Learning Support

Looking after children with additional needs

Chiltern House advocates the integration of children with additional needs into mainstream classes and acknowledges the reciprocal benefits for all children. One place in every class is reserved for a child with additional needs. The Learning Support Team allocates places to children who need additional support. The team meets regularly to discuss the goals and progress of each child having set individual goals in addition to general class goals.

The team also supports class teachers and parents who have any concerns about their child’s development, as well as implementing teacher training.

The Green Room

The Green Room is a class designed for children with social and communication needs. It is a small class with a structured learning approach. The main focus of the class is developing social skills, fostering communication, developing understanding of concepts and independence in life skills. All these areas are part of the daily curriculum.

Each child has an IEP (individualised educational plan) designed by the teaching team in consultation with parents and any therapists who work with that child (when possible).

Children who are able to, and will benefit from integration, visit our mainstream preschool classes with adult support from the teaching team. Here they work on specific activities and goals and learn to generalise their skills. The amount of integration and the suitability for integration varies for individual children.

All children benefit from exposure to activities such as speech and drama, music, assembly, outdoor play, class and centre special events.

Discovery Tree Social Skills Group

The Discovery Tree programme is designed for children who need support to develop their social skills. The programme runs once a week and is for groups of children of similar age.

Discovery Tree is conducted by a team from the Chiltern House Learning Support Department. This team is made up of a speech and language therapist, special education teacher, class teacher and a support teacher.

Each group is set some group goals and some individual children may have individual goals set as well. Confidence building is an important aspect of the programme as well as being able to deal with situations such as losing, turn-taking, initiating interaction etc. There is a structure to each session. At the end of term, teachers meet with parents as a group to discuss progress and to look at possible new goals. A written report is given at the end of each term.