SEND School story - Pembury House
June 2022
At Pembury children learn and develop their attention skills through motivating and exciting activities which engage them. We use the Gina Davies’ Attention Autism approach and provide activities that inspire and catch the children’s attention.
Through a shared experience, children develop intentional communication e.g. asking for more, making a choice and social communication skills, eg taking turns and coping with not being the first to take a turn.
The lead adult carries out the activities using simplified language and lots of pauses. They vary their volume and tone of voice to make it exciting and fun!
What we do:
- We fill a bucket with exciting objects and bring it to the session
- We sing a song before taking one item out at a time. This adds structure and develops anticipation
- We focus and comment on the activity using both language and Makaton
- As we finish with each object, we put it back into the bucket, and then repeat the structure, singing the song again and taking out another object
We also offer activities that have a sequence, building to a final fantastic experience. These activities are highly visual and highly appealing and we add words and signs to it. This stage aims to sustain concentration and attention for a longer period.
Flour shaking is one of the children’s favourites. We use flour, black paper and a sieve to shake flour in patterns over a hand or 3D objects e.g. animals.