Curriculum Support

Curriculum Support

St Michael and St John’s RC Primary School prides itself in being very inclusive and will endeavour to support every child regardless of their level of need.  All pupils follow the National Curriculum at a level and a pace that is appropriate to their abilities. At times, when it is felt appropriate, modifications to the curriculum will be implemented in line with The Children’s and Families Act 2014 and the Equality Act 2010.

To successfully match pupils’ ability to the curriculum there are some actions we take to achieve this:

• Ensure that all pupils have access to the school curriculum and all school activities.
• Help all pupils achieve to the best of their abilities, despite any difficulty or disability they may have.
• Ensure that teaching staff are aware of and sensitive to the needs of all pupils, teaching pupils in a way that is appropriate to their needs.
• Strive to develop confidence and improve learners’ self-esteem.
• Work in partnership with parents/ carers, pupils and relevant external agencies in order to provide for children’s special educational needs and disabilities.
• Identify at the earliest opportunity, all children that need special consideration to support their needs (whether these are educational, social, physical or emotional)
• Make suitable provision for children with SEND to fully develop their abilities, interests and aptitudes and gain maximum access to the curriculum.
• Ensure that all children with SEND are fully included in all activities of the school in order to promote the highest levels of achievement.
• Promote self-worth and enthusiasm by encouraging independence at all age and ability levels.
• Give every child the entitlement to a sense of achievement.
• Regularly review our policy and practice in order to achieve best practice.

At St Michael and St John’s Primary, we believe in participation and progress for all. We aim to create an inclusive culture in our school and value high quality teaching for all learners.

We understand that children learn and develop in different ways. Teachers and teaching assistants recognise this and use different teaching styles, resources and adapt work in the classroom to cater for the various ways children learn. The majority of children in our school will receive support through good quality teaching in the classroom (Quality First Teaching).

However we are mindful that some children, at some time in their school life, may need extra help and support in a variety of different ways. If staff feel that a child’s needs cannot be met through quality first teaching alone, then additional support or intervention may be put into place to compliment the curriculum and enhance access. This is monitored regularly and adjusted as necessary.

Each learner identified as having SEN is entitled to support that is ‘additional to or different from’ a normal differentiated curriculum. The type of support is dependent on the individual learning needs and is intended to enable access to learning and overcome the barrier to learning identified.

The waves of intervention model describes how different levels of intervention can be used to facilitate learning.

 Wave 1 Quality First Teaching

This is about what should be on offer for all children: the effective inclusion of all pupils in high-quality everyday personalised teaching. This could include:

• Differentiated and adapted work to meet pupils’ needs
• High expectations which inspire, motivate and challenge pupils
• Good subject and curriculum knowledge
• Well-structured lessons
• Adapting teaching to respond to the strengths and needs of all pupils
• Behaviour managed effectively to ensure a positive and safe learning environment which promotes progress
• Deploying support staff effectively.

Wave 2 Interventions

Where children need additional support they may be given some Wave 2 intervention to help them ‘Catch Up’ with their peers or prevent a gap from appearing or increasing. Wave 2 interventions are often targeted at a group of pupils with similar needs. These are monitored for each class using the class provision map as well as individually for children with SEND using the Pupil Overview of Provision (POP) each term.

Wave 2 interventions may include:

• Handwriting interventions as a small group
• Phonics catch up groups
• Social skills or nurture groups
• Motor skills groups
• Speech & Language groups
• Maths intervention eg pre-learning activities surrounding vocabulary or strategies to apply in lessons
• Reading comprehension small group interventions
• Targeted spelling interventions in a small group
• Stretching a sentence work or sentence structure targeted small group support

Wave 3 interventions

If pupils continue to make inadequate progress, despite high-quality teaching targeted at their areas of weakness, the class teacher, with support from the SENCO , should assess whether a pupil has a significant learning difficulty, which may require highly- tailored interventions. This may include specialist or individualised provision.