Special Needs Experience
Visit to local school to observe SEN environment - www.pencalenick.org
Part of the unique nature of the Cornwall SCITT is the provision of enhanced opportunities to experience wider educational issues in the form of a Special Needs Experience.We are lucky to have as one of our partners Pencalenick School, which caters for residential and day pupils with specific learning, behavioural and emotional needs.
Pencalenick also provides education for a certain number of pupils whose placement in mainstream education has reached “irretrievable breakdown.” It is the only secondary school for such students in Cornwall and is therefore highly over-subscribed. The school can provide a unique enrichment potential we hope you will appreciate. The creative calibre of the staff and spectacular grounds of the school produce an educational dynamic and excitement about learning that you should benefit from experiencing.
The purpose of such enhancements would be to reflect on other practice and allow it to inform individual teaching strategies. Evaluation of enhancements might be captured in an Education & Professional Studies written assignment, reflective development record insert or a seminar presentation.
The aims of the Pencalenick experience are to enhance:
1) the basic SCITT training by offering an experience of a residential Special School.
2) awareness of the diversity of the nature of pupils with Special Needs and to acknowledge that, whilst inclusion should be the aim and the norm, there are some young people for whom segregated Special Education is the preferred option.
The Pencalenick experience can offer:
• Observation of and participation in the delivery of the full range of KS3 and KS4 curriculum to students whose attainment ranges from below National Curriculum level 1 to level 3.
• Observation of students with a wide range of special needs: learning difficulties, language difficulties, emotional and behavioural problems, autism, medical conditions and combinations of these.
• Observation of a wide variety of teaching and learning styles.
• Opportunity for discussion with a “day mentor”.
• Guided observation using a prepared questionnaire.
• Access to resources and information on Special Needs.
• Opportunity to link theory and practice e.g. assessment, differentiation, managing pupil behaviour.
• Outdoor Education and Social Skills training using a particularly rich environment.
• Information about the Children’s Act and child protection issues.
• Possibility of sharing in evening activities with boarders.
• Opportunity of using the experience as a basis for a formal seminar assessment.
• There is also a negotiated opportunity to undertake a longer 5 or 10 day placement if appropriate to your professional needs and the timetable availability of Pencalenick School.
