Jenny was a mainstream teacher working within a community primary school with many years of experience in working with children and supporting the social needs of her pupils and their families.
With the increased preference for including more children with additional learning needs within the mainstream setting, Jenny found herself requiring more specialised skills to support the specific learning needs of some of her pupils.
ITS was contracted to work across some of the classrooms within the school. Jenny and the ITS therapist jointly delivered some teaching sessions together. At first Jenny was surprised that the therapist did not want to focus on literacy alone, but quickly experienced the benefit of working together across all curriculum areas, building upon strategies and techniques to include all pupils and sustain their attention.
They developed visual systems within the classroom together to help support pupils attention and keep pupils on task. This also gave Jenny time to develop the skills of her more able pupils.
At times, Jenny and the therapist exchanged roles so that she had opportunities to watch and observe her pupils during activities and plan on how to amend activities to access all pupils more easily. This was a rare opportunity previously but one that proved essential to the success of her teaching.
Jenny was provided with background information about speech sound development which had a great impact upon the way she delivered future lessons. They discussed the importance of play and brought more role play and play based activities into the classroom.
Both Jenny and the therapist recognised the mood of the classroom had changed. Jenny felt more in control of her classroom, reducing the ongoing demands from her pupils. The pupils developed better independent learning skills and interacted more so with their peer group.
We generally believe that by working within the classroom alongside teaching staff and pupils, that we can progress pupils language and learning at a greater rate than more traditional therapy methods.
With the increased preference for including more children with additional learning needs within the mainstream setting, Jenny found herself requiring more specialised skills to support the specific learning needs of some of her pupils.
ITS was contracted to work across some of the classrooms within the school. Jenny and the ITS therapist jointly delivered some teaching sessions together. At first Jenny was surprised that the therapist did not want to focus on literacy alone, but quickly experienced the benefit of working together across all curriculum areas, building upon strategies and techniques to include all pupils and sustain their attention.
They developed visual systems within the classroom together to help support pupils attention and keep pupils on task. This also gave Jenny time to develop the skills of her more able pupils.
At times, Jenny and the therapist exchanged roles so that she had opportunities to watch and observe her pupils during activities and plan on how to amend activities to access all pupils more easily. This was a rare opportunity previously but one that proved essential to the success of her teaching.
Jenny was provided with background information about speech sound development which had a great impact upon the way she delivered future lessons. They discussed the importance of play and brought more role play and play based activities into the classroom.
Both Jenny and the therapist recognised the mood of the classroom had changed. Jenny felt more in control of her classroom, reducing the ongoing demands from her pupils. The pupils developed better independent learning skills and interacted more so with their peer group.
We generally believe that by working within the classroom alongside teaching staff and pupils, that we can progress pupils language and learning at a greater rate than more traditional therapy methods.
