Welcome to Acorns

Welcome to Acorn Room

Acorn Room

Welcome to Acorn Class

Welcome to Acorn class! We are very excited to introduce this brand new 'hub' class to support and empower children with particular and significant needs. This class currently caters for children with these needs across FS and KS1. 

Acorn class is taught by our SENDCo (Mr Reay) and he teaches Acorn class all day on Monday and Friday and then every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday morning. Tuesday and Thursday afternoons are covered by Ms Cheston (HLTA) and Wednesday afternoon the children do Forest School with Mrs Haddon in order to release Mr Reay for leadership time in those afternoons. 

Mr Allen teaches P.E every Friday morning from 9:05 - 10:00 in order to release Mr Reay for PPA time. 

Miss Earnshaw, Miss Ford and Ms Cheston are the support staff working alongside Mr Reay in Acorn Class each day. 

Acorn Class will still cater for the needs of complex needs children who are experiencing significant delays or difficulties and who are in receipt of an EHCP or along the pathway for an EHCP. The desire is to equip and support the children with the skills and tools needed to make progress with carefully planned for tasks and a timetable which is incorporating sessions to support needs such as Speech and Language, fine motor skills, sensory circuits, sensory breaks, social skills support and basic number and literacy skills to help the child to make progress and succeed. The key areas of need incorporated within the hub will be ASD, Speech and Language difficulties and Developmental Delay. The desired outcome for this provision would be to help develop the whole child and make progress against personal targets and, with some children the goal will be to have supported the child to close gaps and be able to access the curriculum within a mainstream class with appropriate inclusive resources, support and interventions. 

We will be also 'buddying' up with a KS1 class to complete tasks such as Art and DT tasks, reading, playtimes and other projects to enable the children to maintain friendships and relationships with other members of the school community and to also have positive role models of speech, language, communication and social interaction. 

Acorn parent overview

Our Learning Styles:

Within the hub, the children will constantly be referred to a ‘We are …’ statement throughout all areas of learning. This is to create a positive ethos to support and develop the children’s resilience and determination. These will be our learning styles and will be displayed in areas and on display boards.

Key areas of learning styles are; 

• We are communicators
• We are team players
• We are problem solvers
• We are explorers through play
• We are thinkers
• We are active learners.

 

We also have subject specific ‘We are …’ statements to fully encompass and support our positive ethos. These include;

• We are Writers
• We are Readers
• We are Mathematicians
• We are Scientists
• We are Artists
• We are Designers
• We are Musicians
• We are Cultural
• We are Historians
• We are Geographers
• We are environmentalists (for Forest School)
• We are Athletes

Is this an inclusive approach? 

This model is not designed to exclude children from being with peers nor is it to exclude them from the school community. The hub model is there to provide some further support for children who are experiencing significant delays and will find it an increasing challenge to access learning within their year group. The children will be in receipt of regular external agency involvement from bought-in services such as Acorn Psychology or Independent Speech and Language Therapist to help support the children to make progress. The idea is to put in this intensive support to help the children to progress and equip them with the skills to become emotionally intelligent, resilient and autonomous learners. The children’s progress will be reviewed regularly and at the end of the academic year, a decision will be made with regards to the child’s provision. Transitions will be well planned and thought out and, if a child is to return to mainstream class for the next academic year, there will be plenty of transitional opportunities. The children will be given experiences based on their strengths and areas of further development. They will be appropriately challenged and children will, when the time is appropriate, be challenged to access learning within a FS/KS1 class i.e. for Maths session, English session, Guided Reading or topic lesson to further stretch their ability to access more formalised learning and have other children within their year group modelling how to be a good learner and also modelling speech and language.

Intention

Our Hub will aim to provide support and High Quality planning to meet certain intentions;

• Transform the lives of children to enable them to achieve their full potential through innovation in the curriculum, inclusion and effective partnership working with families and other key agencies in the field of SEN and disability.

• Develop the whole child through a personalised and child centred approach to learning delivered through a fun and active, broad and balanced curriculum incorporating a range of different teaching approaches and learning opportunities to enable progression.

• Provide an exciting, interesting, stimulating and appropriate high quality education that respects each individual child’s aspirations, educational and behavioural needs, their rate of learning and preferred methods or strategies.

• Develop communication skills for a variety of purposes thus enabling our children to have a voice in all aspects of their life.

• Develop a healthy lifestyle for all by enabling our children to learn how to understand and apply the basic principles of health, hygiene and staying safe.

• Develop each child’s physical skills to their maximum potential including flexibility, posture or movement through a range of methods including Physical Education and Occupational Therapy advice and strategies to promote improved physicality.

• Promote high expectations of appropriate behaviour and for children to become responsible for their actions and decisions.

• Be a community where every child is a valued member and instil a sense of pride and self-respect by building a climate of high expectations, where all achievements and successes are celebrated and barriers to learning removed or addressed.

• Develop self-knowledge, self-esteem and self-confidence so our children are able to feel secure, happy, cheerful and emotionally content.

• Prepare our children for a successful transition to the next stage of their life through the use of meeting outcomes from the ‘Preparation for Adulthood’ guidance.
• Promote the social inclusion of all children and prepare them for the opportunities, and experiences of adult life, as is pertinent to the circumstances of each child and young adult with SEN and disabilities, helping them gain access to lifelong learning.

Promote an inclusive school community which will foster attitudes of mutual respect and appreciation of the feelings and understanding of others’, so that our children become caring, confident and responsible individuals both within school and the wider community.

 

Implementation

For our intent to be realised, the hub model strives to implement and provide:

 

• A broad and relevant, child centred and individualised curriculum which promotes learning and independence. 
• A happy, safe, secure, caring and stimulating environment that promotes learning. 
• A rich and varied range of learning activities, resources and experiences.
• Innovative teaching and investigative approaches to learning.
• A child centred ethos that puts the children and their families at the heart of everything we do.
• An ethos of support, challenge and encouragement. 
• Close learning partnerships between school, home, local services (including health and social care) and the wider community in the promotion of high standards of learning. 
• Dedicated and passionate staff who strive to consistently build on and improve all that we do.

An ethos of positivity and growth mindset – encouraging and inspiring the children to be the best they can be.

Intended Impact:

As the children will have a qualified teacher, the children will have National Curriculum objectives delivered to them but the approach will be carefully planned for. The children will have many enriching activities and will access multi-sensory learning opportunities and will also be given ‘show rather than tell’ approaches to help them to develop their knowledge and understanding and also to improve vocabulary. The topics will be in line with FS/KS1 topics but delivered in an approach which will stimulate and support understanding. The children will be in receipt of all National Curriculum lessons expected for KS1. PIVATs assessments will be used to support judgements and to help shape tasks which will be given to children. There will also be use of PSED PIVATs alongside the ‘Autism Education Trust’ to look at enabling a safe and stimulating environment allowing all children to thrive and make progress. For the FS learners, they will also work alongside new target areas from the EYFS framework (updated 2021). There will also be use of the CLPE documents to support with Reading and Writing outcomes. Where some children may excel and be on a National Curriculum level for a particular subject area, then they will be challenged and provided for on that. This may then lead into some ‘link lessons’ where the child may visit a class to participate in that learning to support full exposure for that subject area. Children will also have access to targeted learning time following specific target area on ILPs and given from external agencies. As previously mentioned, we will also look at regular support sessions such as SAL interventions, precision teaching, Motor skill development sessions, sensory sessions and social skills sessions incorporated into the weekly timetable to support progress within the area. This will also be documented within their individual files through the evaluation of learning plans, provision mapping and also through WOW work examples.

• There will be frequent reviews of the children’s personal targets, outlining progress and key areas for further support.
• Joint target setting with agencies, staff and parents to agree on next steps termly.
• Frequent assessment (as mentioned above), book scrutinies and observations of children will outline progress being made.
• Review of intervention data from interventions such as Precision teaching, TalkBoost screening, agency advice and other key interventions.