Sunday 12 January 2014

PE, Schoolsafe and the first week back


My class are a Rec/Year 1 mix and as I said previously adjusting from the management style of KS3 has been a challenge, which would've been difficult enough except the schools policies and general paperwork differs between EYFS and KS1 so I'm having to get my head round two different ways of working...I have 2 EYFS students and their assessment is completely different to the other 7 pupils who are KS1. Still finding it a challenge to find time to make sense of CLL, PSED, PD and 'Specifics'  much less to plan for them in amongst my KS1 lesson planning, in an EYFS classroom set up!?

Anyway, the EYFS set up... Haven't really had a chance to evaluate yet as only really have 2 days where it will be used properly, due to nature of where assemblies, visits to soft play and pe lessons etc. fit in the week. One of my SSAs isn't convinced it will work due to not being able to observe "lessons" if pupils are taught individually (the SSAs are responsible for writing Learning Journeys for each subject). Had a difficult time explaining how it would work... However, my other SSAs are from EYFS so they're behind it and recognise that this group of children just can't sit and learn as a group. On Wednesday and Friday I used plastic buckets, with a "colour" and "letter" theme as an exploratory activity whilst pupils were doing work boxes 1:1. I'm not sure these occupied them well enough, even alongside a home corner. With their asd the pupils in my class tend to flit very quickly between activities/toys - suggestions of "areas" or activities to occupy them, or even better, allow them to occupy themselves would be greatly appreciated.

I'm really facing difficulties getting one in particular to move away from what he wants to do and do any activity. Even a workbox now, with 2-3 adult directed tasks... With plenty of warning through showing him it well in advance, leads to tears. I'm aware that he's just been off two weeks for Xmas, but this has been happening for a long while. Any advice would be welcome. He's yet to attend an assembly - just realises it's not what he wants to be doing/where he wants to be and screams. 

My biggest challenge this week is teaching PE. I've not taught PE for 5 years, as when I was in mainstream secondary within a SEN base I only taught English, Maths, Humanities and PSHE. So, tomorrow is my first attempt, luckily our PE coordinator has planned it for me, but still feeling rather uncomfortable. The main reason for this is that the pupils in my class tend to follow their own agenda... All the time. It's pretty difficult to teach PE 1:1 while the others get on with what they want. So slightly nervous about managing it.

I did a SchoolSafe course on Tuesday, in my honest opinion I didn't find it very useful as it mainly seemed to focus on self-defence. In my case, and I'm aware it might change, I don't feel this is as important for me as preventing them from hurting themselves and how to manoeuvre them if they are endangering themselves. Hopefully, in the future I may be sent on an advanced course which will include this. It was, however, useful in a sense of hearing the legislation and my own rights with regards to defending myself.



1 comment:

  1. Hi your class sound quite like mine, i have 7 pupils at P2-P5 (but mine are KS2) who are pretty mobile, however like you said when they are out of their chairs they mainly on their own agenda and often find it hard to focus on activities for any length of time unless they are of their own choosing. I do lots of splitting in groups and 1:1 work, we also have class chairs for structured times. I am visiting an SEN school this Thursday that encourages continuous provision so i will let you know if i come back with any good ideas. I myself don't do a P.E session as we have swimming, rebound, body awareness etc and often work on physio/mobility/gross motor target during their free play times. We are also enjoying some activities based around cognition/problem solving such as posting activities, switch work, toy they have to figure out how to work with more than one action. Be great to share ideas : )

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