What We Teach: Friends, Relationships and Community including SMSC.
Our Values Statement
At Bradstow School, it is our aim for all young to leave Bradstow with the confidence, skills and resilience to become valued members of the community. We aim to provide all of the young people with experiences within the community that allow for them to apply functional skills learnt at Bradstow to develop their independence. Our young people begin to develop these skills by planned and purposeful activities that can then be applied to real life experiences within the local community and beyond their time at Bradstow.
Bradstow aspires to create a successful learning culture, which will enable young people to become informed, confident, enthusiastic and independent through the implementation of our curriculum in which SMSC and fundamental British values are embedded.
Our ethos is one in which the young people interest and their quality of learning are central to the school’s work and purpose. We recognise our learner’s development is most successful when our core values are promoted by all staff and our learners are supported holistically.
We believe that our school should be a happy, caring and secure environment, where all individuals are valued without any form of discrimination, supported through partnerships with parents, carers and the wider community.
Our British Values
Democracy
The ability to communicate is a fundamental part of our school curriculum and therapy provision. We ensure that our learners are given a ‘voice’ through the use of words, objects, photographs, pictures, symbols, touch cues, gestures or body language.
We empower our learners by giving them opportunities to make choices and share their opinions about what is important to them. We give the young people the understanding of the world around them and sensitivity to difference. By valuing our learner’s choices and opinions and by listening and responding we demonstrate that we support democracy and liberty.
We have an active Community Council and ensure that young people have the opportunity throughout the year to reflect on their own and peers experience in school through surveys, a suggestion box, key working sessions and aspirations day.
Rule of Law
We involve our learners in setting class charters and support them to make decisions and choices that are positive for our whole school through our community council meetings.
Our learners are supported to learn how to manage their emotions develop awareness of boundaries and behavioural expectations can adapt behaviour to different events, changes in routine and social situations.
All staff are committed to providing a consistent and predictable approach in which our learners feel safe and support our learners to develop strategies to enable them to communicate their wants and needs, express their likes and dislikes, can communicate to keep themselves safe in preparation for adult life.
Individual Liberty
Our learners are encouraged and supported to become valued citizens and active contributors to their community as independently as possible. We support our learners to develop their understanding of rights; this includes the right to say 'Yes' or 'No' and develop opinions, likes, dislikes and individual interests.
Our learners are actively encouraged to take responsibility for roles within our school. We support our learners to build positive relationships and participate in charitable events such as, Red Nose Day/Comic Relief and Children in Need. We believe that engendering a safe, caring environment nurtures self-esteem and encourages our young people to become valued contributors of their community.
Mutual Respect
We promote our learners inclusion in all learning, activities and settings. Within school our learners work with a range of people; building relationships with others are a fundamental part of our school ethos. Building healthy relationships foster a sense of community, building on developing relationships that are reciprocal, kind and respectful.
Tolerance of Different Faiths And Beliefs
Cultural appreciation and development forms part of our curriculum and is embed throughput our curriculum. We place great emphasis on providing encounters and participation in events and celebrations to broaden all learners’ experiences and awareness of others.
Our Assemblies ensure our learners find out about themselves and others. The Themes in our curriculum cover friend, relationships and community and celebrations from a range of faiths and world events.
Our learners experience British Culture through our curriculum, visiting a variety of local places which include taking part in sporting and watching activities, participating in and watching theatre performances and experiences a wide range of cultural opportunities throughout their learning journey at Bradstow.
Our staff team work closely with parents, carers and other professionals to ensure that our learners are happy, well cared for and prepared for adulthood and have the cultural capital they need to live a fulfilling life as part of their community.
Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural (SMSC)
Bradstow School has a strong commitment to SMSC within our school ethos and it is embedded within our curriculum. This integrated approach ensures that aspects of SMSC are considered in all learning opportunities and in a range of contexts.
Spiritual Development
Our learners explore beliefs, feelings and values of others throughout our curriculum. We develop and intentionally teach learning about themselves and the world around them through developing opportunities both in and outside of school.
Moral Development
Our learners are taught to develop their understanding of their own emotions and to keep themselves safe throughout our school curriculum and through individualised approaches.
We teach our learners to consider their own views and develop their ability to assert their views as well as considering the views of others.
Social Development
We develop our learner’s social development by developing functional communication which is specific to each learner. We support our learners to develop their communication and social skills in a range of contexts including our local community.
Our learners have the opportunity to participate in a range of community activities which include employment, enterprise and accessing local facilities such as sports centres and colleges.
Cultural Development
At Bradstow School we appreciate a range of different cultures in the school and further afield as an essential element of their preparation for life in modern Britain.
We value our commonalties and treat one another with mutual respect; fostering a sense of community is at the centre of our school ethos. Our learners engage in a range of artistic, musical, sporting and cultural opportunities.
Internet safety
At Bradstow, a wide range of technologies are used throughout the school and play an invaluable part in the education of all students. All classrooms have a Smartboard that allow all pupils to access lessons via resources shown on an interactive computer screen. ICT is used in the majority of subjects to engage and motivate pupils and allow them access to a wide range of environments. To ensure that all pupils have equal access to ICT, adapted versions of keyboards, screens and devices are available. Teaching staff also use portable technology in classrooms; these include iPads, image and audio recording devices and programmable devices. We are also constantly seeking to ensure that our students are digitally literate and aware the risks that technology and online communication may present. In a world where technology plays and increasing part in more and more of our daily activities it is imperative that students leave Bradstow with the knowledge of how to use such technologies safely.
At Bradstow, we teach most of our internet safety through our Friends, Relationships and Community framework, overseen by our school Designated Safeguarding Leads. The curriculum intent for 'Internet Safety' is that children will be given the relevant toolkit, alongside the vocabulary, knowledge and skills needed, to understand the many positives and dangers of using the internet. They will feel inspired to lead their own learning, engage in communication, and ultimately, understand how to stay safe on the internet. As a nurturing school, we will fully support the children in their learning, intending that all children will feel confident discussing any internet safety concerns with our caring staff team.
Bradstow has a strict Internet Protocol so that our young people are able to use the Internet safely. The London Grid For Learning (LGfL) enables our young people to access the Internet via a secure server. Internet Safety is taught discretely, as well as woven through all computing learning, in both a fun and informative way, using videos, games, stories and various other activities. The impact of our provision is that our young people will be empowered and enabled to make the right choices when navigating online platform, and give them the tools to seek appropriate help when faced with online dilemmas.
Community Safety
At Bradstow school, it is our aim for all children and young people to learn how to access the community safely, what services are available to them and how to access them. We aim for all of our young people to learn and develop transferable skills that enable them contribute to the local community and how to sustain this throughout life. Community inclusion for Bradstow means creating meaningful opportunities to contribute to the local community while being valued for their skills and attributes.
- We aim for all our children to leave Bradstow with the confidence, skills and resilience to become valued members of the community.
- We aim to provide all of the young people with experiences within the community that allow for them to apply functional skills learnt at Bradstow to develop their independence.
Our young people begin to develop these skills by role play activities that can then be applied to real life experiences within the local community and beyond their time at Bradstow. We teach community inclusion through a range of real life activities that our young people will experience throughout the 24-hour waking curriculum such as structured learning, role play, and community activities. Our curriculum is structured to enable the young people to apply knowledge and skills through travel training, shopping, and community access. This will include ‘in the moment’ learning where staff can deliver and model the expectations of the subject and required skills during class shopping outings and the home community activities.
Our community inclusion framework outcomes are based on the ‘I can’ statements to promote progression at meaningful steps using SOLAR (assessment tool). Community inclusion will be covered over a 3-year rolling programme with one teacher lead session a week, it will be integrated in cross curricular activities due to the generalisation of the subject.
The topics for community inclusion have been derived from the key areas of preparing for adulthood. These topics have been adapted to meet the needs and interests of the young people at Bradstow School to ensure that the learning is engaging and accessible for our young people. The topics will be divided up over 3 terms to ensure progress can be achieved by all students. Due to the diverse need of students, all students will follow a programme designed for their needs split across four ‘areas’, pre-formal, semi-formal, formal and formal+. Each student will participate in one community inclusion session a week. In addition, students will develop these skills through cross curricular sessions in which the community is accessed depending on the needs and interests of each individual student.
Friends, Relationships and Community 3 year Curriculum Road Map
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