INTERVENTIONS
INTERVENTIONS
INTENT:
The Interventions Programme at St. Lawrence’s is one of extreme importance. It allows our children to access the curriculum and develop life skills at the pace they need to allow them to succeed. We aim to give children additional support in the areas of the curriculum they find challenging, as well as in areas of personal and social need. Through both short and long term interventions we seek to improve skills, knowledge and confidence to allow children to become more independent and help them thrive in their school and home environment.
The intent of the area of Interventions at St. Lawrence’s is to develop literacy and numeracy skills to allow all children to read, write and be numerate. We also work on developing memory skills and self esteem issues.
We feel that our children need to learn to read, write and develop their numeracy skills in order to succeed in life but we recognise that not all children are able to do this without additional, specialised support. We want to give our children a safe space in which to learn the skills they find challenging and help them develop coping strategies to improve resilience both in work and their emotional well being.
We do this by having small groups throughout EYFS, KS1 and KS2 that have specific focuses to address needs. Children are taught by teachers or specially trained teaching assistants to allow them to access the topics being covered with more confidence and are taught through quality teaching. There is a smaller ratio of children to teacher. We also break down curriculum content from the appropriate year group into smaller steps to allow children to access topics more easily.
We take account of prior knowledge by looking at what the children have done previously and areas of the curriculum they have found challenging. When looking at self-esteem issues we also observe things the children are passionate about to help provide tasks that they can connect to and show interest in, as well as offering a nurturing environment in which they can thrive and flourish.
IMPLEMENTATION:
We teach Interventions through an excellent working relationship between teachers and teachers and teachers and children. Feedback is constant between staff working with the children to highlight areas of success and areas that may need further work. Our interventions are very reactive if children have shown issues in class and these areas can be addressed quickly due to feedback from teaching staff to intervention staff. In the same way, feedback is always given regarding work covered during intervention sessions so that classwork can be adjusted accordingly.
We encourage learning through praise and simple steps. We try to involve concrete learning to allow children to cement the basics of the area they are working in to give them more solid foundations and confidence in their ability before building on this. We make the sessions pacey with different sections to keep children engaged.
IMPACT:
We measure the impact of the interventions in curriculum subjects at the end of each term (or half term depending on the intervention length) and base our next interventions on either on these findings, next steps in the curriculum or through feedback from the class teacher about other areas of need.
In terms of our interventions which look at children’s social and emotional needs, we measure the impact of the intervention and rotate children as necessary so as many children as possible that need it can benefit from these interventions.
By the time children leave St. Lawrence’s we aim for them to be able to read, write, have a level of numeracy, be more resilient and find ways to deal with difficult situations appropriately.