Curriculum Subjects: English, Maths, ICT, Science, Art & Design, History, Geography, Drama, PE, Design & Technology, Food Technology, Citizenship, Music.

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Assembly: Weekly assembly and whole school assembly twice a term.

 

Group Speech & Language Therapy: These are weekly timetable lessons delivered between 3 and 5 sessions a week. The programme delivered aims to:

• To provide impairment based therapy which targets specific areas of language and social communication impairment.

• To provide functional based therapy which seeks to devise and implement practical strategies to support the individual in a particular setting (e.g. the classroom/ playground).

• To support educational progress by providing targeted therapy in areas of impairment that are affecting an individual’s ability to access the National Curriculum.

• To support behavioural functioning and emotional wellbeing by providing targeted support in areas such as emotional intelligence and verbal reasoning.

 

The input is tailored to target specific areas of need and may include: developing pupils’ attention and listening skills, understanding and use of language skills and developing pragmatic language abilities. There is also a considerable focus on developing play and social skills, enabling the pupils to develop their friendships and to learn to interact appropriately with each other.

 

There is a Speech & Language therapist assigned to each class group who works collaboratively with teaching staff to ensure a holistic provision for all pupils.  This key therapist is able to provide therapy, advice and assistance to pupils on a needs-led basis. Speech and Language therapists and teachers plan together to provide a curriculum whereby the academic demands are supported and reinforced by the Speech and Language therapy team. This helps generalise these skills into different contexts and reinforce key vocabulary.

 

Individual Speech & Language Therapy: In addition to the group provision, some pupils may receive individual/paired speech and language therapy according to their needs. (see Speech & Language Therapy)

 

Occupational Therapy: Our occupational therapy team provide both individual and group therapy on a needs met basis. We carry out the Alert programme throughout the school which includes proprioception and vestibular rich movement activities. The team also provide teacher support and environmental adaptation for the pupils as needed. Equipment and sensory strategies are provided to help pupils access the curriculum. (see Occupational Therapy and Physiotherapy)

 

Educational visits and trips: There are numerous supporting educational visits throughout the Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 curriculum to facilitate and support learning and further the pupils’ ability to access the curriculum. Trips include The Science Museum, the Planetarium, Syon Park and the London Aquarium. Towards the end of Year 6, pupils are able to go on a 3 night residential trip to an outward bound centre, giving them the opportunity to develop their friendships, life and independence skills.

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Daily Living Skills: Occupational therapists (OTs) and Speech and language therapists (SLTs) jointly deliver Daily Living Skills sessions to pupils in the Lower School. These collaborative sessions develop the pupil's communication skills, social awareness and overall independence. Topics covered in these sessions include hygiene, dressing, personal safety and food preparation. These sessions also incorporate community visits where the pupils carry out functional tasks such as buying items in a shop, ordering a beverage at a café or borrowing a book at the library. At the end of each session, the pupils are encouraged to reflect on their own performance in each daily living activity. This supports the pupils to increase their self-awareness of their own strengths and needs so that they can use these strengths to harness their areas of difficulty.

 

The integration of approaches from two disciplines enables the pupils to learn functional vocabulary and appropriate social behaviour whilst simultaneously acquiring the skills to plan and carry out an activity of daily living in sequence. The SLTs and OTs collaboratively deliver interactive parent workshops where they demonstrate the skills explored in these sessions. Parents can then promote these independence skills within the home environment to support generalisation.

 

Group Reward System: In Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 the group start chart works effectively to promote and reward learning. In Year 6, a tally chart is used as a more mature way of rewarding pupil’s learning.

 

Individual Targets: Throughout Key Stage 1 and 2 the pupils work on targets, usually linked with their IEPs to help build and support key life skills.

 

Daily Positive Feedback: This is given to the pupils both verbally and in written form to recognise achievement on a day to day and weekly basis. The pupils are encouraged to recognise their positive achievements and rewarded with ‘Star of the Day’ and ‘Star of the lesson’ stickers and ‘Star of the Week’ certificates. The latter are usually presented in Assembly. These help support the ‘Every Child Matters’ government policy.

 

Promoting self awareness and self esteem: Pupils are encouraged to recognise their strengths on a daily and weekly basis and individual aspects from different lessons and different parts of the day are identified and highlighted to the pupils as a way of promoting their confidence and self esteem. It is also an effective way for children to learn to identify and maintain friendships within their group.