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Programs are delivered in a variety of ways (or combination thereof) as appropriate to the needs of the individual student. Information about these is listed below.
Rich Task Approach to Curriculum Development and Delivery (New Basics)
Over recent years, TWSS has been moving towards an integrative, Rich Task approach to developing and implementing curriculum. This approach is based on 4 principles:
1. Uncluttering the curriculum to increase intellectual engagement
2. Learning context must be transdisciplinary
3. Curriculum must be for current and new worlds
4. Need to connect curriculum beyond the 4 walls of the classroom
This approach encourages the use of Productive Pedagogies to engage students – ie they are actively participating, aims at the process not the product, balances out the theory and the practical.
The Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS)
Many of the children who attend TWSS have communication difficulties. These difficulties can range from :
1. those who have no language at all
2. those who use non-verbal means to communicate eg. pointing, gesturing
3. those who have minimal language skills eg. Single words, pronunciation difficulties
4. those who can communicate well in many forms.
As a whole school we use the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) to teach these children functional communication. PECS is a program that is based on applied behaviour analysis. It uses small pictures/symbols that are located in the student’s PECS folder. The student exchanges these symbols to communicate their needs and wants to others in the school. There are a number of specific strategies and lessons that take place to teach the students how to use this form of communication and there are a number of different phases that they can progress through.
The use of PECS has significantly reduced the level of frustration previously experienced by these students when communicating their needs, making choices and commenting.
Functional Movement Program
This program is based on the principles of Conductive Education, an internationally acclaimed and accepted curriculum used with children who have motor disorders. A playgroup is currently offered to younger children who have multiple impairments (birth to 5 years) on a sessional basis. There is also a group of school-age, full time students with whom this approach is utilised. Elements of the Active Learning approach are used with our students who have visual and multiple impairments.
Programs within the Community
During the past year students have been accessing programs at a local gym. Our older students have been involved in regular community access programs in local shopping centres, library and sporting excursions.
Information and Communication Technologies
Computers play an integral role in the curriculum including cause/effect programs, auditory scanning and switch access to enable students to make choices for communicating / responding (for students with multiple impairments), to composing sentences / writing short stories using the Writing with Symbols program and reading using the Balanced Literacy Program. The teaching of technological skills to our students is highly individualised.
Intensive Interaction
The majority of students who attend TWSS have an intellectual impairment. Some of these students have severe or profound intellectual impairments, multiple impairments or severe autistic spectrum disorder which can mean that many of them are:
1. pre-verbal,
2. have severe sensory and learning difficulties,
3. have poorly developed social and communication abilities,
4. are very withdrawn; and
5. may engage in ritualised and self-orientated behaviours for most of the time.
Intensive Interaction is a way of learning that we can use with these students to help them to learn about reciprocal communication, and to build meaningful, equal relationships with others. It is a positive, student-driven form of interaction on a one-to-one level. Some initial work in Intensive Interaction was implemented with some students in FMC in 2007. It is an area of potential to be developed in the future.
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