Resource Base
Ohakune Class
The Kiwi Resource Base Curriculum aims to provide children with a targeted curriculum that meets their individual needs while engaging with their interests, fascinations and the wider world. The aim is to provide children with experiences that help them to thrive and to gain the knowledge and skills they will need to progress through their education. This includes formal and less formal approaches with priority given to establishing positive relationships between adults and children.
The curriculum covers three main areas through which the totality of the children’s experiences can be seen: core, enrichment and integrated.
Core Curriculum
The core curriculum is built on the four areas of needs identified within the SEN Code of Practice. Each area of need has five goals identified. These broadly relate to targets set within the EHCPs for the children in the class. By focusing on these areas as the core provision we can ensure that we are working towards the children’s needs.
These are the foundation skills all children need but the children within the Resource Base find challenging. The main focus of need for the RB is as its designation states – complex needs. This means that there are generally two or more areas of need which impact on the development in another. On the whole these are social interaction (pre-dominantly linked with ASD) and self-regulation. These are the children’s biggest barriers and therefore the main focus of the curriculum.
Enrichment Curriculum
Beyond this core curriculum we aim to provide a rich and meaningful range of enrichment and enhancement experiences which will bring learning to life. This will be identified from three main sources: children’s motivations and interests, events in the world around them (eg harvest, seasonal changes, Christmas) and created opportunities (eg animal handling experiences, swimming.)
Children’s engagement with these opportunities and experiences will be tracked separately to inform future planning and to illustrate that children are engaging in a broad curriculum beyond potentially narrow fields of personal interest. This aspect of the curriculum will be emergent in that it will stem from ‘in the moment’ and meaningful opportunities rather than a pre-planned themes or topics.
This aspect of the curriculum will be monitored to ensure that children are experiencing a breadth of learning as illustrated within the National Curriculum. Opportunities to learn about science, the history and geography of the world, people’s beliefs and customs as well as creative opportunities are as important as the core curriculum. Progress within the core curriculum will help children to access the enrichment curriculum. The enrichment curriculum will bring the core curriculum to life.
Integrated Curriculum
For some children there will be appropriate opportunities available within the mainstream curriculum for them to integrate their learning. This is the benefit of a Resource Base within a mainstream school. For some children this may be specific academic lessons (eg English or maths) or because of a particular skill or interest (eg art, music or PE). There are also further opportunities on a daily basis including break and lunch times, assemblies and special events such as performances. These opportunities will be planned on an individual basis to meet children’s needs without overwhelming them.
Through these three strands a personalised, highly engaging, multi-sensory approach is built. Targeted and specialised approaches are used including Attention Autism (Bucket Time) sessions, Intensive Interactions, the TEACCh approach and Sensory Stories. These are supplemented by language and communication approaches including Colourful Semantics, Makaton and a huge range of visual supports.