By: Rastee Chaudhry and Manuella Ankrah
The first step towards inclusion is within reach of every school system, even where resources are scarce. That step is effective instruction, supported by strong teaching and learning materials designed so every child, including children with learning differences, can learn from day one.
World Inclusion Day is a moment to reflect on what it means to meaningfully include all children in education systems. Getting children into classrooms matters, but what happens once they are there matters just as much. That starts with instruction that works for every child.
How children are taught shapes not only what they learn, but how they experience school, and whether they feel they belong there. In classrooms, belonging is built through everyday choices: whether children see themselves in what they read, whether teaching meets them where they are, and whether they get support when they fall behind.
How children are taught shapes not only what they learn, but how they experience school, and whether they feel they belong there.
Drawing on a decade of work with vulnerable children across sub-Saharan Africa, The Luminos Learning Differences Approach sets out a three-part strategy for ensuring all children are supported to learn in low- and middle-income contexts. First, provide every child instruction that is effective and inclusive by design. Then, once effective instruction is in place, identify children who continue to struggle and provide targeted support in practical, scalable ways.
In this blog, we dive deeper into that first step: what it takes to build effective, inclusive instruction from the outset, and how Luminos has done this in practice through our classroom materials.
The Luminos Learning Differences Approach
Representation So All Children Feel Seen
Many children in low- and middle-income countries rarely see themselves represented in their learning materials. Textbooks and illustrations are often adapted from elsewhere, showing faces, places, and daily lives that can feel far removed from their own.
Every classroom brings together children with different cultures and home lives, as well as children who move, see, hear, and learn in different ways. The materials they learn from should reflect that range, and Luminos’ structured pedagogy materials are designed to do just that.
For many of our students, formal school culture can feel unfamiliar, and a new language or unfamiliar norms can signal that succeeding in school means leaving their home identity behind. Luminos rejects that model.
In each country, communities help shape our programmes from the start: teachers come from students’ own communities and speak their language, and lessons draw on local texts, traditional games and songs, and familiar places, so children learn in classrooms that value who they are. When children feel that their identities are valued and accepted, they build the confidence and self-belief to see themselves as successful learners.
Sample Read Aloud Story:
Oware
A popular game called Oware is used to support learning in Liberia. Students play these games during numeracy lessons to practice addition and subtraction skills as well as to develop logic and strategic thinking.
The same is true for children with disabilities, who should see themselves in their learning materials as readily as their classmates.
In Ghana, Luminos recently partnered with the government to revise the country’s existing Complementary Basic Education (CBE) materials, which help out-of-school, primary-aged children build strong foundational literacy and numeracy skills. The materials are available in four Ghanaian languages. Their illustrations show children with disabilities learning alongside their classmates, such as a child who uses a wheelchair, a child with a vision impairment reading braille, a child who wears a hearing aid, and a child missing a leg writing on the board with crutches.
Sample of the illustrations created by the Luminos Fund for the Government of Ghana.
This is an intentional design decision, and it works on two levels. Children with differences see that they belong in an ordinary classroom. Teachers who use these materials every day see it too, reinforcing a core message: every child is here to learn.
Instruction That Works for Every Child
Representation is only part of the picture. At Luminos, we are laser-focused on ensuring teaching is accessible and effective for every child.
We use a phonics-based approach, because the evidence is clear that explicit, systematic phonics is most effective for all children learning to read, including children with learning differences such as dyslexia.
The same thinking shapes how we structure lessons. Teachers introduce each new skills clearly and directly rather than expecting children to grasp new concepts through exposure alone. Following this explicit introduction, later lessons return to each skill again and again, in different ways, until children can use it confidently and independently. For children with dyslexia and other learning differences, clear and frequent practice with sounds, words, and text from an early age is especially valuable. Repeated practice helps the brain build and strengthen the neurological pathways that reading depends on, improving accuracy and automaticity.
Children learn best when they feel secure, welcome, and happy in school, and when differences are recognised, supported, and celebrated rather than singled out.
The classroom environment matters just as much. Children learn best when they feel secure, welcome, and happy in school, and when differences are recognised, supported, and celebrated rather than singled out. Children who feel anxious or unwelcome tend to miss more days and fall further behind. For children with learning differences, who may already arrive carrying negative experiences of school, this can also shape how they see themselves as learners.
Support That Leaves No Child Behind
Once effective instruction is in place and most children begin to progress, the children who continue to struggle become visible. That is when targeted support can make the biggest difference, and it forms the basis of Steps 2 and 3 of The Luminos Learning Differences Approach.
Even with effective instruction, some children may still struggle in the classroom. They may be younger in age than their classmates, learning in a language different from what they speak at home, or living with a learning difference. Whatever the reason, the first line of support should not depend on a diagnosis. It should be built into everyday teaching through regular skills review, assessments of learning progress, and time for extra support for those learners who are struggling.
Luminos’ teaching and learning approach is designed this way. For instance, before a new letter-sound is introduced, teachers review all the sounds children have already learned. Each lesson ends with a quick “exit ticket” activity, such as asking each child to read a single decodable word, so teachers can see who has mastered the day’s skill and who needs more support. Review days close each week, and full review weeks are spaced throughout the school year.
Additional support is provided within the regular lesson time. While children work through progressive exercises in their workbooks at their own pace, teachers move around the room and provide additional support to those who need it. Teachers also use weekly assessments to form mixed-ability groups, so children who have grasped a concept can support their classmates who are yet to. None of this requires a specialist. With the right material design and training, every classroom teacher can provide this support.
Design for Inclusion from the Start
When classroom materials, lessons, and teacher training are designed with every child in mind, children have more opportunities to be taught well, and to feel seen and supported. That is a meaningful step towards truly inclusive education systems.
The Luminos Learning Differences Approach details our approach to inclusive education in low- and middle-income contexts. Across our programmes, we have seen time and again that children who start out struggling can catch up and go on to flourish. These strong learning outcomes have reinforced our firm belief that every child can learn—a belief central to our organisational culture and that informs everything we do in the classroom.
Access Our Materials
Luminos’ online library of structured pedagogy materials—including Teacher’s Guides, Student Books, and supplemental reading materials—are freely available online in several African languages to download and adapt. Carefully designed by our education experts, Luminos’ classroom materials are joyful, locally rooted, and sequenced to build foundational skills quickly. Importantly, these materials are intentionally created for low-resourced settings where students are often the first in their families to learn to read.
Rastee Chaudhry is Associate Director of Programs at the Luminos Fund, where she supports program development, delivery, and management. Before joining Luminos, Rastee managed the assessment portfolio at the PAL Network, worked as a researcher for the RISE Programme at the University of Oxford, and served as a policy and measurement consultant for UNICEF Pakistan. She is passionate about using evidence and policy to address education challenges in the developing world. Rastee holds a BA in International Economics from the University of British Columbia and an MA in International Education Policy from Harvard University.
Manuella Ankrah is a Senior Program Analyst on the Teaching and Learning team at the Luminos Fund. In her role, Manuella is responsible for developing high-quality teaching and learning materials, supporting training design and implementation, and working on assessments in close collaboration with other teams across the organization. Manuella brings nearly a decade of experience working with children and youth across multiple countries. Manuella holds a BA in French and Spanish from Cardiff University and an MA in Education and International Development from University College London.
