Welcome to the first of this years' SEND newsletters. It has been a pleasure to be working with so many of you over the term. This term has been a very very busy one. We began the school term supporting the children's transitions into school for our new reception and nursery children but also to new teachers across the Federation. The work that we put in before the summer ensured the majority of our children were able to transition smoothy into their new classes. Thank you for all your support with this, we know it can be daunting time when expectations and familiar routines change. As the first term drew to a close and after the first round of our coffee mornings, we turned our attention once again to training.

The 4th November saw all of our teachers and teaching assistants complete the accredited training from the Autism Education trust, Autism Awareness. The feedback from staff was very positive and the impact on supporting our autistic learners has been effective.

This term has also seen us raise the profile for children with social emotional and mental health needs, each school now has an Art Therapist working weekly in school and bespoke mental health support for each of our settings.

We have been working closely with the speech and language therapists and they will be running training for all teaching assistants before we finish for the holidays, the focus for this training will be questioning.

As always, if you have any SEND questions or queries which your child's class teacher cannot help with, please email me.

Best wishes

Kathryn Congdon

When thinking about SEND Special Educations Needs and Disability in the BJS Federation we are thinking about how children are able to access the learning that is being delivered in our mainstream classrooms. Are children able to retain and apply their learning across the curriculum?, Are children able to talk about what they have learnt? or Use language to express themselves? Our teachers have many hats and responsibilities during the school day but their primary one (for want of a better word) is educator.

At the BJS Federation we want all children to thrive and become, happy independent children who are curious about the world around them and we recognise that for this to happen we need to know each of our children as individuals. One of the ways we do this is, by watchful waiting. This term is used as we gather evidence before we approach parents and, also as children are transitioning into new classes. The term effectively means waiting to see what happens and then making conclusions based on the evidence seen over time rather than from one or two solitary events. One huge part of our children's lives we cannot watch, is when they are not at school, therefore it is integral that you let your child's class teacher know if you have concern about how they are accessing the learning at school.

As educators we cannot diagnose the differences we see but we can apply strategies which support learning styles, this is what we aim to within the Federation. The iceberg diagram beautifully illustrates the value of watchful waiting, detailing all the factors that are having an influence on what we could see at school.
The curriculum we deliver supports all learning styles and enables children to develop strategies to support independence and a love of learning.

Labels and diagnosis do hold some value which is why we complete referrals to the paediatricians, to establish if children have underlying medical conditions however, the more important thing for us is the individual child and us understanding what they need to be successful.

So when we think of SEND we don't think of differences we think of diversity of thought and the challenge of enabling all children to be included and thrive. As a Federation we work tirelessly to support your child and recognising what they need to be successful learners is a key part of this.

This year we have continued to embed and develop our Makaton, this term we have been focusing on maths vocabulary. These are the symbols we will be learning in the final weeks of this term.

Earlier this term the children of Bonneville learnt a little about what it is like to be partially sighted (or run a Marathon) as they raised money for Guide dogs. Ms Innes will be running the London Marathon in April 25th for this worthy cause inspired by our very own Paddy who guides Ms Auton at Bonneville. If you would like to donate to this worthy cause or find out more, click the picture.

The first point of contact should always be your child's class teacher, please always discuss your concerns with them before contacting a member of the inclusion team. The teachers and support staff who work with your children really value the relationships they have with their classes and are in the strongest position to speak to you about how your child is getting on at school.