Lancasterian School

[EduCativ]

Lancasterian High School is a rich and vibrant environment, where students are allowed to build on the progress and skills that they have developed through our outstanding Early Years and Primary education. We endeavor to deliver an exciting and personalized curriculum that sets clear targets that will stretch our students pastorally and academically. We take every opportunity to work with a multi-agency approach in planning and delivering our lessons. We also have a comprehensive transition package for our students that will support them from year 5 and beyond. We strive to ensure that the students have a variety of destinations to choose from so that we can guide and support them on their journey to adulthood. We offer a curriculum that has a combination of core and non-core subjects, we have grouped the non-core subjects into preparing for adulthood categories that will help them to work towards accreditation and develop the life skills needed for further education, independence, and employment.
Lancasterian Specialist School for Communication & Interaction is a 3-16yr community special school situated in West Didsbury, Manchester. Our school provides a quality, inclusive education for pupils with physical difficulties, severe medical conditions, and communication needs.
The staff at Lancasterian strive to provide challenging, enjoyable, and enriching learning experiences at all times. The team is dedicated to enabling pupils to achieve their potential. We believe that every single pupil has the right to control his or her own life, and share opportunities, challenges, and experiences with their peers. We pledge to serve the children, families, and carers we work in an honest, professional, and committed manner.
The Early Years Foundation stage at Lancasterian school consists of three age phases Nursery 1, Nursery 2, and Reception. It would usually be expected that a pupil in Nursery 1 would attend 2 full days, a pupil in Nursery 2 would attend 3 full days and a Reception pupil would attend 5 full days. This takes account of the pupils' developmental levels and the fact that pupils are unable to attend part days due to the requirement to use home-school transport. These are a guideline only and would be reviewed at the six-week settling in review, individual circumstances sometimes necessitate that a pupil would attend more or fewer days than those stated.
Teaching and learning are based on the revised 2014 Early Years Foundation Stage framework. The framework is separated into 7 areas of learning with pupils working throughout all 6 stages of development towards the Early Learning Goals. A different topic is focused on each half term and these are taken from a four-year topic cycle to prevent repetition for the pupils.
A typical day in the Early Years Foundation Stage would involve two group times followed by focus activities and continuous provision activities taking place in the morning. These are broken by a snack and outdoor playtime, snack time is seen as a learning opportunity and this is typically around Personal, Social, Emotional Development targets. The afternoons usually consist of another two group times broken again by focus and continuous provision activities. The Early Years Foundation Stage joins with Key Stage One on two afternoons each week to enable the pupils to be grouped for Physical Education and Creative.
Key Stage One teaching and learning is based on the National Curriculum framework with Year 1 pupils continuing to consolidate the Early Learning Goals in the Autumn Term. The National Curriculum key skills have been mapped across a 4-year topic cycle and grouped into subject areas English, Maths, People and Places, Explore and Investigate, Creative, Physical Education, and Personal, Social, Health, and Citizenship education.
A typical day at Key Stage One level would involve English and Maths taking place in the morning. These are broken by a snack and outdoor playtime, snack time is seen as a learning opportunity and this is typically around Personal, social, health, and citizenship targets. The afternoon begins with a reading session and this is then followed by one or two other curriculum subjects. Key Stage One joins with the Early Years Foundation Stage on two afternoons each week to enable the pupils to be grouped for Physical Education and Creative.
Each of our classes at the Key Stage Two level of schooling has, a Class Teacher, a team of Teaching Assistants and a link Physiotherapist supporting our children. We also work closely with the school Speech and Language Therapy team, Occupational Therapist, and School Nurse to ensure our children are comfortable, safe, have appropriate resources, and thereby have the best possible opportunity to access the curriculum on offer.
Every child at Key Stage Two receives daily lessons in English and Mathematics. They also all spend time each week with a teacher or a teaching assistant focusing on their learning programs (ILP’s) in English, Maths, and ICT. Since September 2011 we have been trialing a creative approach to teaching the other curriculum subjects such as History, Geography, Science, etc. Each half term the whole department focuses on a theme such as ‘Amazing Animals’. The class teachers plan this topic together to ensure that there are lots of fun challenging activities for the children to engage in, as well as ensuring that there is an opportunity to explore the objectives for each of the curriculum areas. So far this approach of linking learning and revisiting themes and information in different lessons seems to be working for our pupils.

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