At Nine Maidens AP Academy, the Primary Department is currently composed of three classes: One specialising in providing an appropriate curriculum for Key Stage One children; a lower key stage two class and an upper key stage two class. We also have the flexibility to allow children to move between classes to best fit their needs. We use the Thrive programme to assess the children’s emotional and developmental needs and ensure that we can meet these needs in order to make sure that every child is actually ready to learn, enjoys being at school, and is able to fully access all the learning opportunities we can provide. At Nine Maidens we follow the National Curriculum in line with all of our mainstream feeder schools. In this way, any of our students who are due to be reintegrated will not feel like they have missed parts of their learning, but may be able to share knowledge with their peers. We also provide as many outdoor education opportunities as possible to ensure that the children gain as much life experience as we can provide, as well as giving them the chance to find an area in which they naturally excel. These opportunities include swimming, sailing, surfing, forest school and gweal-an-top activity centre, for example. These facilities do not just enhance the learning opportunities for the children, but show them that, despite previous negative educational experiences, we are here to support them and help them to deal with situations that they may have found tricky in the past, whilst making education enjoyable. As of September 2014, we will be following the new National Curriculum through the Inspire Programme; again ensuring that our children follow the same topics and ideas as their peers and so help the transition from our school back to mainstream as fluid as possible. In addition to addressing the mainstream curriculum requirements, we also aim to meet individual needs according to advice from fellow professionals, as and when required, or as an additional support to any students we feel are struggling. We use various tried and tested resources to help support the emotional development of our children, including anger management, emotional literacy, social skills, and include various texts and techniques. We have access to an outdoor play area – whether the weather is wet or dry. We are able to use the school garden and tarmac area, and use the field too. During these outdoor activities, we encourage independent play, as well as social interaction with other adults and students. We have an activity box to expand gross motor skills, and as all outdoor activities are fully supported by adults, we are able to focus on individual development and need. We use a range of blended online and teaching/learning resources for KS1, reinforcing skills and engaging children in language development – reading, spelling and phonics knowledge, including Read Write Inc and Nessy. We use Oxford Reading Tree books, alongside other approaches for children in a phased development.
