St Paul's C.E Primary School

We are a 12 place Additional Resource Provision (ARP), which is a provision within a mainstream school, designed to provide specialist and targeted support for children with complex needs, in our case supporting those children with Autistic Spectrum Behaviours, and Social Communication and Language Needs (SCLN). We call our ARP The Vine: within The Vine we are funded to staff a team of teachers, and full time specialist teaching and learning support assistants who have great knowledge, skills and expertise in supporting pupils with autism and SCLN.

Our vision is that pupils will spend time within The Vine learning environment and in their linked mainstream class.

The purpose of The Vine classrooms is to provide a safe, nurturing and engaging environment, so that individual needs are met and individual progress is made, in particular in the areas of pupils’ emotional regulation, social communication and sensory processing skills. The aim is for pupils to spend at least 50% of their time within mainstream, which may at times be unsupported, encouraging pupils to use strategies independently; increasing to 75% by the end of key stage two.

Underpinning our offer is the development of: communication skills, social interaction skills, independence and life skills and early literacy and numeracy skills.

Within The Vine there are four distinctive phases: Explore, Engage, Emerge, and Embed

Explore:

Bluebell class focuses upon the individual barriers to accessing learning faced by pupils, which are clearly identified in their Education Health and Care Plan (EHCP); strategies and programmes are developed to help pupils manage their own behaviour, accept social conventions and expectations within school, and develop their early literacy and numeracy skills. Much of the work within Bluebell focuses upon personal and social development: developing behaviour for learning, emotional awareness, personal independence and self-help, and social awareness and relationships.

Pupils will be supported to extend their learning journey by accessing social activities with their mainstream class group. Some pupils may be ready to access more formal learning experiences with their mainstream class, and Vine staff will support pupils to access these sessions.

The prerequisite skills to learning are fundamental, interact, and encompass development in all other areas.

We consider the prerequisite skills to include:

Prime Areas:

•     Physical development

•     Personal, social and emotional development

•     Communication and Language

 Specific Areas:

•     Literacy

•     Mathematics

•     Understanding the World - Learning to Learn skills. The ways in which a child engages with other people and their environment – ‘learning to learn skills’- underpins learning and development across all areas and supports the child to remain an effective and motivated learner.

•     Creative Development encompassing expressive arts, and design.

Additional areas:

·         Cognition – particularly the skills associated with early Piagetian developmental levels. Such as early problem solving, cause and effect, object permanence, where am I in space?

•     Sensory skills – for many of our pupils sensory overload, and learning to manage their sensorial responses

•     Therapy – when and wherever therapeutic support services are clearly identified in a child’s EHCP, we follow the advice and guidance from external professionals in order to support planning and opportunities.

•     ICT skills to offer additional support for communication or/and access

The prerequisites to learning will develop in response to relationships and experiences, and run through and support learning in all other areas. The development and refinement of prerequisite skills will continue to be fundamental to support access to the curriculum for the vast majority of children in The Vine.

We have found for all teaching and learning it is imperative that our children are ready to learn. Sensory and accessibility needs must be met to ensure engagement for learning.

These skills will be taught through a child-centred approach that promotes a high level of exploration, self-learning, discovery and play.

Engage:

Pupils at the Engage stage may be based in either Bluebell class or Daisy class. Lessons are firmly rooted in the National Curriculum, and lessons follow a skills and knowledge-based approach as adopted by the wider St Paul’s community, where learning takes place through a range of contexts and interlinks with other subjects. Pupils are supported to practise their self-management and strategies that they developed in the Explore phase of their learning journey into practice, in a more formal classroom environment. This promotes the children to be active thinkers through questioning and enquiry.

Emerge:

Pupils will be based within Daisy class, and will be supported to extend their learning journey into inclusive learning situations with their mainstream class group. They will start to have regular, timetabled lessons with their mainstream peers. They will be starting to develop strategies for coping with busier, noisier environments, and learning 'what to do if it all goes wrong'. Support will be provided initially to access these session, but it is envisioned that support (from Vine staff) will be withdrawn as and when it is right for the individual pupil.

Embed:

Pupils will, by the time they have progressed to the Embed phase of their learning journey, have a variety of successful strategies that help them to access their learning within their mainstream class base, and will spend nearly their whole week within their chronological year group class . This further extends a child’s ability to think creatively and work collaboratively with their peers. This will also provide opportunities for new, and relevant, experiences as well as extending their wider understanding, learning, and self-help skills. The curriculum in mainstream classes is adapted to meet the needs of individual children. They may require time within The Vine as part of their self-regulation strategies, when appropriate to do so they will bring their work from their mainstream class with them to complete within The Vine. 

Individual Learning Plan

Each child’s EHCP has a clearly identified set of targets that are seen as their barriers for learning. Each child will have an individual learning plan (ILP), regardless of which phase of The Vine learning journey they are at.  ILPs will address how the  EHCP targets will be met within school; ILPs are reviewed termly, and are used as evidence for progress towards meeting EHCP targets. They also inform any changes required to EHCPs to ensure that EHCPs are relevant and up to date.

Curriculum content

Most pupils are able to follow adapted and modified programmes of study from the EYFS framework and National Curriculum. Planning and delivery of learning tasks is highly personalised based on individual needs and learning styles.

For pupils with the most significant needs, who may not yet be able to access subject specific learning, the National Curriculum provides a context to engage and motivate pupils and to promote curiosity and awareness of the world around them.

All classes in The Vine follow a thematic approach with learning contexts, quality texts, activities and resources planned to give all pupils a fun, engaging and enriching learning experience. When possible we try to follow the themes of learning followed by the rest of school, so that our pupils have the opportunity to learn in tandem with their mainstream peers.

Due to the continually evolving cohorts found within The Vine, themed learning units from within the wider school are adapted to meet the needs of The Vine’s pupils. Vine staff work closely with mainstream class teachers, and subject leaders to ensure that content is covered at an appropriate level for pupils accessing their learning within The Vine. This is to ensure that pupils have appropriate knowledge and understanding of the subjects that they access within the wider St Paul’s community at the Extend phase.

Assessment

Pupils at the Explore, Engage and Emerge phases of their learning journey will be assessed using PiVATS on a termly basis. Those pupils at the Extend phase will be assessed in line with their mainstream class. 

Our two registration groups are Bluebell and Daisy classes. For more information on each class please select from the classes menu.

Latest news from The Vine