Every day, in every classroom, all students, including those identified as experiencing special educational needs and disabilities, will learn and achieve in a safe, supportive, engaging and appropriately challenging common learning environment. Within such a setting, their personal, social, emotional and academic needs are fully met.
In the PYP the curriculum is made accessible to all the students through differentiation and providing multiple means of expression and representation. We have a strong student support team which consists of the following-
Student support coordinator– the coordinator interfaces with the families to understand the students home environment and history and works with the team to design an Individual Education Plan (IEP) which highlights goals- both short term and long term. The plan also highlights specific skills that the team will be working on in the mentioned time frame. The IEP is made for a 6 month period and then reviewed with parents. IEP is a collaborative process with the Homeroom teacher, the co-teacher and the special educator, OT therapist along with the parents. There is weekly monitoring of children in the classroom and regular interaction with the parents. The department also meet weekly for all case discussions. As part of calendar they conduct sessions for parent training, teacher trainings and marking certain specific days of celebration with children.
Learning support teachers– We have a team of dedicated learning support teachers (5) who work exclusively with the primary school students on skill development, developing focus and concentration and celebrating their success. They have a combination of pull out and push in sessions depending on the support required by each child. The focus is to create a balance between supporting and challenging students. The team also shares strategies for gifted and talented children with homeroom teachers. They are assigned to collaborate with specific grade levels for providing in class strategies to support and challenge students.
Occupational Therapist- we have an occupational therapist (OT) who works with students with specialised equipment creating support plans for both in school and at home. Our therapist collaborates with Homeroom teachers, specialists and parents to ensure that she is able to support the child in all environments. We also invite parents for demo of OT services to follow the same at home setting.
English Language Acquisition (ELA)- We have 2 ELA teachers who work with children for whom English is a second language. They create IEP’s to support specific language skills so that the child is able to have access to all the curriculum at the school. They are in close contact with families and homeroom teachers. They also do pull out and pull in sessions to work on skills as well as concept learning. They have introduced reading programme for children in the classroom.
Teachers, Co-teachers and specialists- The teachers are always a part of the IEP discussions and planning. The learning support teachers have regular collaboration meetings with teachers to support them in class and create differentiated tasks for students.
Parents and caregivers– We encourage constant communication and involvement of parents and caregivers- while designing and reviewing IEP’s, monthly newsletters for celebrating student success, survey’s for feedback and suggestions and inviting them for guest speaker sessions. We conduct two programmes in a year for parents.
Students- Students agency is important to us and we ensure that children are an active part of the planning and learning process. They set their own goals and review the same with educators. They plan activities, games, assessments and choose how they would showcase their learning with the community. We also have a specialist integration program where students get to be a part of a club for their chosen activity – performing arts and visual arts. This gives them an opportunity to strengthen their skills and build confidence.
