Page 76 - SEN116 January-February 2022

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“A potential barrier is the inconsistency of implementation of goals”
Training and communication should not just be the sole responsibility of the therapist. All professionals should ensure that everybody is on the same page and have a shared vision and a collective understanding of the pupil’s needs and abilities.
One of the pitfalls of unsuccessful integration of therapeutic provision into a pupil’s daily life may come from direct staff not understanding what a therapist does and works towards and therapists not being aware of a pupil’s other needs, perhaps not directly related to their therapeutic goals but equally essential to know.
All skills are interconnected, and when cross-curricularity is evidenced and observed, it makes a curriculum even better.
Steps towards therapies
curriculum integration
Every setting has its own curriculum. Some curricula might be more flexible and ‘welcoming’ to adaptations. In contrast, others may be more concrete and have distinct and separate thematic and teaching units that need to be followed hierarchically.
However, the adaptability of a curriculum should not be a consideration when it comes to therapeutic curriculum integration. As discussed, a potential barrier is the inconsistency of implementation of goals across professionals due to misinterpretation. Goal setting should come from the same source – the curriculum itself. Therapists should make it their goal to look at the pupil’s individualised curriculum as a whole.
They need to come into close contact with the strengths and needs of each pupil across all the subjects formulating their individualised curriculum. This is easier said than done, but it is not impossible.
Steps that professionals can take to ensure that the therapeutic provision is fully embedded include:
• Look at the pupil’s individualised curriculum as a whole and gain a better understanding of the pupil’s overall strengths and needs.
• Identify goals that are directly linked to their discipline by looking at the relevant subject areas.
• Liaise with other therapists after the goal-setting has been completed to, if possible, introduce cross- disciplinary interventions.
• Liaise with the pupil’s direct classroom staff to gain information and clarify the reasoning and challenges of accessing the curriculum.
• Agree with all professionals that the selected goals are S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound).
• Have good awareness of the school’s monitoring system on assessing achievement and progress of goals.
• Incorporate the same logic and, if possible, adopt the same monitoring system to review goals.
When the above steps are followed, they will assist in creating a common language amongst all professionals. It will profoundly impact the child’s progress on the curriculum as a whole and not just on specific goals. Therapeutic goals will cease to be a specialist’s work and will become a part of the child’s standard toolkit towards achievement. Therapeutic objectives and outcomes will be as much part of the curriculum as the goals set by teachers, positive behaviour management specialists and other professionals. What is more, they will strengthen even more the sentiment of belonging and being part of a bigger whole for everybody.
■ All skills are interconnected.
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