives you a range of different ideas that you can use to ensure everyone's voice is heard in new and varied ways

Plan
  • Use the equal contributions poster to identify different ideas for ensuring that all your students get to contribute in class alongside your planning for the week or day, and implement a variety of these across the week
Do
  • Try using some of the suggestions with your class, aim to use some of the non-verbal ones as well as the verbal ones
Review
  • After a few days, use the reflection template to note what you tried, what was good about it and what was not so good.
  • Did it help all students to engage with your teaching across the school day? If not, what could you do differently?
  • Talk to your SENCo or colleagues about your new activities, and your thoughts on the reflection template
  • Consider how you are going to build this in to your teaching and planning going forward