Making the day make sense: sequenced learning in a PMLD classroom
Practical sequencing for clearer routines, stronger engagement and meaningful learning.
13 November 2026: 9am – 12.30 pm
In this practical session, Nick looks at how to make the PMLD teaching day clearer, calmer and more purposeful. Working from the learner’s perspective and drawing on the Engagement Model, he explores how routines, resources, and teaching moments can be sequenced to support learners in understanding what is happening now, what is coming next, and how they can take part.
The focus will be on turning the whole day into a connected learning journey, rather than a series of separate activities. Nick will share practical ideas for readiness to learn, snack time, transitions, anticipation, prediction, engagement, sensory cues, story, literacy, numeracy, movement and resource management.
This session will help class teams consider how everyday routines can become meaningful learning opportunities when well planned, repeated, and clearly structured. The aim is simple: a teaching day that staff can manage, learners can understand, and everyone can build on.
Session 1: Getting ready to learn!
In this first session, Nick looks at how to help learners with PMLD and complex needs become more alert, engaged and ready for the day ahead.
He explores how to create a clearer start to learning by focusing on readiness, regulation, communication and sensory access. Nick shows how familiar routines can wake up the senses and help learners access their curriculum in the way that works best for them.
Session 2: Mathsy Snack
Snack time is a forever-forgotten learning opportunity. In this session, Nick looks at how apples, bananas, cups and plates can become powerful teaching aids for learners with severe and complex needs.
The focus will be on turning a familiar daily routine into a meaningful maths experience that supports counting, comparing, choosing, sharing, anticipation, communication, and early conceptual understanding.
Session 3: Transitioning with success
Transitions can make or break the day. In this session, Nick looks at how we can help learners with severe and complex needs understand what is happening now, what is finishing and what is coming next.
The focus will be on building anticipation and prediction in a fun, practical, and multisensory way, using clear routines, sensory cues, objects, sounds, movement, and repetition to help learners feel more secure, more involved, and more ready to move on.
Session 4: Engagement!
The Engagement Model can feel daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. In this session, Nick unpacks the model in a clear, practical and down-to-earth way. The focus will be on showing how the Engagement Model can help class teams really notice their learners at their best. Nick will explore how exploration, realisation, anticipation, persistence and initiation can give staff a clearer picture of what learners are showing, what they are beginning to understand and what the next small step might be.
This session will help take the fear out of engagement and show how the model can become a useful, everyday tool for recognising progress, shaping teaching and celebrating the small moments that matter.
Session 5: The Lord of the Rings
It’s story time — and this is where the morning comes together. In this session, Nick looks at how a well-structured, well-sequenced story can bring purpose, rhythm and meaning to the PMLD classroom.
The focus will be on using story as a practical teaching tool, not just a nice activity. Nick will explore how repeated sensory experiences, clear beginnings and endings, familiar resources and planned moments of anticipation can support communication, engagement, literacy, organisation and, just as importantly, staff sanity.
Session 6: Let’s get out and about!
As the day moves on, our word expands, and we can become braver throughout the afternoon. This session explores how movement and exploration support learning in meaningful and fun ways. Nick will share practical ideas for using walkers, mats, standers, sensory routes and familiar routines to build confidence, engagement, communication and curriculum access beyond the chair or classroom table.
Session 7: Ending the day mathematically!
The last session of the day does not need to involve YouTube! Nick looks at how to finish the day with purpose, structure and meaningful maths.
The focus will be on simple, free-flowing ideas that support tagging and numerical awareness in practical ways, keeping learners engaged right through to the end of the day.
Session 8: Resources, Routines and Staff Roles
Nick finishes by examining how resources, routines, and staff roles can support a well-sequenced PMLD classroom. This session explores how class teams can use resources with a clear purpose, reduce unnecessary clutter and support consistent delivery across the day.
9 am Admissions and virtual tea/coffee to start the session
9.05 am Welcome & a warm-up!
9.15 am Session 1: Waking up – getting ready to learn!
The first session is about how to get your pupils ready to learn and engage in their curriculum however they need. We will focus on different alerting strategies, how to enliven the senses and ensure everyone is in the right place to learn. Get those mats and standers out!
9.45 am Session 2: Mathsy Snack
A forever-forgotten learning opportunity! We will work on changing the mundane to the extraordinary and how apples and bananas can be crucial teaching aids in developing conceptual understanding.
10.00 am Session 3: Transitioning with success
If you have heard me talk before, you will know this is one of my big passions! Getting pupils to anticipate what is happening next is a fantastic skill. In this session, we will examine how we can help our pupils predict and anticipate what is happening next in a fun and multi-sensory way!
10.30 am Session 4: Engagement!
Yes, that taboo subject strikes fear into most PMLD teachers’ hearts. But fear not! We will unpack the model and explain how it is straightforward, impactful, and a great way to see your pupils as their best selves.
10.45 am COFFEE BREAK
11.00 am Session 5: The Lord of the Rings
It’s time for a story! We build up this all morning, so let’s make it count! We will discuss how a well-structured and sequenced story can make all the difference to your day through a teaching and learning perspective and an organisational and preserving sanity one, too!
11.30 am Session 6: Let’s get out and about!
As the day continues, our world expands, and we can become braver throughout the afternoon. Get those walkers and mats out, and let’s do some old-school moving and grooving while still learning!
11.45 am Session 7: Ending the day mathematically!
It’s the last session of the day; stick on ‘Frozen’ on YouTube? Absolutely not! An excellent free-flowing session on tagging and numerical awareness is what you need to get those pupils through to the end of the day in a meaningful way.
12.15 pm Questions and Answers
12.30 pm Thank you and goodbyes!
This course will be appropriate for classroom practitioners from special schools and colleges, mainstream settings with specialist SEN provision and early years settings, and working with pupils with severe/complex learning needs and autism, or both.
Nick Sheffield is a specialist in designing and implementing SEN curriculum and assessment, having previously worked for the DfE as an Expert SEN Practitioner on the Expert Rochford Review Group. Nick is on the London North East Maths Hub Strategic Board and is in the process of co-authoring ‘Special school wisdom for mainstream schools’ with Mike Fleetham. Nick has worked in various roles in SEN, from working in VI as a PMLD class teacher to a secondary SEN deputy head; he is also a guest lecturer at Bedfordshire University. Nick enjoys giving practical advice to teachers and leaders and loves getting stuck in!
The cost is £149 plus VAT per delegate. You can select multiple places on the booking form.
You can pay by credit card for this booking or request an invoice on the booking form.
The recording of this event will be in your account at online.hirstwood.com. You will access this using the email address on the booking form and your password (instructions for creating your password are in the joining information).
Here you will find:
a digital recording of the event
a transcript of the Zoom chat
These will be available for 10 days after the event.
NEW for 2025!
We will suggest practical reflective practice for this event to support you in implementing your key takeaways from this session in the classroom.
We’ll also offer a toolkit of additional resources to help, which may include further documentation, videos or links to valuable resources/websites.
Please join our Facebook Group, Sensory Support Spaghetti, to connect with us and other like-minded professionals – for everything sensory!
UPDATED FOR 2026!
