Therapy Services
Abingdon House School has a team of Speech and Language Therapists, Occupational Therapists & Physiotheraists.
Together with specialist Literacy and Maths Teachers, these staff make up the ‘Special Provision’ Team.
Therapy is integrated into the school day at Abingdon House School. Therapists work with children in their classroom alongside teaching staff in lessons and also at lunch and break times. Therapy is also provided on a need led basis in small group, paired and individual sessions.
Therapy programmes / curriculums used at Abingdon House School.
Word Aware/Word of the Week (incorporated into Literacy lessons). Research has shown that pupils with more extensive vocabularies do better academically. Word Aware is a way of teaching new words to groups of pupils using a multi-sensory approach. It has been found to be important to incorporate learning how to say and spell words alongside learning word meanings and so both areas are used in the programme: www.thinkingtalking.co.uk/word-aware
Social Thinking is an approach to help pupils of all ages to think socially, to work in groups and to develop friendships. It teaches pupils important concepts such as expected and unexpected behaviours in social situations to help them interpret the behaviour of others, develop perspective and to regulate their responses to situations, often alongside the Zones of Regulation programme: www.socialthinking.com
Zones of Regulation is designed to support emotional and sensory regulation by helping pupils identify which zone they are in. They are supported in finding sensory and physical strategies to help them get back to the ‘green zone’ where they are focused, regulated and ready to learn.
smiLE (structured, measurable interaction in Live English) therapy is a structured, functional social skills therapy that teaches students how to communicate effectively with people unfamiliar with their needs, in a variety of everyday life situations. Students are filmed before therapy, carrying out a specific communication task. Post-therapy the student is filmed again on a similar task, to see whether new skills have been learnt. Modules include: greetings, requesting in an office, requesting and refusing in an office, buying something in a shop and asking for help at the train station. Modules can be adapted or added according to the specific social needs of the students.
Attention Autism is a therapy technique that helps to develop joint attention. There are 4 stages that helps to build focus through interesting objects and situations. The skills learnt are needed in social and language development.
The Speed Up handwriting programme is for children aged 8-13 whose handwriting is slow, illegible or lacks fluency. It uses kinaesthetic awareness (i.e. awareness of the position and movement of limbs and joints without the aid of vision through multisensory activity and exercise. The programme consists of a series of activities, games and exercises that stimulate the joint sensors and arouse the body’s kinaesthetic sense. This then improves movement, motor and pressure control. As the child develops their ability to sense the position of their joints and limb they are also developing a mental image of the patterns, movements and forms required for writing. As the child continue to experience these rhythms and patterns of movement the skills develop into more faster and fluent handwriting
Handwriting without Tears is a handwriting programme that uses a multisensory approach to teach letters in a developmental sequence. It helps to develop correct letter formation and placement.
Cognitive Orientation to Occupational Performance (CO-OP) is an occupationaltherapy approach that focuses on teaching the child and family how to use cognitivestrategies to improve performance of tasks that are a problem for the child on a daily basis. It was particular designed for children with dyspraxia / motor planning issues but may also be used with children with other difficulties.
ASDAN Key Steps and Stepping Stones Awards are the programmes followed in the school as part of the life skills lessons. After completion of a number of hours pupils can receive a participation certificate. Younger pupils in the school complete Stepping Stone activities and older pupils complete ASDAN Key Steps.
“The highly skilled ‘Special Provision Team’ is impressive in its breadth of expertise. The SENCos and multi-disciplinary team of therapists support and work with subject teachers and have input across the curriculum. The whole school benefits from this approach.” CReSTeD inspection