Archives for "Special School"
OFSTED Report
The special school that I have volunteered at for the last five years had a full OFSTED inspection last month. It was nearly 10 years ago when the school had its last full school inspection. When I asked how it had gone the school said fine and they were very pleased that the inspector was extremely knowledgeable on special schools.
Last week I was given the inspection report, the school secretary had printed off a few too many and I’m not surprised because they got an outstanding. The opening line of the report said this is an outstanding school. The report is very fair. One of the comments should be true of any school special or not, that the children feel happy and safe, love coming to school every day they attend whenever they can, work hard and behave outstandingly well.
As a parent and governor I have read many letters from inspectors and I have to say they’re all pretty much the same. I imagine it is a standard letter however this one was very different.
The inspector asked the teachers to explain to the students by any means they can, using symbols, pictures or by telling the parents that…
This is an outstanding school
You are well taught and make good progress in your learning
You grow up as delightful young people who try to help each other
You are well looked after and enjoy school
Your headteacher and her staff are very good at their jobs
I do appreciate that inspections do need to take place. Teachers and governors always get in a bit of a state when one is announced, but now the school can celebrate its success and keep working towards maintaining its high standards.
I know it is the fashion now to try and include as many children as possible in mainstream school, this school might well buck the trend and I can imagine parents clamouring to send their children here.
At the moment it is very difficult to send your child to a special school it seems to me that a child must fail in mainstream before they are allowed into a special school.
Some children might need a couple of years is a special school/nursery and then they may be ready to make the transition to mainstream.
I think a more flexible approach is needed to provide an education for these very special children.
I Know I Shouldn’t Laugh
I have now helped many times with swimming and the children and adults have all got the hang of the routine.
Rather annoyingly the lesson before us always seems to overrun. This means that we get in late. Now when we use our 30 min timer, which is crucial so our children understand when our swimming session is over, we only have 25 minutes. It is impossible and unfair for us to ask our children to get out the water before the 30 min is up, so we overrun the public session that follows ours. A few of our children enjoy swimming so much that they really do not want to get out of the pool, it may take three adults to “encourage” a child to get out and then they are so cross that they are out of the water that they cause “rather a fuss”. Members of the public are now poolside with our children. They are possibly getting into the water which confuses our children as we have clearly told them that swimming is finished!
This happened the other week, a child waiting behind another child who was refusing to get out was getting rather anxious and, unfortunately, was sick in the swimming pool. We reported this to a member of the pool staff who went off to get the scoop. The child who was making a fuss was being protected by three members of staff so that the child could not get back into the water. I asked a member of the public who wanted to swim if they could give us some space and perhaps use the other steps. She snapped back at me “I’ve come here to swim” and promptly got into the sicky area of the pool. I know I shouldn’t have laughed. But I did.
Besides the Sea
Last week I went on a grand expedition to a funfair at the seaside.
I had been invited to help as a volunteer on a school trip. As this is a special school and since the children that were being taken were all on the autistic spectrum it was felt that a ratio of one child to two adults would be sensible.
Very calmly the children, teachers and volunteers all boarded the buses. The children were amazing they got into their seats, put on their seat belts and stayed sitting calmly and quietly for a long drive to the coast. On arrival the children had a snack on the bus and then we went to the toilets. Visual timetables were read, then we were given wristbands so that the children could go on the rides for free. Some were happy to wear the bands but most removed them quickly! Then it was down to the funfair. The children were desperate to go on a ride.
The first one was the log flume. We joined the queue climbed the steps and then had to climb into a log boat. For some children this was okay but for others the step down into the log boat was enormous. They wanted to get into the log boat but just could not actually take the plunge. The man operating the ride stopped it so that the log boat was not moving, but still it was too much. Eventually after about 20 min one of the carers picked up the teenager and put them in the log boat! You should have seen the look of delight on the teenager’s face. Round and round they went, the kind operator let them stay on many circuits. Later this teenager managed to climb into the log boat independently, the reward for doing so outweighed the terror of climbing in.
I then took a young boy on the dodgems. This is a child with very little speech, still in nappies who really struggles to control his behaviour. However on the dodgems he was amazing: he could steer within millimetres of other dodgems, control the speed of the car with a foot pedal with incredible accuracy. He also understood that he had to put on the seatbelt and he then at the end climbed calmly out of the car. WOW.
We had our picnic lunch overlooking the sea. After lunch we went to a soft-play area where the children could move about more freely without their harnesses, as there was absolutely no risk of them running off! A final visit to the toilets, and back on the bus for home.
It was a truly amazing day organised by the British Lions, it was wonderful for these children to be given the opportunity to experience a day out at a funfair. The whole of the funfair that day had been given to special schools. There must have been about 100 children there, all of whom attend a special school. It was also very brave of our school to allow us to go, our children are unpredictable even in an environment they know, so to take them to somewhere new is a particular challenge. I felt very privileged to be included on the trip and the children’s experience of the day is something I will always remember.
A few days later reflecting on why the trip had been such a success was, I think, due to the tremendous amount of planning that had gone into it.
The children’s teacher had visited the funfair the weekend before. Having had a good look and trying to imagine all the possible scenarios he felt that our children needed a safe space to go to if they were not coping with the experience. The owners had kindly offered us the soft play area just for our school to be available all day. The fact that it was not needed during the morning does not mean that it was not essential, we all knew that we had somewhere to take a child that needed to “chill out”.
Some activities had to be ruled out as the risk of an incident was too high. For example a walk on the beach, which may seem simple to a neurologically typical class outing is too much for our group. Nearly all the children love water and it would have been too difficult to stop them running into the sea!
It is a huge responsibility to take any group of children on a trip and often it is easier not to bother. Today with all the ”risk assessments” it is getting harder for any children to have experiences outside the classroom. However it is nearly always worth the effort and stress. The head teacher must have rung us every 20 mins to make sure we were all safe. We were and we had a great day.
Rebound
Yesterday I was lucky enough to go on a rebound course. The special school that I help in has a lovely large trampoline which is used with many of the students. This was an opportunity for more of the staff and volunteers to have training on rebound therapy.
Before the course I paid a trip to my local supermarket to be kitted out with tena lady! I had no idea that there were so many different types; in the end I went for the largest one available! I also dug out a sports bra, which has not seen the light of day since I ran the race for life in this life in 2009! When I arrived rather uncomfortable I suddenly had this panic that we were just going to watch a video and not going on the trampoline at all! However we did do lots of jumping and I was grateful for all the equipment I was wearing.
We started with safety and who is not allowed to use a trampoline and that for every person doing rebound a risk assessment has to be done. We were then talked through how to hoist someone on the trampoline and how to move them to the centre of the trampoline bed. We all had a go at moving and being moved using glide sheets. Then we had a go at bouncing the bed. It was great fun and I found it difficult to stay in time with the other operator I tended to go much too fast. We were shown how to bounce in a stable position, how to ride the bed, how to kill the bed, how to do an emergency stop, supporting holds and how to kip. Kipping is not having nap on the bed! It is when the operator puts up enough force into the bed to make the other person jump. We all got to have a go at being the operator and the receiver.
The students at the special school have a range of physical and behavioural issues so what is suitable for one student would be inappropriate for another. Much of the afternoon was spent talking about individual needs for the students we then had a go at putting these into practice. For example, bouncing a child who can sit but would need support. For this we used a semi-circular wedge resting against the spring cover and the side wall of the trampoline the student sat in the wedge and the operator slowly bounced, then rode the bed and finally kipped!
We finished with fun games and relaxation activities. One idea is that the student sits astride a softplay bolster and the operator tries to bounce the student off the bolster! For relaxation 2 or 3 students lie on the trampoline while the operator gently bounces the trampoline while other carers waft a parachute over them.
It was a great day and I learnt a lot. We were given lots of information on the benefits of rebound which include movement, communication and improvement in cardio respiratory circulation, to name a few. However in my opinion it was fun and why not do something because it’s fun.
If you would like more information on rebound here is a website www.reboundtherapy.org
Autistic Accreditation Award
The special school that I help in has provided an autistic specific provision for a number of years and decided to submit for National Autistic Society Accreditation. The assessment took place earlier this year and I was to be part of this. The two assessors were booked in for three days, 20 lessons were observed as well as information gathered about how the school works. Staff and families were interviewed and parents completed a questionnaire. The assessors were so impressed with what they had seen that they left after two and a half days. Thus I was not part of the assessment!
The feedback was very positive but the school was not able to let on until now. There will be a ceremony later this month to Award the school. They will be the only school in North Yorkshire with this Accreditation. This is fantastic news for the school and I am not at all surprised because it does provide wonderful education for autistic children of school age.
Autism Accreditation was established by The National Autistic Society (NAS) and its affiliated local societies, with support from the Department of Health. Autism Accreditation has been the foundation upon which much of the successful expansion of quality services for people with autism has been built.
The mission of the Autism Accreditation programme is to improve the quality of provision for people with an autism spectrum disorder:
* By providing a unified standard of excellence in both policy and practice
* By presenting a systematic framework for continuous self-examination and development
* By ensuring that services registered with the programme are given guidance and support in order to meet the established criteria required for accredited status.
Autism Accreditation provides an autism-specific quality assurance programme for over 300 organisations throughout the UK. Clients include local authorities, NHS trusts, education authorities, local autistic societies and private companies. It actively seeks to help like-minded organisations throughout the world to use our expertise, in order to develop national standards. The Autism Accreditation award provides a seal of quality and provides peace of mind when choosing a place for a relative or friend.
Trampoline at last
I have now been able to help with a few sessions. First a huge trampoline is assembled which fills the hall!
Then the students come into the hall. They have to take turns to jump, so those waiting their turn do an activity in the hall. When it is their turn they climb up onto the trampoline. The first instruction is to “stop”. I had forgotten how important it is to teach stop. When my daughter learnt to run, her crèche taught her the instruction STOP. It was fantastic – we could go out to the park or down the street and she could have some independence because I knew if I shouted “stop” she would! It is the same with Brownies, only there I use a whistle or a salute. All activities are better if you know how to stop, driving a car or riding a bike. How often do we teach an activity without explaining how to stop?
Back to the trampoline session STOP is taught by one adult saying “stop” and two adults holding up pictures of a large red hand with the word stop on it. It works most times! They then do lots of different jumps; they all love it and work very hard. There are lots of laughs and they are all so good at waiting their turn. When the session is over the trampoline is put away. This takes four adults, its quick and folds amazingly small for such a huge trampoline. I can’t wait for next week.
Not yet Back to School
We have only been back to school for two weeks and already I have had that call, “your child is ill and needs collecting!” Just a very high temperature and luckily she was back at school 24 hours later. However it did mean I was unable to get into the special school. As the building work at the school had run late over the summer causing the hall to be out of use for the first week, I still have not done a trampoline session. Hopefully I will this week.
This weekend I took 21 girls aged 7-10 on a Brownie Holiday, The amount of organization needed is incredible, food, health forms, activities, toys etc. Luckily the weather was very kind to us and they could play outside in the woods collecting sticks for the bonfire and doing skipping games, we did a skipping badge! Inside we played lots of parlour games and endless games of twister and tell me. It is always surprising which games children will choose, none of them would try a game they had not played before. I should do a games night and get them to all try a new game.