As someone with dyslexia, (and a father of three children with dyslexia), I know that learning doesn’t look the same for everyone.
Many children are struggling in learning environments that don’t meet their needs. No matter how hard the teachers and schools try, without the funding and support, these children won’t reach their potential – regardless of how hard they try.
Increasingly, I’m working with schools to support their students with special educational needs (SEN) and to get them back into the classroom.
Behaviour often comes from dysregulation, not defiance, and noisy classrooms can be overwhelming. Students who should be receiving one-to-one support from support staff are instead having to share that support with others who are struggling in the post covid cohort.
As such, I welcome the government’s proposal to reform SEND funding in the future. But for pupils, parents and teachers struggling right now – what can they do right now?
How can We Are Adventurers support?
This is where my work comes in. Over the many years we have been supporting children with SEN in schools, I have seen that outdoor time supports emotional regulation and therefore impacts on behaviour in the classroom.
Our team will come in and work with pupils on daily or weekly sessions either on school grounds or at our site in Trafford Ecology Park.
For some schools, this is about focused work with individual children, for other schools, it’s about taking small groups of upto 10, within a key stage group, through a programme designed to boost communication skills, reinforce boundaries, and improve social interaction to help with the return to the classroom.
During these sessions, children have the space and freedom to move which helps to reduce the overwhelm that builds up in the classroom. We’re helping them to build the skills they need for a classroom that isn’t tailored to their needs, in a different and more bespoke setting.
Schools often fund this through their SEN budget or pupil premium budgets, dependent on the children who attend.
With rising numbers of children with SEN and diminishing resources, schools need supportive approaches. Outdoor learning provides practical support both for under supported children and overstretched staff.
These children want to succeed, and when given the right environment, they can thrive.
Sometimes helping a child cope in the classroom starts outside it.
