Owl Class

Welcome to Owl class, Owl class is on the Practical Willow Pathway, this pathway entails lots of hands-on practical learning. Owl children range in age from year 1 to year 4. We have a team of 6 staff all with extensive experience and knowledge from across the pathways, this enables us to support the children that sit at different stages of their learning journey. We believe learning should be fun and so we do like to get messy- frequently! Building on our social and communicational skills sits at the forefront of what we learn every day, and as a result Owl children love to play, we have seen immense amounts of progress in these areas. We operate daily TEACCH cycles, attention autism bucket sessions weekly and are fortunate enough to have a hydro slot on a Thursday afternoon.

Curriculum information: Terms 1 and 2

Owl class have been working hard on settling back into routines after the summer break, routine and structure is important for our children to learn so that they can feel more comfortable at school, knowing what the expectations are for social skills and in our learning, enables the children to try their best. The routine changes slightly termly to allow for our extra-curricular experiences, in term 1 we went horse riding on a Monday and in term 2 we have had drama on a Wednesday. The children learn the routine using symbols, and Makaton signing during circle time- we also discuss the weather, days of the week and seasons, alongside signing our friends’ names. A huge part of our learning is our social skills which we feel are being learnt in every moment, learning to share and play alongside or with others can be tricky work, therefore we practice taking turns with our peers during our play and PSHE lessons. We use the TEACCH programme style of teaching in our lessons, this supports in building attention skills, focussing skills, children’s independence and in following simple instructions. If you can imagine a carousel of rotating activities, a group table, an independent workstation (with 3 tasks) and a leisure/play activity- this is TEACCH, we will continue to use TEACCH all year daily. Term 2 and Christmas had crept in early, we have been focussing on fine motor skills, sharing, cooking, personal hygiene skills, and all through the text of ‘Twas the night before Christmas.

Curriculum information term 3 and 4

Our topic for terms 3 and 4 is ‘The great outdoors’, we will work with the text ‘Tree full of wonder’ by the author Anna Smithers, this will support our learning in a cross curricular fashion, learning how to sequence a story, learning rhyming words and in predicting what might happen next, also the book will support in our Science ‘bucket’ (attention autism) lessons with the topic of light and dark and seasonal changes. During these terms we hope to grow some amazing plants, refreshing our learning around plant systems that we worked on last year. Some of us are eager to grow our apple seeds from our snack! Term 3 sees us getting fit (as all good new year’s resolutions do) we have a rebound session with George and a slot for inclusive sports! Exercising twice weekly will support us in learning how to care for ourselves and others which conveniently is our PSHE topic! In maths we will continue to develop our knowledge of 3d shapes, days of the week, comparative language and we will add ‘time’ into our new learning. We plan to continue our weekly community trips, extending the distance we venture away from the school and in making safe choices! In term 4 we loose rebound and inclusive sports, however, we have these sessions replaced with the climbing apparatus and Drama with Anita! (We do like a bit of Drama in Owls)

Owl class