If you have any questions or queries regarding Special Educational Needs, please see link below to the Staffordshire Local Offer which contains  details of help and answers to your questions.

Meet the SEND Team

Mrs Gemma Simpson is River View's Assistant Headteacher Responsible for Inclusion.

Mrs Melanie Hutchinson is the school's Family Support Manager and together, they offer a very holistic approach towards meeting the individual needs of children and their families.

   Mrs Gail Earp

   Co-opted Governor

    Link Governor SEND

SEND Documentation

 Please follow this link to our SEN Information report: 

School SEN details- Staffordshire County Council.

At River View Primary and Nursery School both Staff and Governors place Special Needs at the centre of its whole philosophy.

• We aim to work with parents, children and support agencies to make a positive difference to all.
• We provide our children with a challenging education which meets their academic, physical, social, emotional and moral needs.
• We aim to raise the aspirations and expectations for all pupils, including those with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND).

The staff in school work closely with parents and other agencies to ensure that the needs of all our children are met within school.

At River View we define special educational needs as:

"A child or young person has special educational needs if he or she has a learning difficulty or disability which calls for special educational provision to be made for him or her. A learning difficulty or disability is a significantly greater difficulty in learning than the majority of others of the same age. Special educational provision means educational or training provision that is additional to, or different from, that made generally for others of the same age in a mainstream setting in England.....Health care provision and social care provision which educates or trains a child or young person is to be treated as special educational provision." SEND Code of Practice 2014

The SEND Code of Practice (2014) identifies four broad areas of Special Educational Need:

• Communication and Interaction
• Cognition and Learning
• Social, Emotional and Mental Health Difficulties
• Sensory and/or Physical Needs.

All children have access to a differentiated curriculum, and our primary focus is on all children receiving high quality teaching within their classes. The SEND team offers support and advice to class teachers in regard to strategies, prompts and scaffolds to support children within the classroom.

Early identification of Special Educational Needs and prompt intervention is a focus of the SEND team, while also taking into account and following the "Assess-Plan-Do-Review" cycle promoted within the SEND Code of Practice (2014). There is a clear process and procedure in place within school to facilitate this and all children's academic progress is closely monitored and tracked.

We work with a range of professionals in order to support all children in our care, these professionals include: Educational Psychologists, Hearing Impaired Service, Physical Disability Support Services, Behaviour Support, Specialist Educational Support Services, Local Assessment Team, Single Point of Access, School Nurses, Diabetic Nurses, Community Paediatricians, Midland Psychology, Community Speech and Language Therapists, Autism Outreach, CAMHS, Local Support Team, Social Services and others.

SEND Termly Learning Conferences

For the past two years we have offered the parents/carers of children with additional needs the opportunity to attend an extended Termly Learning Conference. We have found this a fantastic opportunity to discuss the personalised paperwork that supports each child's needs. 

SEND Interventions

During the afternoons, following core learning time, some children may receive interventions by the SEND team or other trained staff and professionals. We offer a range of evidence-based researched interventions to support children with their needs and learning.

Lego Therapy

LEGO-based therapy is a social development program to improve effective social communication development. The skills developed during weekly therapy sessions generalise well into the classroom. The children work in groups of 3, supported by an adult facilitator, and take on defined roles as Engineer, Supplier and Builder. The children rotate through these roles.

(Further information is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SVqfOSSzjs)

Through their participation in LEGO therapy children develop skills in:

• Collaborative work
• Division of Labour
• Sharing
• Turn-taking
• Eye contact
• Emphasis on verbal and non-verbal communication
• Social problem-solving
• Impulse control
• Attention and concentration
• Taking the lead
• Giving clear and understandable instructions

and much, much more!

Attention Autism

Attention Autism is a therapy developed by Gina Davis. The purpose of these 30 minute sessions is to build children’s attention and interaction levels. These sessions occur in Early Years Foundation Stage three times weekly, with the purpose to build specific children's attention to 20 minutes of sustained listening and interaction.

Attention Autism is a highly motivating and creative approach to building attention and early communication skills. The approach utilises highly visual and engaging objects and fosters a kinaesthetic, hands-on approach to learning. 

Colourful Semantics

Colourful Semantics is a highly visual method of supporting children to write more complex and meaningful sentences that make sense and extend their vocabulary use. It starts by breaking sentences down so that children can understand the different parts of sentences, before putting them back together again.

Talk Boost

Following extensive research and testing, the speech and language charity, ICAN, have developed robust interventions for children who have mildly delayed speech, language and communication.

Children in Key Stage 1 who have delayed language (as identified through completion of "Progression Tools") also have access to Talk Boost.

Children identified as having delayed SLCN development receive 3 weekly sessions of 45 minutes in a ratio of 1:6 for Talk Boost.

Evidence has proved that children make 12 to 18 months progress after participating in 10 weeks of Talk Boost.

Children will bring home workbooks (for Talk Boost) to share with you. Please help the children complete the tasks with you, and ensure the books are returned to school daily.

Precision Teaching

Children receive short 10/20 minute 1:1 sessions around specific targets in English or Maths with Lunchtime Supervisors, Teaching Assistants or a member of the SEND team. These sessions may be on-going or very short term around a specific difficulty or learning objective.

Time To Talk

This is a programme specifically designed to teach and develop social interaction skills and improve oral language skills for children aged between 4-6 years old. 

The skills which a child can gain from taking part in this intervention include:

-Turn taking

-Following instructions

-Sharing

-Listening and attention

-Awareness of own's feelings

Small group Maths and English Interventions

Children receive small group teaching around specific Maths concepts or aspects of English. They are taught strategies they can utilise to then take this learning back into the classroom environment.

Assess-Plan-Do-Review (APDR) Individual Educational Plans (IEP)

All children on the school's SEND record have a termly APDR IEP with specific targets. These documents will be shared with you termly, and the children's progress also discussed with parents. There will be an expectation within the APDR IEP that parents and carers will support children by helping them at home as appropriate. All children on the school's record at SEND 2 will either have weekly small group or an individual session focusing on their targets. All children on the school's record at SEND 3 or above, or with a speech and language target, will receive 3 weekly 1:1 sessions with a member of staff to work on their APDR IEP targets.

Parents of children with SEND can receive free and impartial advice and support from Staffordshire SEND Family Partnership. Please use the following website address to access their site: https://www.staffordshire.gov.uk/education/welfareservice/SpecialEducationalNeeds/spps/home.aspx

Mrs Simpson’s English Group

In Mrs Simpson’s English group, the children’s learning is based around a book for each half term. The children complete a variety of practical and multi sensory activities to help immerse them into the story. 
 

Please take a look at some of the exciting things they have got up to. 

Here We Are by Oliver Jeffers

The children became astronauts and travelled into space, where they discovered a brand new planet. They made models of this new planet and created planet fact files. 

Journey by Aaron Becker

The children learnt all about different types of transport and story setting. They ordered and followed instructions to make origami boats, designed and made hot air balloons and went on flying red carpet adventures. They also worked on developing their retelling skills by putting events in order. 

The Polar Bear Son (An Inuit Tale) by Lydia Dabcovich

The children really enjoyed finding out about the weather in the Arctic and how the Inuit people lived. 

Stone Age Boy by Satoshi Kitamura

Everyone enjoyed finding out what life was like in the Stone Age and how it was different to life today. The children especially enjoyed acting out scenes from the book! The children were so enthused by this book, that they created their own short stories based on the Stone Age. This resulted in them all earning a Star Writing for their creativity. 

Big Blue Whale by Nicola Davies

The children used their research skills to find out interesting facts about Blue Whales. Did you know that Blue Whales do not have any teeth? 

Stuck by Oliver Jeffers

During this theme week, children had fun re-enacting the story and then planned and wrote their own story based on the book. 

Zerrafa Giraffa by Diane Hofmeyr

The children went on an adventure travelling all the way from Egypt to Paris. They travelled along the River Nile, across the Mediterranean Sea and walked from Marseilles all the way to Paris. When they arrived in Paris, Parisian had never seen giraffes before, so they had to explain all about giraffes. They all celebrated by following instructions to make giraffe biscuits. 

Superheroes

For our final topic, the children wanted to learn about superheroes. So, they donned their capes and masks, read some comics and set to work creating a Superhero and Supervillain to make their own comic. 

RWI Phonics

At River View we follow the Read Write Inc phonics programme, more information can be found on the Reading section of this website.

To help support your child with the correct pronunciation of sounds, please watch this video where 5 year old Sylvie will demonstrate how to say each sound.