Clare SENCO Forum Primary CoP (P) (Face-To-Face)

Clare SENCO Forum Primary CoP  

DATE:   Wednesday, 30 November 2022 
TIME:    4pm to 6pm (Tea/Coffee and sandwiches from 3:45pm!)
Venue:  Clare Education Centre

The SENCO Forum aims to continue to bring together a network of teachers working in inclusive/special education in Clare Primary schools. The network aims to provide professional learning, support, and networking opportunities for teachers. Margaret Egan will facilitate the network and will support its development over time. If you are a Principal, Special Education Teacher or SEN Co-Ordinator in a primary school in Clare and would like to find out more about the network, please join us.

Our second face-to-face meeting of the SENCO CoP for the academic year 2022/2023 will focus on Assistive Technology with an input session from the very experienced Jean Reale from Mary Immaculate College. It intends to be a very informative session to help support teachers in this area. This session will be run live from Limerick Education Centre and the Clare group will zoom in from Clare Education Centre. There will be a follow-up discussion on items discussed during Jean’s workshop and the group will share what is working well for them on the ground in relation to Assistive Technology.

We will also continue our discussion on identifying the needs of the group for the remaining terms.

Jean Reale
Assistant Professor in Academic Practice
LEAD Centre

Research interests: Universal Design for Learning; Building Digital Capacity in Higher Education; Inclusive Education, and Assistive Technology.
“In this session we will look at harnessing the power of inbuilt assistive technology supports in everyday classroom technology, to support ALL learners to achieve their full learning potential. The session aims to support teachers to incorporate the most relevant assistive technologies to support their students. It will look at current developments in text-tospeech, speech-to-text, translation and writing supports”

Dr. Margaret Egan 

Dr. Margaret Egan is a Lecturer in the Dept. of Educational Psychology, Inclusive and Special Education at Mary Immaculate College. She was a Deputy Principal and SEN Co-ordinator for many years before joining the Faculty of Education at MIC. Margaret teaches at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.  Margaret is actively engaged in Communities of Practice with a number of schools. Her interests are in Inclusion Policy and Practice; Language and Literacy for students with additional needs; Social and Emotional Learning, for all students, including those with Autistic Spectrum Difference (ASD), and Positive Behaviour Support for students with attention and behaviour needs. Margaret is currently supervising a number of Master and PhD students in these fields.

Karen Riordan

Karen has been teaching for the last 17 years in a co-educational school and has a special interest in working with children with additional needs having spent ten years as a Special Education Teacher. She has a particular passion for differentiated instruction and completed her thesis on ‘One size doesn’t fit all’ for her M.Ed at Mary Immaculate College. Karen has also designed and published yearly planners specifically for Special Education Teachers and Special Needs Assistants for the past three years. She has delivered many CPD workshops and webinars in the past twelve years on Early Literacy Instruction and has recently completed a Post-Graduate Diploma in Play Therapy. She is currently completing a  Masters in Creative Psychotherapy.