Children with additional or special educational needs may need extra help and support from us and here at Dean Field we have a dedicated team of adults who, alongside class teachers, will provide support for those children who have additional educational needs.
Dean Field provides a wide range of additional interventions and strategies to help our pupils with their difficulties. Including but not limited to:
Cognition and Learning
‘Read Write Inc.’
Read Write Inc. Phonics teaches children to read accurately and fluently with good comprehension. They learn to form each letter, spell correctly, and compose their ideas step-by-step.
‘Numicon’
A multi-sensory resource which encourages an understanding of number and arithmetic relationships. It also helps to reinforce the use of number in real-life contexts.
‘Times Tables Rock Stars’
On online way to practice times tables which can be accessed in school and at home.
‘Accelerated Reader’
Accelerated Reader engages children, motivates reading practice and improves reading progress. A child reads a book, takes an online quiz, and gets immediate feedback. Children respond to regular feedback and are motivated to make progress with their reading skills.
Communication and Interaction
‘Language for Thinking’
Is a resource that provides clear structure into developing children’s language from the concrete to the abstract. It is based on fifty picture and verbal scenarios that can be used flexibly with a wide range of ages and abilities.
‘Social Use of Language Programme’ (SULP)
Is a cohesive framework within which to develop interpersonal and social abilities from a communication and thinking skills perspective. Within this framework, it provides a series of multisensory activities sequences designed to appeal to different age groups
‘Word Aware’
Is a structured whole school approach to promote the vocabulary development of all children. Focussed on whole class learning, the resource is of particular value for those who start at a disadvantage – including children with Developmental Language Disorder, Special Educational Needs and those who speak English as an additional language, but it will extend the word learning of all students.
Social, Emotional and Mental Health
‘Social Stories’
These stories, which can be a written or visual, guide describing various social interactions, situations, behaviours, skills or concepts to support those children who don’t understand them.
Well Being Zone
A zone we have created in school which is used by Miss Dinsmore to deliver SEMH interventions in a calming and safe environment. There are a range of books covering many difficult subjects such as bereavement or break downs in relationships at a child friendly level.
Sensory and/or Physical Needs
‘Disco Dough’
Dough disco involves moulding dough in time to music and performing different actions such as rolling it into a ball, flattening it, putting each individual finger into the dough, rolling it into a sausage and squeezing it. This activity helps to strengthen children’s fine motor muscles to enable them to develop their pencil grip which in turn will help to develop their writing skills. But most of all it’s fun!
‘Theraputty’
Theraputty is a resistive hand material used for rehabilitation and strengthening of fingers, hands, and forearm muscles by squeezing and moving the putty in your hands. Each colour of the putty is a different consistency. This is an intervention advised by NHS Occupational Therapists for some children.
‘SEND Expectations Document’
At Dean Field we have created a document called our ‘SEND expectations’. This document is not what we expect of the children but what we expect teachers and classroom based staff to do and provide for children with additional needs. This is to ensure that the children are receiving the best possible teaching and therefore reaching their full potential through carefully planned out support. We recognise that all children are different so do not expect that all strategies in the document will work for every child, but having a bank of resources and ideas to refer back to when planning and preparing is incredibly useful.
Useful websites
https://www.afasic.org.uk/
http://www.talkingpoint.org.uk/
https://www.ican.org.uk/
http://www.thecommunicationtrust.org.uk/resources/resources/resources-for-parents/
http://www.cht.nhs.uk/services/clinical-services/childrens-therapy-services/childrens-speech-and-language-therapy/
See also: The school SEND Information Report for Parents, available under the SEND tab on the school website.
