About Us The Special Needs Room (Kid's Haven) takes a nurturing, two-way learning, pupil centered, holistic approach in working with all the stakeholders in a child' life. Working closely with teachers, parents, pupils and external agencies to provide the best support for a child with special needs. Through consultation and collaboration, a balanced in a child's development is achieved. We focus on therapy sessions that would help support a child with special needs in school in his/her areas of difficulties. These therapy sessions are equipped with various intervention strategies catered for the individual child. Language and Literacy Therapy Sessions The therapy sessions focused on the Orton Gillingham Approach which is a multisensory, sequential, and systematic approach to enhance automacy in a student. We have noticed that this method works well with children who are auditory - sequential learners of letter sounds. Sessions are kept in a small group setting so that child would be able to excel at his best and there is a one on one instruction during learning. This language and literacy programme targets concepts in teaching reading, spelling and writing skills by using the Orton Gillingham Approach - recommended by Dyslexia Association of Singapore. (DAS) These sessions also follow closely with the AVID ( Auditory, Visual, Interactive, decoding ) which is an approach adopted by training sessions at SCOPES, IMH. It is a cognitive-based approach to reading instruction with an emphasis on rapid swapping between letter clusters ( visual processing ) and their associative sounds ( auditory processing ) We feel that this approach work best with children who are visually - kinesthetic learners to letter sounds. The ultimate aim is for a child to be able to function independently in the classroom setting. However for some, it takes extra effort before they are able to function without support. This is where the school's Special Needs Officer would come in to aid a child with special needs in his/ her classroom until the child is able to function in his/her daily task by oneself. Other Therapy Sessions Include:
| Referral System For our pupils with Special Needs, a four stage referral process is in place at the School. At the first stage, Form Teachers who support child to the best of their ability in the classroom with certain classroom strategies. Where further assistance is required, a Teacher Trained in Special Needs (TSN) would be able to assist further by advising based on their training / knowledge on what strategy would be best appropriate to support the particular child with Special Needs. The Special Needs Officer at the third stage will receive
directly cases that are referred by teachers, parents and external agencies. At the fourth stage, pupils who may require further support and interventions for learning and other emotional and behavioral difficulties will be referred to external agencies. Collaboration with External Agencies
Collaboration with the various external agencies and stakeholders is an essential partnership which aids in the kinds of support services rendered to the children in the school. Our internal team also plays a huge role in supporting the children first in the school. Our school team compromises of trained staff such as, teachers trained in special needs, teacher counselors, our full time school counselor and our pupil welfare committee members. In this team, we work closely with one another through consultations and discussions and tap on resources that are available in our school. We also have a strong network team where collaboration takes place within various other schools where we share and learn more on how to best support a child with special needs. |
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