Autism Base | Allen Edwards Primary School

"The school is an inclusive and welcoming environment where pupils are well supported to strengthen their learning and well-being." Ofsted 2018

Classes | Curriculum | Assessment |

What is Lambeth Autism Advisory Service? | Inclusion Across the School |

What Parents can expect from us | Admissions | Transition | Support for Parents

Support from Professionals - Speech & Language | Music Therapy | Art Therapy | Occupational Therapy |
Educational Psychologist |

Autism Resource Base

At Allen Edwards’ Autism Resource Base, we strive to provide an environment where children and their families feel safe, welcome and supported.

We aim to enable every child to become the very best they can be by nurturing and encouraging their individual strengths and interests, whilst giving them opportunities to learn new and exciting things in a safe and secure learning environment. Pupils are supported to develop and use strategies that help them to overcome and cope with challenges they are faced with, developing them into resilient young learners.

Allen Edwards Resource Base offers an adapted school provision to allow our pupils to thrive. We currently have 3 classrooms with a high level of adult support. In each classroom there are 8 children, who are supported by one class teacher and 3 support staff to enable us to create a classroom environment that supports the success of our pupils.

All staff receive regular training from a range of professionals to further develop their understanding effective Autism Strategies and interventions to meet the needs of the children that they work with.

Classes

Base 1:

Teacher: Mr Verga

Support Staff: Ms Fatima, Ms Laura, Ms Visare and Ms Rennish

Base 2:

Teacher: Ms Amoah

Support Staff: Mr Michael, Ms Evelyn and Ms Matteo

Base 3:

Teacher: Ms Grosskopf

Support Staff: Ms Maria, Mr Dylan, Ms Sophie, Ms Jennifer, Ms Georgia (part-time) and Ms Ashleigh (part-time).

Classes

Curriculum

Learning in meaningful, engaging ways is of paramount importance in the classroom. We endeavour to ensure that the children are learning in an environment that encourages them to learn through play as well as giving them opportunities to access a broad and balanced curriculum that prepares them for the ever changing world around them.

We recognise the importance of beginning our children’s learning journeys at the starting point of the individual child and developing a curriculum to meet their needs.

The majority of the children in the resource base are working within the Pre-key stage standards levels
1 – 4 and the Year 1 curriculum. Children who are not yet accessing subject specific learning are assessed using the Engagement model (this has replaced P levels 1-4).

Therefore, we follow an adapted version of the National curriculum to ensure that all children can access a curriculum that meets their individual needs and allows them to make progress from their starting points. The curriculum is tailored to the needs of the children and objectives are taken from the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum, National Curriculum and we adapt the B-Squared Progression Steps for English, Maths and Science to further adapt the objectives to meet the needs of our children. The delivery of the curriculum is adapted and broken down into manageable chunks to meet the needs of our learners and allow them to access a range of exciting learning to prepare them for their futures. Communication, interaction and preparation for the future is paramount to all learning opportunities and is considered in all lessons that the children access.

Developing the children’s communication, language and emotional understanding to promote positive social skills is a key priority for us at Allen Edwards’ Resource Base. This plays a vital role in helping the children develop friendships as well as positive interactions, confidence, self-assurance and self-esteem. Giving the children the tools they need to communicate effectively in a range of environments to prepare them for their future success.

We want our children to thrive and achieve their full potential so will always have extremely high expectations of them.

Curriculum Objectives:

To provide children with broad and balanced curriculum opportunism that prepare the children for an ever-changing world.
To meet the diverse learning needs of the children.
To improve the children’s self-confidence.
To encourage them to become more resilient in their own learning and understand how to overcome barriers to learning through taught strategies.
To develop their independent learning skills.
To make progress from their individual starting points across all aspects of school life.
To develop their attention skills to enable them to access a range of learning opportunities.
To develop pupils understanding of how to manage their sensory and emotional needs to allow them to access all learning opportunities and transfer these skills outside of the classroom.

Curriculum Outcomes:

Pupils make progress from their starting points.

Pupils are able to access strategies that help them to self-regulate and attend to learning activities.

Pupils enjoy accessing a range of learning activities alongside their peers.

Pupils attend to learning for greater lengths of time.

Pupils retain learning and can transfer this across all areas of life.

We recognise that all learning must be highly stimulating and fun to engage the pupils at all times. We want to nurture positive learning attitudes at all points and respond to the children’s reactions to tasks and themes, which is why our curriculum is constantly changing.

We offer a range of extra-curricular activities including cycle lessons, swimming and piano lessons. Each term, the children go on at least one school trip linked to their theme to further develop their understanding of the theme and support their communication and interaction skills in a range of environments. In addition, we offer weekly visits to the local nature garden where the children participate in forest school activities.

The children in the resource base access after school clubs such as karate and gymnastics.

Curriculum Overview

Curriculum

Assessment

Across the school and within the resource base, we strive to understand the children’s needs to allow us to successfully support and assess the pupils that we work with.

We understand that the children we work with have a high level of need and ensure that we assess the child from their starting point in a holistic manner. Therefore, we assess the progress of the whole child.

Speech, communication and interaction skills are assessed each term with staff and our SALT working closely together to review targets and provision and adapting these accordingly. All targets are shared with parents and carers each term.

Academic progress is measured against Pre Key Stage Standards and the National Curriculum. B SQUARED Progression Steps is used to record the small steps of progress within the pre key stage standards and NC levels.

For pupils who are not yet engaged in subject-specific learning we use the The Engagement Model. The model has 5 areas: exploration, realisation, anticipation, persistence and initiation. These progress reviews feed in to our curriculum meetings and allow us to continuously adapt the curriculum to meet the needs of the children we work with. We assess the academic progress of the children continuously to feed into daily planning as well as capturing data at three points across the year on the B Squared assessment system.

All children have Individual Target Plans with targets linked to the four areas on their EHCPS: Communication and Interaction, Cognition and Learning, Sensory and Physical and Social, Mental and Emotional Health, which are assessed each term as part of the assessment cycle for each child to support us to adapt provision and learning to ensure maximum progress of all children.

Annual review meetings are held to look at progress against the long term and medium term outcomes and to set new outcomes. We ensure the children’s needs are correctly reflected in the EHCP and if necessary adjustments are made during these multi-agency meetings.

Evidence for all assessment and moderation is collated through learning tasks in books and observations and through intervention records.

Support fro Professionals

Support from Professionals

Weekly Music Therapy with our trained music therapist, Catherine Price.
Weekly Speech and Language Therapy sessions, staff training and target reviews with our SALT, Demi Rosen
Weekly Art Therapy sessions with Art4Space
Educational Psychologist training and support for children, staff and parents
Lambeth Autism Advisory Service teacher, Edyta Zjawiony
Occupational Therapy

What is Speech and Language Therapy?

Speech and language therapy supports children to communicate whilst supporting them to develop their speech and language skills. Our speech and language therapists (SLT) work alongside our staff delivering training, assessing children’s needs, developing targets and supporting interventions as well as 121 or small group support with the children on their caseload. They will also work closely with parents providing drop-in sessions, targets and advice where needed. Our Speech and Language offer comes from Words First, who are in the resource base for 1.5 days a week.

In the resource base and across the school, our SLT helps with a range of different speech and language needs:

Understanding: using and understanding language in social situations.
Verbal skills: understanding and using spoken language.
Non-verbal skills: communicating using signs and gestures, body language, turn-taking
Expressive skills: getting a message across, verbally or non-verbally
Comprehension or receptive skills: understanding of spoken language and sign
Voice skills: controlling volume, quality and pitch
Speech: pronouncing sounds and words
Literacy: developing an awareness of letter-sounds and language skills that are specifically related to reading, spelling and to understanding written text.
Attention and listening: developing strategies to increase attention and focus to support the children with their understanding.

Speech and Language Interventions that you may hear your child’s teacher discuss with you:

Lego Therapy: supporting children with their turn taking and social skills
Zones of Regulation: supports emotional regulation and understanding of children’s own emotions and those of others.
Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS): communicating through pictures to support early language development in children with SEND. This is used across school where appropriate. In addition to the PECS used specifically for some children, visuals accompany displays throughout the school building and on signs to enable children to access all areas of the school.
Other interventions used include: Word Wanderers, Terrific Talkers, Higher Level Questioning, Conversations and Colour Semantics.

What is Music Therapy?

At Allen Edwards, we have a Music Therapist, Catherine Price, who joins our staff for one day a week.

We use Music Therapy to support children’s communication and language skills and social and emotional needs. Music Therapy draws on music to support children with initial language and spontaneous sound making. Music Therapy is also a great support for our children with emotional needs as it often provides a distraction for the mind allowing the children to process trauma and develop lifelong strategies that will support them to regulate their emotions.

What is Art Therapy?

We have worked closely with Art4Space, who are a local charity that provide Art therapy for children in Lambeth. They us art as a media of expression and communication. Art is used to support children with emotional regulation and processing to allow them to access home and school life more positively. Art Therapy is also a great way for children to relax and develop social skills in small group environments.

What is Occupational Therapy?

Occupational Therapy (OT) supports children who have physical, sensory or cognitive needs. It supports children to develop life skills that allow them to become more independent and carry out daily tasks that they might find difficult.

This might include support to help with:

Eating
Washing
Using the toilet
Fine or gross motor
Regulation
Transition
Playing

Often children with autism present with motor, perceptual or sensory challenges. They may be oversensitive to touch, noise or sound. Their attention and behaviour can be affected by these physical or sensory challenges.

Occupational Therapists provide specialist assessments to identify the underlying difficulties impacting on your child's function (for example motor, sensory or perceptual skills). They will then provide therapeutic intervention and recommend appropriate strategies to help children overcome these difficulties working closely with school staff and families so they are supporting all aspects of the child’s life to enable them to be as successful as can be.

In school, we use the Evelina Occupational Therapy Pack to support children in our Universal Offer. If the child needs more support, we will make a referral to the Evelina Team after discussions with parents. We also buy in days with an occupational therapist to support children with EHCPs in school.

What does an educational psychologist do?

We commission an educational psychologist (EP) to work together with children, parents and staff as well as other professionals to support school based interventions for the children to help them to make progress. This work usually focuses on consultation, assessment and intervention.

If we feel that your child would benefit from an assessment from the educational psychologist, we would arrange a meeting with you and the EP, the EP would meet with your child’s teacher and observe your child in class. They will then write a report outlining their findings and recommendations that we will then implement in school. This assessment may also be used to support an EHCP application.

We are constantly evolving the therapeutic work that we do at Allen Edwards and looking for new ways to support your children to thrive. If you think that there is a therapy or intervention that you think your child would benefit from, please come and speak with a member of the Inclusion Team and we will discuss this further with you.

Our resource base teachers all have supervision each term with the EP to discuss specific children or practice to ensure we are constantly adapting to meet the children’s needs and work with a multi-agency approach to best meet their needs.

Speech & Language Therapy

Music Therapy

Art Therapy

Occupational Therapy

Educational psychologist

What is Lambeth Autism Advisory Service?

At Allen Edwards, our Autism Advisory Teacher is Edyta Zjawiony. She has worked here for several years and has a strong relationship with our children, parents and staff.

She provides support in schools for staff to develop a greater understanding of autism and to empower staff to apply good practice. We aim to have an Autism Friendly environment across school so she reviews our universal offer as well as working with our Autistic children in school to provide support, advice and strategies to promote independence and help them reach their full potential

Here are some Autism Friendly Strategies used in school:

TEACCH
PECS
Social Stories
Work Stations
Visual timetables
Whole school behaviour policy linked to Red and Green Choices
Communicate in Print labelling across school
All staff have Attention Autism training with Gina Davis

Lambeth Autism Advisory Service

Inclusion Across the School

Our base is at the heart of our school community. We are committed to ensuring that the children in our resource base access areas of the mainstream provision that are appropriate to their level of need and we will work closely with parents and professionals to support with these transitions.

Where it is appropriate for our children, they access lessons, playtimes, assembly times, workshops, after school clubs, school trips and lunchtimes within the mainstream. This is always carefully considered to ensure the positive impact and development of the children we work with.

Across school, we have ensured that the school environment and all classes are Autism Friendly to support the children in those classes and allow children in the base to access mainstream when appropriate as well as ensuring that all staff are able to support children with Autism and understand their needs. All of our school staff are trained by Gina Davis in Attention Autism training.

As soon as they are ready, all pupils are included in some weekly mainstream sessions to help build their social skills and further enhance their learning experiences.

Our resource base children have weekly lessons with our trained sports coaches.

Inclusion Across the School

What Parents Can Expect from Us

In order for the children to reach their full potential, it is vital that we work closely with parents.

Staff are always available before or after school to speak with parents and carers.
The deputy head in charge of the resource base will meet with parents and carers.
Meetings can be arranged with all staff members to discuss any further support or concerns about your children.
Parents and carers can send Dojo messages to teachers and other staff in the resource base, which will be responded to outside of teaching times. If the matter is urgent, the deputy head in charge of the resource base will respond.
Targets are reviewed and shared with parents each term. This feeds into our ethos that the development of your child is enhanced by building relationships between all adults working with your child.
You will be invited to a yearly annual review to discuss your child’s progress.
We provide termly coffee mornings run by professionals working with your children to provide support and training for parents and carers.
Signposting and support accessing services.
Organising 121 support or training with our specialists to support specific concerns related to your children.

Regular communication will be made with parents via Class Dojo, face-to-face contact at the start and end of the day as well as informal meetings where appropriate.

What parents can expect from us

Admissions

The Resource Base for Autism follows a separate admissions process to the main school. Admissions are processed by Lambeth SEN.

Admissions Criteria:

A diagnosis of Autism
A statement or EHC plan
The child fits the profile for resource base

If parents are considering a specialist provision for their child they should contact Nicola Harris (Deputy Head for Inclusion) to arrange a visit to the school at nharris@allenedwards.lamebth.sch.uk or by calling the school office on 020 7622 3985.

It is of the utmost importance that parents make an informed decision with regard to their child’s educational placement therefore it is advisable that they visit a number and range of specialist provisions in order to assess where they feel their child’s needs would be best met.

Below is an outline of the application process:

For children already at school:

An annual review must be held and a change of placement needs to be discussed. The SENCO at your child’s current school will then submit a change of placement request in the annual review paperwork that will be sent to Lambeth SEND.
Lambeth SEND will then send the consultation paperwork to the assistant head teacher for Inclusion.
As part of the assessment process, we will arrange to visit the child in their current setting.
We will also invite you to Allen Edwards so that you can see our provision and ensure that it is the best fit for your child.
The Deputy Headteacher in charge of the resource base will send a response to Lambeth SEND within the specified period, stating whether or not we can meet their child’s needs. This will depend on the children currently in the resource base, spaces available and the needs of your child.
If there are no places available, we will offer to keep the child on a referrals list until a place becomes available.

Admissions

Transition

For children starting in our resource base, we will tailor a transition to support your child and your family circumstances.

Your child will be invited for an initial visit to meet the staff they will be working with and familiarise themselves with the resource base.
They will be provided with a transition pack to support this process.
In most instances, we will begin with a staggered start: this prevents your child becoming overwhelmed with a new environment and new people and promote a successful start. It will also allow your child and the other children in the base to familiarise themselves with each other to ensure all children remain calm and happy in the provision.
We will meet with parents once the child is settled to discuss progress and provide any additional support needed.