Forest and Meadow are our two specialist classrooms that provide bespoke teaching to a group of autistic children who have significant additional needs. These draw heavily on specialist support, including collaboration with a local special school, Phoenix, as well as an especially significant amount of support from a specialist speech and language therapist. They also have much higher staff ratios than other classes in the school.

Autism is a difference that often affects communication and understanding. As a result, supporting children to develop these skills is a broad aim underpinning their entire curriculum. Naturally, different children in these two classes are at different stages of development with regard to their communication skills. Extensive support from a specialist speech and language therapist means that children follow a bespoke path as they learn to communicate. This may include:

• Symbol Exchange

• Core boards

• British Sign Language

• Spoken language

Given the importance of developing communication skills, we seek to provide children with as many opportunities as possible to practise. This could include during the lessons of the curriculum or during less formal parts of the day like snack time.

Children in our Forest and Meadow classes fall into one of two groups:

• Explorers. These children are learning within the engagement model. They learn through play and the curriculum focuses on promoting engagement as a prerequisite for learning.

• Discoverers. These children are learning within the engagement model, though they may be taking further steps towards accessing the National Curriculum than their explorer peers. Children who are able routinely to access the National Curriculum are generally taught in mainstream classes.

Of course, some children may be an explorer in one area of the curriculum and a discoverer in another.

The curriculum for children in Forest and Meadow is structured as follows:

• English. Each term and unit of work provides multiple opportunities for children to practise key skills:

  • Explorers focus on key elements of the Engagement Model, including making a request or responding to interaction.

  • Discoverers work towards accessing the National Curriculum by learning phonics, mark making and writing some words. They also learn to compose simple sentences orally.

• Maths. Each term and unit of work provides multiple opportunities for children to practise key skills:

  • Explorers focus on counting and numbers initially to 5 and later to 10.

  • Discoverers focus on counting and numbers to 10, and later to 20.

• Topics. Science and some foundation subjects are covered through a half-termly topic. These provide contexts for children to practise their communication skills as described above while also building knowledge to support later access to the National Curriculum.

• PSHE. This aspect of the curriculum focuses on supporting children to meet their own needs and to stay safe.

• Specialist teaching. To ensure a broad range of experiences, children in Forest and Meadow have specialist teaching in music, PE and computing.

Further information about what children learn, including more about maths and English as well as this year’s topics can be found in the curriculum overview here.