Maintaining pedagogy with complex individual or cohort needs – delivered by Dominic Gunn
Aims and objectives – Delegates will have opportunities to:
- Discuss how to support the increasing numbers of children with additional needs attending individual settings and classes.
- Discuss how to support significant levels of additional need.
- Consider the value, as well as the challenge, of including children with significant additional needs in their settings and classrooms.
- Share similar experiences.
- Discuss concerns about the impact on previously established practice.
Participants will understand how supporting complex additional needs, with confidence and from an informed position, improves provision for all children. Participants will feel more confident in advocating inclusive, child-centred learning to parents, school leadership teams, and to other adults. Managers will feel empowered to support children with additional needs effectively in the context of limited additional funding.
This training is available in a bespoke format, based on initial consultation, and will usually include an interactive presentation followed by discussion of participants’ particular concerns, and concluding with a summary of key points and an action plan. On-site reviews are offered as an option.
An awareness-raising session can be provided as a 2-hour session, in flexible formats, with full training and consultancy increasing as required.
This training is ideal for all practitioners, managers, and school leaders responsible for the education of children aged 3-6 years. It is also likely to be of interest to others who are more broadly concerned with educational inclusion.
Self-regulation and play (A neuro-scientific perspective) – delivered by Dominic Gunn
Aims and objectives – Delegates will have opportunities to explore:
- How recent findings in neuroscience affirm the need for child-led play.
- How that child-led play is essential in order to develop self-regulation.
- What child-led play involves and how it differs from other types of play.
- The role of the adult in children’s play.
- The negative impact of limiting child-led play.
- Why behaviourist approaches, including reward charts, and overly directive timetables can create dysregulation in children and lead to resistance rather than resilience.
- How to support emotional self-regulation of children with Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and specific additional needs during child-led play.
Participants will understand how child-led play is required for healthy brain development. They will feel confident to ensure necessary play opportunities are a major part of each child’s day. They will also feel more confident about their own role in this play. Participants will be empowered to advocate and articulate how child-led play leads to productive, respectful relationships quickly, in young children, and is sustained permanently in older children and later life.
This training is available in a bespoke format, based on initial consultation, and will usually include an interactive presentation followed by discussion of participants’ particular concerns, and concluding with a summary of key points and an action plan. On-site reviews are offered as an option.
An awareness-raising session can be provided as a 2-hour session, in flexible formats, with full training and consultancy increasing as required.
This training is ideal for all practitioners, managers, and school leaders responsible for the education of children aged 3-6 years. It will also be of specific interest to anyone working with children in older age groups who present as being dysregulated and resources on Nurture Groups can be provided as necessary.
Transitions – Starting school and moving to Key Stage 1 – delivered by Dominic Gunn
Aims and objectives – Delegates will have opportunities to consider:
- Why uninterrupted periods of child-led play are essential throughout the EYFS, and for children continuing to access this in Year 1.
- Practical implications and the adult’s role.
- Would we alter our pedagogy based on a child’s chronological age while presenting the same curriculum?
- Is our teaching for each Unique Child based on a proven set of principles or disconnected prescription?
- What is the impact on learning of increased adult direction with a more tightly timetabled day?
- How well do we understand the relationship between children’s physical development and their most effective learning?
- Does our Year R and Year 1 provision facilitate a connection with the natural world and the act of creation? Why is this necessary?
Participants will understand how to support children, and their individual learning, comfortably and with the greatest impact while they change physical environments and make new relationships. Participants will feel confident in preparing educational opportunities that enable the most effective learning for young children. They will feel empowered to advocate and explain the value of lengthy, autonomous play exploration above pre-determined lesson plans.
This training is available in a bespoke format, based on initial consultation, and will usually include an interactive presentation followed by discussion of participants’ particular concerns, and concluding with a summary of key points and an action plan. On-site reviews are offered as an option.
An awareness-raising session can be provided as a 2-hour session, in flexible formats, with full training and consultancy increasing as required.
This training is ideal for all practitioners, managers, and school leaders responsible for the education of children aged 3-6 years.
