Our curriculum

The EQUALS curriculum is person centred. The schemes of work are developmental, start at the beginning stage of a learners journey and aim for the highest level of independence possible.

The schemes of work covers ages between 2 and 25 years old and beyond but are not directly related to age or key stage. Pupils begin according to their individual abilities and interests.

At Banks House School, we have 3 pathways: formal, semi-formal and informal.

The semi formal pathway has 12 schemes of work and the informal pathway has 5 schemes of work.

We work alongside other groups to ensure outstanding progress e.g. TITAN, healthy smiles, Unicef, local schools, the community.

Communication is a fundamental part of our school ethos. We believe that all learners have the capacity to communicate with others either verbally or through non-verbal behaviours.

Informal learners largely use non-verbal, behavioural and/or imperative communication. We encourage them to express their wants and needs through the use of PECs, makaton and visual cues.

Semi-formal learners engage in formal social interactions with familiar and unfamiliar people and our personalised reading and writing program.

Learners take part in an appropriate reading program. Initially learners take part in the read, write inc program of systematic phonics, which is then reinforced by practical reading and writing experiences when out in the community.

At Banks House School, our aim is to provide our learners with concrete practical numeracy skills that will help them in living more independently once they have graduated from our school. We do this through the My Independence unit (shopping) as well as the thinking and problem solving scheme of work.

Our numeracy covers 1:1 correspondence, number recognition and the use of coins as a means of exchange. Our learners are given the opportunity to reinforce their skills through repeated practice before being presented with a problem that they have to solve. We do this in a range of settings including cooking, physical activity and scenarios involving money.

Through our yearly topics, we encourage our pupils to experience the theme in many different ways. This year, we are exploring water. Pupils will:

• Explore water based play, experience rain, the properties of water, explore where water comes from, that living things need water to survive, explore moving through water and different ways of transporting water
• Visit different places that contain water – rivers, lakes, water fountains, splash parks, play with water balloons, swimming pools, ice.

We are an active school and we love to get out into the community. Pupils will embed TITAN by walking as a pedestrian, using public transport. Pupils will visit places in our local area and will also travel further afield to engage in their interests and develop their independence.

My Outdoor School is process based learning. Pupils and students learn by ‘doing’ without any fixed or rigid target, and the more times they ‘do’ the deeper their learning is likely to be. Pupils will learn what they need to wear in different seasons. They will build dens and shelters, explore, make and extinguish fires and the safe use of tools. They will learn how to cook on open fires and how to stay safe around fires.

Through learning outside, pupils develop their: independence, self-esteem, self-confidence, resilience, fostering sensory awareness, promote physical well-being, enable communication, especially peer-to-peer communication, promote team building and co-operative learning, promote thinking and problem solving, not to mention, having fun!

At Banks House School, pupils use a variety of devices to improve their communication and independence skills such as talking tins, phones, tablets, iPads and an interactive whiteboard.

Pupils are taught to use technology safely and respectfully, keeping personal information private, recognise acceptable/unacceptable behaviour, and identify where to go for help and support when they have concerns about content, contact on the internet, or other online technologies.

The aim of Physical well-being at Banks House School is to maximise opportunities for functional movement, whenever and wherever possible, continually throughout each day. The emphasis is on learners seeing this as a lifestyle choice in the hope they will continue to remain physically active throughout the whole of their lives. The role of the teacher is not so much to instruct, as to lead learners into truly believing that the healthy options are the ones they want to adopt. With this in mind all teaching related to My Physical Well-being has the key learning intention of how can I ensure that the learner will want, and be able to, carry on being active outside of school.

We look at four specific areas at Banks House School:

• Sensory circuits (activities are offered in the woodland, sensory garden and at the FDC)
• Rebound Therapy (students have access to a gymnastics centre and trampoline parks)
• Other play based activities (students access, horse riding, boccia, new age curling, cycling, climbing, assault courses, archery, football, short tennis, pickleball, netball, athletics, basketball and table tennis
• Aquatics (swimming features on our timetable weekly, canoeing)

My Play and Leisure – Play is fundamental in the development of both the child and the adult that the child will become. It is a crucial way of learning within a safe environment, here at Banks House school play and leisure activities are embedded in all aspects of our curriculum. The aims of My Play and Leisure are to:

• Experience interaction with others
• Learn about social interaction
• Practice and develop social communication
• Encourage in the making of friendships
• Learn new skills in a safe environment
• Explore own body and senses
• Develop kinaesthetic senses
• Explore the surrounding world
• Develop a safe understanding of emotions of both self and others
• Develop fine and gross motor skills
• Develop flexibility through thought
• Develop Theory of Mind
• Develop Central Coherence

On top of all of these, Play is essentially about HAVING FUN and with FUN comes with a multitude of learning opportunities.

My Dance – Responding to life’s rhythms is an innate drive in us all. We all come into the world with a rudimentary ability to move. We all have a body with parts that can move, internally and externally.

We use our body to experience our internal landscape and the world around us, by noticing our inner sensations, moving through space and connecting with others.

Here at Banks House School we use dance and movement in education to enhance our understanding of ourselves, others and the environment. Our students develop:

• Awareness of their body and its possibilities
• Control over their musculature in order to be able to adjust their strength and tension to give movement an expressive quality.
• Harness movement in different combinations
• Execute actions with control, balance, coordination, poise and elevation
• Transfer weight onto different parts of the body
• Execute transitions between actions smoothly and fluently
• Learn to make contact between their body and the body of another/others

Our dance curriculum allows students to develop bodily confidence and knowledge and give them a forum to express an idea or feeling.

Art at Banks House School is ingrained into the fundamentals of what we do. Art is dependent on the individual and we encourage them to use whatever resources that are available to them, using all of the equipment and natural resources around them to experience and create something personal to them.

Art is split into three different grades and are as follows- (i) encountering (ii) exploration and (iii) developing understanding. As a school we facilitate this through the different activities that we do.

Some of the activities that we do create a lot of mess but they are fun and interactive, getting all of the students and staff involved. These activities include, but are not limited to, painting, collage, printmaking, mark-making, sculpture using lego, drawing and using textiles to make dresses. A lot of these activities use our different senses, including what they can see and feel.

This aids the creative process by gradually allowing for more depth to be offered over time so that learners move from encountering to exploration to developing understanding and beyond, but it also allows learners to proceed at their own pace. This means that some learners will spend a very long time encountering the materials, resources and ideas. They may dip their toes into more complex ideas offered, though they may not.

Music at Banks House School is a core part of what we do. Every day there is music playing within the classrooms and a variety of different instruments always available to play with. Staff expose pupils to an eclectic mix of music genres.

The purpose of My Music as an educational subject for those with severe learning difficulties is not to produce a steady drum beat, or to stop playing when the teacher says so.

My Music is explored in separate elements that will work on each other and with each other all of the time. So, when working with Tempo for example, learners will not just be exploring tempo but also many, or perhaps even all, of the other elements of music. This is in the holistic nature of music which cannot be compartmentalised into one element at the expense of the others.

There is no specific order in which these elements should be taught. This is not a developmental framework where Tempo comes first, then Rhythm then Timbre etc. It may do, but then again, it may not.

Having said that, the ideas that make up this scheme of work have been ‘graded’ into:

(i) encountering

(ii) exploration

(iii) developing understanding

This aids the creative process by gradually allowing for more depth to be offered over time so that learners move from encountering to exploration to developing understanding and beyond, but it also allows learners to proceed at their own pace. This means that some learners may well spend a very long time encountering the materials, resources and ideas. They may dip their toes into the more complex ideas offered, though they may not.

The aims of personal, social, health and economic education in our school are to:

• Provide students with the knowledge, understanding, skills and British Values they need in order to reach their potential as individuals in the community
• Actively encourage students to take part in a wide range of activities and experiences across the curriculum and in their communities
• Encourage and demonstrate to students the importance of being responsible citizens
• Help students to recognise their own self-worth; to feel positive about who they are and to enjoy healthy, safe, responsible and fulfilled lives
• Enable students to identify and articulate feelings and emotions
• Educate students in ways to manage risk and to take increasing responsibility for their own lives, actions, choices and behaviours
• Demonstrate respect for one and other and for oneself, the school environment and the wider world

We believe that all vulnerable children should receive safe, appropriate, high quality care, with the emphasis on health, education, community and social inclusion. We provide an ethos of support and encouragement to enable the students to be happily challenged in their learning and nurtured as individuals.

RSHE involves a range of activities that relate to family lifestyles, personal identity, behaviour and values as discussed. Due to the sensitive nature of such topics it is therefore essential to help students feel safe and comfortable with their environment and within the RSHE/PSHE lessons. To do this, all teaching staff involved in delivering RSHE/PSHE strive to ensure that the following procedures and actions are embedded within every lesson:

• Use age/ level appropriate resources
• Use a range of different activities in consideration of different learning styles
• Pay consideration to groupings
• Give students the opportunity to speak, take part in discussions, time to think and an opportunity to choose not to speak if they do not wish to
• Use a question box at appropriate times and within appropriate lessons

Pupils are encouraged to brush their teeth daily being as independent as possible. We may use hand over hand to support pupils with gradually reducing support to aid their independence. Each pupil has their own storage container and we have the same toothbrush that they use at home to keep the consistency. The toothbrush cases are cleaned regularly to keep cleanliness to a high standard. We have achieved the Healthy Smiles Award. Staff receive oral health training annually.

At Banks House School, our aim is to prepare our learners to live as independent a life as possible. We intend to equip them with a range of practical life skills that they will be able to use whether they are in care or living independently. As part of their curriculum, pupils will focus on: shopping, dressing, cooking and travelling.

As part of their long term learning objectives, learners are given ASDAN units to complete that match the long term goals that parents and a range of professionals see as key to their lifelong success. The ASDAN units that learners complete are part of our broad and varied curriculum and offer learners the opportunity to develop practical life skills that they will need as part of their preparation for adult life.

At Banks House School, we plan a bespoke, exciting and innovative programme of careers for our learners, ensuring students have the opportunities to experience, participate and learn about the opportunities available to them when they leave school.

We understand that our students will leave Banks House School with a range of skills and abilities and we strive to ensure that they are well equipped for their next steps into adulthood.

All students from Year 9, are entitled to access work-related learning. The school recognises that there can be some aspect of careers / future pathway preparation for all students. It is therefore necessary to approach work-related learning opportunities in our school, through experiences, which are appropriate to their needs and abilities. Experiences may take place in the school setting or offsite depending on individual the pupils.

Many of our students are experiential learners, whose learning needs are met through experiences and activities, which stimulate learning through the senses of touch, hearing, taste, sight and smell, proprioceptive, vestibular and inter-respective. Some students may also be supported in structured patterns of communication and social activities to enable them to develop positive social behaviour.

Other students are able to communicate with a degree of fluency and make reasoned choices, work and act cooperatively in a small group with varying support, or work independently for some aspects of their programme.

At Banks House School, we follow the NHS’ 5 steps to mental wellbeing:

• Connect with other people. Good relationships are important for your mental wellbeing.
• Be physically active. Being active is not only great for your physical health and fitness.
• Learn new skills.
• Give to others.
• Pay attention to the present moment (mindfulness)

Pupils have a voice, a choice and everything we do in each pupils’ curriculum relates to their ‘dream’ – what they would like to achieve and work towards.

We assess learners using ipsative assessment, where we measure them against their own personal baselines. We monitor their progress through the use of Evidence for Learning and set each learner targets based on their personal EHCP. Each learner has a Personalised Learning Plan where we set them a number of targets based on where they are when they join our setting. Learners are monitored against 4 criteria: independence, fluency, generalisation and maintenance.