Follow up on carrying out next Steps

We are now 6 weeks into term 3 and we are in lockdown!!!!

But after gaining feedback from a variety of sources, during the school break and the beginning of term 3 I have addressed some of the next steps.

• To deal with things that are in my control straight away: talk to the other teacher and ask if we can increase the time with each

We now have an extra 10 mins at college, which is taken up with getting the children in and out of transport and organising the groups.

• Make sure that my team works more efficiently, make more time for transportion.

Now the TAs who don’t start til 9 meet us at college so there is no time issue at the beginning of the day, this means that we can leave earlier and actually be at college ready to start learning just before 9.

• Ensure participation and support with all learning when with the other classes

The speech and language therapist now spends time with a couple of learners, by supporting them with language learning, adults have groups and if need be an adult is easily freed up to to assist if necessary. We have made sure that organisation is better during the learning time. The adults involved in numicon have paperwork to guide them onto next steps of the groups they are working on.

• Discuss the issues with regards to worthwhile learning as we are using the teacher's expertise.

• Ensure that everyone develops an understanding of why we are doing the different outings.

This has hopefully been enlightened through this exercise and the feedback given by various sources. Going to learn with other classes and teachers, is to use each other;’s expertise but it is also about decreasing children’s anxiety as there is a lot of this especially when meeting new people and transitioning to new classes. It is about developing their social skills, being in different settings with different adults and children.

I do feel however more PD needs to be given around the importance of giving children opportunities to learn in different environments, with different teachers and children. This relates back to developing adults insight to children anxiety.

Feedback from all Partners involved in Collaboration across classes.

 At the end of term 2 I asked my team, children, colleagues who I collaborate with and parents their thoughts with regards to the value of collaborative experiences the class experiences:

Teachers feedback: 

• Very good as decreased anxiety for children with up and coming transitions

• Very good as uses teachers strengths when learning

• Very good as it helps build knowledge of how to develop social skills and ability to interact with others.

From children:

• Like it because they like going in the vans

• Like going to college

• Like writing emails to SLT

• Like meeting new friends

From the parents:

• Like it as it decreases anxiety issues for when children are moving classes next year.

From class team:

• Just one or two outings each week, as they spend too much time out of class.

• Not spend much time there so not much is learnt

• Concerns with the van

• Turn up late, not much point as children don’t do much in music

• Need to ensure that they children participate in activities so worthwhile for everybody

• Sometimes when we go to base and there's a lot of other kids and noise there, and our students seem to get quite overwhelmed and scared

Next Step:

• To deal with things that are in my control straight away: talk to the other teacher and ask if we can increase the time with each

• Make sure that my team works more efficiently, make more time for transporting

• Ensure participation and support with all learning when with the other classes

• Discuss the issues with regards to worthwhile learning as we are using the teacher's expertise.

• Ensure that everyone develops an understanding of why we are doing the different outings.