Welcome to Crofty!

Our Class:

Our class is led by Jess Roberson (Mon, Tues, Wed, Fri) and Jenna Leonard  (Thu) assisted by a team of teaching assistants who are extremely knowledgeable about the needs of the pupils. We are supported by the school’s Specialist Intervention Team, a team of Physiotherapists, Occupational Therapists and Speech and Language Therapists and specialist teachers for the visually and hearing Impaired. .  We work with these multi-disciplinary teams to set and review personalised targets and programmes for each of our pupils. These programmes are built into our everyday learning and the therapists enjoy joining us to see their programmes in action! Crofty class provides an engaging, enriching and enticing environment that is a safe place to learn, explore and thrive.

  

Our Curriculum:

Crofty class learn through a highly active, structured and holistic multi-sensory curriculum on our Engagement pathway. This is informed by a developmental perspective where the starting point is the individual learner’s Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP). The curriculum is personalised for each pupil, addressing the priority areas relating to the development and needs of the learners throughout the day. The aim in Crofty class is for each learner to achieve his or her personalised goals in terms of cognition & learning, communication & interaction, sensory development, physical & motor skills, social & emotional awareness and independence. We use the Project Core approach to practice our communication and interaction skills with our friends, class team and the wider community by learning about 36 core words that are modelled and taught across our day, by everyone, every day.

We learn through physical, fine and gross motor activities benefiting from spending lots of time learning in different environments and we enjoy physically exploring our environment out of our chairs wherever we can. We learn through social & emotional activities which often include working and playing with our friends from other classes and Illogan school. We place a high emphasis on learning communication strategies, visual skill development and visual awareness techniques to develop sight and visual-tactile recognition.

         

Reading in Crofty Class:

In Crofty class we are working on our pre-reading skills.  We really enjoy music, stories, songs and rhymes and these are incorporated in our sensory phonics learning.  We are learning to recognise environmental sounds, enjoy rhythm and identifying difference in sounds, for example focussing on fast and slow rhythms, or listening to loud and quiet sounds and attempting to replicate these with our bodies or voices.  All of this comes into Letters and Sounds Phase 1 phonics, and all of the skills we are practicing will support us to learn to ‘read’ our environment.  For all children this is the first building block in their reading journey.  Additionally we are taught how to interpret photographs, 3D tactile and visual symbols and signs, another component in early reading development.  In Crofty Class reading and communication are closely linked and often cross over.

Our Teacher Jess has undertaken research and training in delivering a Core Vocabulary approach for children with complex needs. We use Project Core to help us to learn and embed new language through a 3D and symbolic core word approach. All staff model the use of core word symbols throughout different contexts across our day.

  

 

 

Many of our topics are taught through books and stories, helping us to develop a love of literature.  We enjoy sensory stories, rhymes, audial sound stories, musical stories, attention autism bucket stories, massage stories and TACPAC and we are encouraged to share books with adults, which is a great way to develop the relationships that we have with each other.  

Some of our children with specific needs are able to share specially adapted materials such as the Living Paintings books, Xychem tactile pictures or tactile character audial stories, specifically designed to support children with visual impairments.  Making stories and rhymes accessible and enjoyable to every member of the class is at the heart of our planning every time we choose a text to share.

     

 

Learning Environment:

At Curnow Lower school we access a range of learning environments which support and vary our learning opportunities. We have a spacious classroom with a covered balcony, outside play areas including a sandpit, trampoline and plenty of accessible space for everyone. Our sensory room is used for a wide range of sensory, social, physical and cognitive learning activities and the movement room provides a soft play area for structured and free play sessions. We use the hall, classroom and outside space for physical activities both in and out of our postural management equipment. The pupils work in small groups in different learning environments throughout the school day ensuring their learning is stimulating, varied (often messy) and most importantly, active and fun!