The Ark

Teaching and learning

It is recognised that children in the Ark need access to a wide range of learning opportunities and not just the academic skills. Children need teaching and learning to cover social interaction, communication skills, emotional regulation and sensory regulation techniques. It is also important that children are taught life skills, particularly those that will keep themselves and others safe. The Ark is highly structured and each child accesses a curriculum tailored to their individual needs and ability, using targets acquired from our assessments.

In the Ark we offer three curriculum pathways in order to develop and support the needs of individual learners. Each curriculum pathway is carefully planned to help motivate the children to learn, making use of interests and learning styles. Children have individual targets that are incorporated into everyday teaching across the learning environments.

The pathways in the ARP are pre-formal (sensory based/engagement), semi-formal explorers and semi-formal challengers. Then there are the formal learners (mainstream).

All children take part in daily small group sessions. The focus of these group sessions is to practice joint attention and working alongside others, communication skills and turn taking as well as subject based learning where appropriate. This aids with integration into mainstream and teaches group skills. Staff work flexibly across the groups, however children largely work within a group that matches their curriculum pathway.

The role of staff

The Ark has a team of two teachers and four teaching assistants. The ARP manager, Mrs Robinson, works closely with the Ark lead teacher to monitor and maintain a high standard of teaching and learning across both classes. All staff engage in regular and ongoing training related to autism teaching and learning.

One of the main strengths of the Ark is that staff know all the children extremely well and can ensure that provision is tailored to their individual needs. Good communication and team work between adult’s results in a consistent approach and all members of the team are highly valued, with all staff leading group sessions.

Staff are encouraged to share ideas and contribute to all aspects of the Ark including group planning, physical structure of the environment and implementation of the development plan. It is, however, the responsibility of the teachers to make final decisions.

The role of Parents

We recognise the important contribution parents make to their child’s learning and work hard to communicate with parents regularly, either in person, by phone, email/Arbor or via home-school communication books.

Parents are encouraged to communicate any pertinent information. We recognise that our children may have challenging moments at home and on the way to school. Parents are encouraged to share this information with staff in order for us to adapt the day to ensure that a child is calm and available for learning.

A termly meeting is held between home and school to share and review pupils’ learning and progress, and parents are encouraged to actively support with target setting and work at home.  The ARK aims to hold regular information sharing/ more informal coffee- mornings to build networks and collaboration in order to best support the children.

Mainstream

Children in the Ark are also allocated a mainstream class appropriate to their age. 

The aim is to encourage the children to engage with their mainstream class where possible. The emotional, sensory and regulatory needs of each child, are considered and where it is agreed children may access the mainstream learning, this is planned for with appropriate ongoing support.  An ongoing evaluation and assessment will be completed on a day to day basis, in order to ensure that this is a positive experience for the children.  If a child is dysregulated, in crisis or shows through their behaviour that they do not want to be in mainstream, they may remain in the Ark.