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We are an SEN school in Southampton. Our Post 16 department was looking for something to link with our vocational learning and life skills.
Overall impact
Our Post 16 students have loved the skill stories from the Skills Builder Hub. The Accelerator programme has supported us to build on our current practice with a clear framework to work within. Our Education Associate has been invaluable as a person to bounce ideas off and enable us to have resources specific to our students needs.
Keep it simple
Our Post 16 classes have displays of the essential skills. We celebrate the use of essential skills in whole school assemblies with students receiving skill certificates. We teach sessions based on specific skills as well as referring to the skills throughout the college day. We use many of the Skills Builder resources and adapt them for our learners individual needs.
Start early, keep going
As an SEN provision, we modify resources to support their specific learning needs, including using symbolised and signed support in class. We are looking to extend into the school aged learners in the coming year.
Measure it
We use the Skills Builder Hub to assess our learners and use the skill tokens to recognise individual achievements.
Focus tightly
We consistently use the language of the essential skills and model those learning behaviours. We use games, projects, class discussions, videos, stories and a range of resources to explain and explore the essential skills.
Keep practising
During our residential week, we had a "care-crow" project to make scarecrows which included planning, designing, resourcing, problem solving and working as a team. All our learners knew about the essential skills and staff and students referred to them throughout the week.
Bring it to life
Our Post 16 curriculum is vocational and life skill focused. We do Duke of Edinburgh awards, volunteer on a local farm, work in our on site cafe as well as community trips which are all real life opportunities to practise the skills.
What's next
We are looking at further embedding Skills Builder in Post 16 and introducing it within the school in KS4. We will continue to modify the resources and creating more that are specific to our learners needs.
