Summary Transition to School: Early days of school (Youtube) www.youtube.com
1,037 words - YouTube video - View YouTube video
n/a This clip is called the early days at school. It's the 4th in a series of short video clips which follow a child with a disability's transition to school.
n/a So for this little boy's school start to school, not everything was smooth sailing. Within the 1st few weeks, there were changes and the children, had to change teachers within the first little while at school. I phoned the the teachers, spoke with them, arranged to come into the classroom, and ask them how things were going. The teachers were somewhat concerned, about how this child was going to be included in their classroom, and that was mostly around behavioral concerns and sensory needs. However, it didn't take long, you know, of being in the classroom and working with the teachers to identify a few strategies to support the teacher with their classroom management.
n/a We noticed that some strategies we were needing to implement to benefit our little boy who had additional needs actually ended up benefiting the rest of the class. For example, at the beginning of the year, we set up a literacy session that was quite long but it had smaller lessons within it. Even those smaller lessons were a little bit long for that little boy, but some other children in the class too. So we ended up changing things around and putting together a whole series of short, sharp lessons and we could really see the benefit for the whole class.
n/a No class, even if you don't have a child that comes with a disability as such, no class is has everyone working at the same level. So anything that you would have put in place for a child with a disability would work beautifully in any sort of sit far situation or playground situation.
n/a It has been really helpful having input from our little boy's family this year. That family’s let us know that he loved trains. So we've used that information to help us with things like getting work done at the table. All we do is put a picture of a train, glue it into the book and then he's really motivated and enthusiastic about getting his work done. Whereas before, getting his work done was a real challenge.
n/a The ECI worker was scheduled to come to the school on a fortnightly basis and could have come at any other time that we felt we needed some assistance with or direction in a particular way. And she was able to bridge the gap between the parents and what happened at home and what could be done in an education facility as such as the school.
n/a We cut out a lot of extracurricular, activities for most of kindergarten, but I think it's probably critical in that first of term, because the kids are just exhausted. You pick them up at the end of the day, and they're absolutely wrecked. Not necessarily from physical activity, but just that mental stimulation, the concentration, taking
n/a all the
n/a new information in. It really is quite exhausting. Academic skills are definitely not the most important when a child starts school. I think that it's much more important for a child be able to have some independence at school for the small tasks like packing their lunchbox away or putting a note in their bag, zipping up their bag, being able to put their bag on their back and line up. Other really important skills I think are being able to socialise with other children, being able to communicate when something's not going your way.
n/a And the things we started up in the sort of second half of the year were there's a basic sort of martial arts class that my child goes to, and maybe he's learning from it, maybe he's not. I don't really know. He really enjoys it, and that he enjoys the physical side of it. I don't know that he's going to be a karate master or anything like that, but what's been really good is that interaction with other kids in an activity that's not school.
n/a I think the benefits for this child in a self defense class have been the social setting that have given him a sense of inclusion. They've also been in familiar grounds such as the school. So he's interacting with children that he may have seen at the school but not necessarily played with and this same social setting lets him interact on a deeper level with them. Starting the class involves them acquiring a skill set over time. So they sort of inch away at developing that skill set and with time they start to change how they start to move around, their gross motor skills change as they get into the rhythm of establishing the compliancy drills that we do in self defense.
n/a We had a very big input from the family in terms of just assisting around the school and so that this particular child was very aware that he was not just dropped at school and off went mom and and dad. So, yeah,
n/a I think it's great to get involved in the School, whether it's the PNC, whether it's helping out on the sausage sizzle, it's the school working bees, all of those things help you build relationships with your parents and that relates to how confident and comfortable your child is going to be at school.
n/a This little boy's transition to school has been really quite successful. He he has his needs. However, he's got a really supportive family, a family that have great communication skills and are really able to work collaboratively.
n/a Having familiarized myself with the TTS website, I feel it has a lot of, elements that would be of benefit to any child starting school.
n/a There are cheat sheets and resources and, different tools. There is, for example, something called Snapshot of My Child.
n/a The troubleshooting guide is also really useful for if you're having some challenge and you need a few ideas.