An Introduction to The Code of Practice Delivered by Ellie Collar - £38. Expand Upcoming Course: Monday 7th November 2022 (9.30pm - 12.30pm) This course is delivered online. Our online courses are delivered by Microsoft Teams. Joining instructions for all online courses will be sent 1-2 days prior to the course start date. You will then have ongoing access to the system with the course materials after the course has finished. To book a course, please find the date you desire on our booking page and select 'book now' Course overview: The Code of Practice is the national guidance on identifying and supporting children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities, and the legal responsibilities of all settings. It sets out the expected ways to meet needs including initial assessment, action plans and targets, and works closely with the Equality Act to help SENDCos ensure access, inclusion and that reasonable adjustments are made for children who may have disabilities. This can all sound a bit alarming! This non-scary course is an opportunity to work together through the early years specific parts of the Code, to look at the useful information for SENDCos and how you may wish to extend and develop your practice, and most importantly to help early years SENDCos feel confident and able to plan effectively for their children and families, and their staff teams. For new SENDCos just beginning the role to whom this is all new, or experienced SENDCos who would like a chance to review and develop their practice, this is a course intended to leave you feeling confident and keen to take your SENDCo work further. Course aims: Know the key legal responsibilities of a SENDCo in an Early Years Setting and feel confident to assess and plan for how your staff team and setting follow the law for children with SEND. Know the key principles of the Code of Practice relevant to Early Years and also the key principles of the Equality Act. Know the importance of identification and begin to plan for ensuring that no child in your setting is missed. Know how to ensure that a child’s needs have been properly considered under both their SEN need and their access and inclusion needs Know how to assess whether a child may have the legal protection of disability and what this means in practical terms when planning for them Know how to meet and work with some of the challenges of inclusion and to use reasonable adjustments. Reflect on your staff’s training needs and skill set individually and as a whole team, and consider your plans for development. Have a plan of how to work with your key workers and parents for a good quality initial assessment, action plan and target setting Know the key things to evidence through this process for children who may need referrals or an EHCP. Be confident to incorporate the child’s voice into all planning to meet a child’s SEND needs Know where to look and go for additional information, resources and support.
Boosting Babies Brains Delivered by Becky Watanabe - £30pp Expand Upcoming Courses: Dates for the face to face version: Thursday 29th September 2022 (9:30am - 12:30pm) Dates for the online version: Thursday 1st December 2022 (9:30am - 12:30pm Tuesday 17th January 2023 (9:30am - 12:30pm) Overview: This exciting, practical workshop explores the importance of attachment and forming secure relationships with a key person in an enabling, sensory rich and nurturing environment. Consider how to provide a safe yet stimulating environment where a baby feels confident to explore the curiosities, awe and wonder of the world through their senses. Be sure to leave inspired with new ideas, delving in and enjoying the ride as you explore first-hand developmentally appropriate activities that stimulate all the senses, including two all-important sensory systems that are often overlooked. I look forward to taking you on an adventurous journey through the senses, unlocking the potential to boosting babies’ brain development. To book a course, please find the date you desire on our booking page and select 'book now' Overview: This exciting, practical workshop explores the importance of attachment and forming secure relationships with a key person in an enabling, sensory rich and nurturing environment. Consider how to provide a safe yet stimulating environment where a baby feels confident to explore the curiosities, awe and wonder of the world through their senses. Be sure to leave inspired with new ideas, delving in and enjoying the ride as you explore first-hand developmentally appropriate activities that stimulate all the senses, including two all-important sensory systems that are often overlooked. I look forward to taking you on an adventurous journey through the senses, unlocking the potential to boosting babies’ brain development. Location: Acorn training Centre, MK4 4DE
Early Identification of SEND Delivered by Ellie Collar - £38. Expand Delivered by Ellie Collar Upcoming dates for the course: Tuesday 18th October 2022 (9:30am - 12:30pm) This course is delivered online. Our online courses are delivered by Microsoft Teams. Joining instructions for all online courses will be sent 1-2 days prior to the course start date. You will then have ongoing access to the system with the course materials after the course has finished. To book a course, please find the date you desire on our booking page and select 'book now' Overview: A key responsibility in the Code of Practice for Early Years SENDCos is ensuring that their setting identifies when young children may have additional needs, and supporting their keyworkers to carry out quality initial assessments. Parents and keyworkers often have questions about how to tell when they are concerned for a child; how can they be sure if this is a typical stage of development or if there is a need there that could be supported? How do you best find out about a young child’s development? You go and play with them! This course looks at fun practical games and play situations that practitioners can create with their children to observe and understand in more depth where their developmental stages might be in: - underlying play skills - speech and language skills - sensory and motor skills - social and emotional skills Course learning outcomes: By the end of this course you should be able to: Know which of the four stages of early play development your child uses most in their independent play and know how to help their play skills move on to the next stage Be able to recognise your child’s current level of involvement in their play, understand why ‘flitting’ is important to spot and what this may tell you about your child’s underlying needs, and know some practical strategies to help Know how to quickly and easily observe through play where your child’s current key word understanding is, match this to developmental stages and know how to support your child’s next steps Know what oral motor skills are, why they matter in speech and language development, know how to observe signs of need and which children may be more vulnerable to challenges with these, and how to play to support them Know how to observe some key social communication skills through play and some key things to observe and consider when observing your child’s physical and emotional regulation in your environment. Recognise sensory seeking and sensory avoiding play, what this may tell you about your child’s experience of sensory processing and how to help How to gather your observations together for strong action plans that really support the high quality access and early years experience we want for every child. Location: Acorn training Centre, MK4 4DE
Riding the Waves and Calming the Storm Delivered by Becky Watanabe - £30pp Expand Delivered by Becky Watanabe Dates for the online version of the courses Wednesday 5th October 2022 (6:00pm - 9:00pm) Tuesday 13th December 2022 (6:00pm - 9:00pm) Dates for the face-face version of the course: Thursday 23rd March 2023 (9:30am - 12:30pm) Overview: This hands on and interactive course will equip you with the knowledge and skills need to help provide an enabling environment that promotes positive behaviour and tools needed to support children to calm big emotions. This course is aimed at those working with young children. Learning Outcomes: To prepare an enabling environment that promotes positive behaviour Identify what may trigger a child to become dysregulated Be confident to apply effective strategies to support children when experiencing and overcoming big emotions Be confident to use evaluative tools when working in partnership with parents and the wider team to promote positive behaviours To book a course, please find the date you desire on our booking page and select 'book now'.
SENDCo Scary Bits! - Leading and Organising High Quality Meetings and Supporting Your Families Delivered by Ellie Collar - £38 Expand Delivered by Ellie Collar Upcoming dates for the course: Thursday 8th December 2022 This course is delivered online. Our online courses are delivered by Microsoft Teams. Joining instructions for all online courses will be sent 1-2 days prior to the course start date. You will then have ongoing access to the system with the course materials after the course has finished. To book a course, please find the date you desire on our booking page and select 'book now' Course overview: What often worries early years SENDCos the most? The challenges of how they can best support their families when information can be so sensitive, when every parent has their own individual pace and readiness, and when parents of young children with SEND may already be dealing with more appointments, professionals and information than they ever expected to have to deal with. What do you do when the child seems very different at home to nursery? And when parents and practitioners don’t agree? And then there’s the meetings…. The ones you have to lead! This course is a chance to talk with, network with and share experience with other SENDCos as we look at some of these challenges and at you building up your own range of ideas, strategies and tools that can help you as a SENDCo to feel more confident when working with your families, and with leading quality meetings. Course aims: Have a deeper insight into some of the challenges that families with young children with SEND may experience, to help you in matching the right support to the right family Have a range of ideas for finding shared ground and positive working together when not everyone agrees on the best way forward for the child. Have strategies and ideas of how you can support someone who is feeling overwhelmed or frustrated, while also taking care of yourself and your staff team Support parents with tricky situations such as impact on other siblings or disagreement from other family members and know some resources to suggest to them Know what makes for an effective meeting, and quality in meetings Have a plan of where to start to build your own confidence in planning and leading meetings that achieve what you need them to Have a range of strategies and ideas to add to your tool kit to address some of the common challenges of joint working with other agencies for the best outcomes for your family.
Supporting Positive Behaviour for Young Children Delivered by Ellie Collar - £38. Expand Delivered by Ellie Collar Upcoming Course: Wednesday 28th September (9.30pm - 12.30pm) This course is delivered online. Our online courses are delivered by Microsoft Teams. Joining instructions for all online courses will be sent 1-2 days prior to the course start date. You will then have ongoing access to the system with the course materials after the course has finished. To book a course, please find the date you desire on our booking page and select 'book now' Course overview: Supporting positive behaviour in the early years is a different challenge to supporting behaviour at any other age. Why? Because in early years we are working with a brain going through the most intense and rapid development period of its life! Find out how different levels of the brain develop at different ages and stages, and how those levels relate to the developing physical, communicative, emotional and cognitive skills that promote positive relationships and behaviour for young children. Most importantly, try out some new ways to observe your child and their experience from a developmental perspective to give them the best support. Course aims: Know the key stages of development of the brain in the first four years, and how each stage grows specific skills and readiness for positive behaviour Know how to differentiate your support to meet your child’s developmental stage of need Understand how lower brain maturity and physical development play a powerful part in confident, happy children who can easily regulate themselves, and know some ways to play to strengthen lower brains! Understand how human brains react under stress and how this can guide you in finding more effective ways to support a child Know how to analyse an ABC chart in greater depth to find the patterns and clues that may help you plan more effectively to support a child Know how to recognise signs of escalation and create a whole team approach to support your child to de escalate, to manage their feelings, and to help them learn to communicate their needs and use these strategies themselves
Supporting Speech and Language in the Early Years Delivered by Ellie Collar - £38. Expand Delivered by Ellie Collar Upcoming dates for the course: Friday 7th October 2022 (9;30am - 12:30pm) This course is delivered online. Our online courses are delivered by Microsoft Teams. Joining instructions for all online courses will be sent 1-2 days prior to the course start date. You will then have ongoing access to the system with the course materials after the course has finished. To book a course, please find the date you desire on our booking page and select 'book now' Course overview: Early years practitioners often wonder: when should we see a delay or challenge in speech and language skills as needing our support? When should we suggest that a child is referred for Speech Therapy? What do we do in the meantime to help a child when waiting for professional support can take months? This is a practical course intended to help Early Years practitioners to build their confidence through observation and play in: - knowing the breadth of developmental areas to consider in a child’s speech, language and communication skills - identifying where their children’s skills are currently secure - identifying and supporting next steps through practical play activities - supporting parents who are concerned and would like to support their children’s speech and language development at home - having a practical plan to hand to develop children’s speech, language and communication skills in a range of areas and in a way that ensures progress - identifying children who may have a higher need for support, or who may be showing early signs of an underlying SEND need, and making quality referrals for additional support. This course is intended for practitioners to have secure understanding of typical development, and so to be able to identify where a child’s development is not progressing as expected and provide needed additional support. Course aims: Carry out a play assessment to know your child’s stage of receptive language and identify their next steps, plus plan how to play with them to help them progress Explain what oral motor skills are, their purpose in speech clarity and speech sounds, how to observe your child to learn about their oral motor skills and how to play with them to help these to develop Observe a child’s current stage of imitation skills and carry out play activities to help preverbal children build up their sounds to saying single words Use a repertoire of play environments and activities that support children’s early listening, sound discrimination and attention skills Observe and identify key social communication skills typical in young children’s development, and recognise when a child may be in need of more support or where there may be early warning signs of Autism. Implement practical strategies to help a child to build up their vocabulary Use strategies to support children who are multi-lingual in building up language confidence across all of their spoken languages Know how to support a child who is anxious about or choosing not to speak (sometimes known as selective mutism) Describe the close relationship between early language, listening skills and physical development skills, and later success in school with spelling, reading and maths. Support parents with some of the most often raised concerns regarding their child’s speech and language, and confidently offer them some strategies to support their child at home. Use your observations across a breadth of speech, language and communication skills to monitor progress and be able to make quality referrals for additional support for your child as needed.
Supporting Young children with Autism and creating Quality Provision Delivered by Ellie Collar - £38 Expand Upcoming Course: Tuesday 29th November 2022 (9.30pm - 12.30pm) This course is delivered online. Our online courses are delivered by Microsoft Teams. Joining instructions for all online courses will be sent 1-2 days prior to the course start date. You will then have ongoing access to the system with the course materials after the course has finished. To book a course, please find the date you desire on our booking page and select 'book now' Course Overview: Autism is one of the most high frequency needs early years practitioners meet, and practitioners are often the first to work with families to identify when a child’s development may show indicators of Autism. This practical course is intended to help with confidently identifying and meeting need, understanding how Autism and neurodiversity can affect a child’s early development and strategies to support them, and ensuring that their setting is not just inclusive but accessible. Course aims: Understand the traditional idea of the Autism Spectrum, and why this is not always the most helpful way to understand children’s needs. Recognise the four key areas of difference for a child with Autism and the individual ways they may affect your child’s access to early years provision, play and learning. Observe play, language, social interaction and communication skills and needs in greater depth in order to identify where a child’s development may not be as expected how their development may be affected by their Autism make quality referrals sharing information with outside agencies to support a diagnostic pathway plan effectively as to what your child’s next steps may be Implement some key play approaches to support your child in learning to share agenda and cope with requests on adult terms Observe and use some practical play strategies to support some key areas of speech, language and communication development, from children at the earliest stage of interaction to children learning to manage friendships and group social skills Support a child to manage and reduce their anxiety Observe and plan to meet a child’s sensory needs, including sensory seeking or sensory avoidant Look deeper into how Autism and neurodiversity can affect children in order to better support behaviours that may be communicating unmet need Know the key things to consider when planning for an individual child who may be neurodiverse