Teach-Primary-18.3

LisaPigg is assistant headteacher, inclusion team leader (SENDCO), deputy designated safeguarding lead andEAL lead at Sir Alexander FlemingPrimarySchool in Telford. S END S P E C I A L MAKING IT WORK l Know your children As a full-time, non-teaching SENCO it’s easy to get dragged into the paperwork and not see the children. I teach in our Hive provision on a Friday morning, and volunteer to attend trips with classes. I love the fact that some of our nursery children know my name. l Make provisions work We’ve created wonderful nurturing spaces, but no two years are the same. For example, last year our Den provision was for one child who was placed at our school whilst a specialist provision place was found for him. He required two adults to support his needs. The Den needed to be adapted to suit him. I visited the specialist provision for ideas and the team there supported us in creating the space we needed. This year, our morning Den sessions are for a group of Year 3 children who need that nurturing support for their academic progress. l Visit other schools, including secondaries Make time to see other provisions and explore what children will be offered once they transition to secondary school. I love having visitors to our school, where I can show them how we have created spaces and explain how we fund and staff them. l Network with other SENCOs I make time to network regularly with other SENCOs in my LA. We bounce ideas off each other and support each other; some of us have become friends, too. www.teachwire.net | 67 We designed and created allotments with vegetable gardens and began to plant a new outdoor learning area for our KS2 children to use. Three years later we won the Royal Horticultural Society’s Primary School Garden of the Year award! 4. Reflect and adapt 2020 was also a time for us to reflect on the needs of our pupils, and the impact of the spaces we had created. We realised that some children who were accessing our nurture space really needed a smaller classroom. These pupils were academically behind the rest of their cohort – some by over two years. This was when the idea for the Hive was born: bespoke sessions that would allow children to build on their independence and give them the confidence to have a go at any work that is suitably adapted to their academic ability. The sessions would also provide pre-teaching and post-teaching support to secure understanding. We also realised we were missing support for one part of the four areas of SEND: social, emotional and mental health needs. We decided to create another space, the TLC room. This is an area where children can access one-to-one and group interventions, such as LEGO or sand therapy, and where they can talk openly and honestly about any concerns or anxieties. These two new rooms have supported a number of our pupils greatly. Run by a full-time teacher and TA, the Hive takes up to 10 children at a time. Morning sessions focus on English, maths, reading and phonics, and afternoons are comprised of targeted interventions for individual year groups. Our TLC room is now run by our inclusion support assistant, who leads sessions that teach skills for anger management, and interventions aimed at improving the inclusion of children with challenging behaviour or who face other personal difficulties. Over the past five years, we’ve seen massive changes regarding our children’s needs and funding, during a time when we have unfortunately had to go through restructures, significantly reducing staff availability. However, I’m proud to say that as a school we’ve continued to find creative ways for all our children to access the provision they need and deserve. TP