How Busy Things Can Support a SEND Setting
SEND covers a wide spectrum of needs and disabilities and finding good quality, curriculum-linked learning resources, appropriate for your pupils, can feel like an impossible task. One size most certainly doesn’t fit all for an average SEND setting.
What does Busy Things offer children with SEND?
Busy Things allows children to access over 1,600 award-winning, educational activities, which cover the National Curriculum but also inject an element of fun into lessons. ‘Teach, laugh and learn’ is our motto and with our quirky, humorous curriculum-linked activities and games, learning on our platform is always accompanied by a smile.
Particularly important for children in SEND settings, Busy Things covers three of the areas of need in special education. Below, we introduce one game per area, which you can play for free by clicking the links. This should give you a quick taster of what we offer.
Sensory/physical needs
Our ‘Mudball shootout’ maths game is extremely popular, so it’s a must-see if you’ve not tried it already.
Aim the cannon and select the right amount of force, using the two controls, to hit the pink men with the balls.
See what happens when you hit the nets, the targets or passing birds!
Play ‘Mudball shootout‘ here!
Cognition & learning
‘Balloon tree’ supports number learning and subitising.
Click on the balloon which has the same number on it as the number of dots on the monkey’s board. If you’re correct, the pink man will jump and pop the balloon!
Play ‘Balloon tree‘ here!
Communication & interaction
‘Letter line up’ is a fantastic activity for teaching and reinforcing your pupils’ knowledge of the alphabet.
Find the letters as they’re asked for by tapping or clicking on them.
Can you put the letters back in their correct sequence too?
Play ‘Letter line up‘ here!
Ideal for use on touchscreens, whiteboards and tablets, Busy Things is also compatible with eye gaze and other accessibility devices.
What does Busy Things offer SEND teachers?
School life is always hectic and teaching learners with a multitude of unique needs can lead to significantly more complex lesson plans. Busy Things, however, will help you take this in your stride and save you valuable time, as it’s been designed with adaptation, differentiation and communication in mind.
First and foremost, Busy Things offers a wealth of curriculum-linked activities, which cover English, maths, science, history, geography, computing, art and more! Directly linked to learning objectives within the National Curriculum, it provides engaging activities which give the learner instant feedback.
Need an activity simplified for one user?
Just pop into the activity’s settings and see the array of options available. Below you can see Activity settings for one of our maths activities. As you can see, you can choose which fractions, decimals and percentages to include and omit.
Equally, if your pupils find a particular type of activity challenging, there are often different formats to choose from. Instead of a quiz, they could try a sorting activity. Instead of focusing on ordering, it could be more productive to ask them to complete a labelling activity.
Need to keep children focussed on a single or set of activities?
Busy Things’ padlock feature can be activated at any time. This removes the back button from the page so stops children wandering away from the task in hand.
Need to step down an academic level for a particular activity?
Busy Things has activities and games for children from Reception-age right through to Year 6, so there’s often an alternative! Click into the Curriculum browser or use the Search feature to see what they could be. You can search by activity name (if you know it) or subject area and alter the target age as you enter.
You can hide the level if seeing it negatively impacts the child. They’ll just see whatever you’ve chosen amongst their other activities and games.
Need to save evidence of learning?
Evidence is easily saved with Busy Things. You can save it to your account and keep it within the platform or export it in one of a variety of formats to save elsewhere. It’s totally compatible with applications like Boop and Seesaw.
Need verbal and written instructions for each pupil?
When setting work via Busy Things, you can blast activities to the pupils individually, in groups or as a whole class, attaching instructions either by recording your voice or adding typed text. It’s a terrific way to engage the pupils right from the start of the lesson and a real time-saver!
Do you have children with limited mobility?
Eye gaze works well with Busy Things and we have several games that are ready to use with switch control.
Interested to know more?
Our subscription fee for special schools depends on the number of pupils that will access the platform. We know that Busy Things may not be appropriate for everyone in your setting but want it to be available to those who will benefit.
For this reason, we have a two-tiered approach: for less than 10 pupils, it’s just £110 per year; for over 25 pupils, it’s £280.
We would love to be able to show you around and help you understand the types of activities that would be most appropriate for your pupils. You can either take a 28-day free trial and take a look yourself, or for a more tailored introduction, choose to schedule a Zoom call with our platform expert, Rachel.
We look forward to hearing from you!