Teaching as Inquiry 2020

This is my 3rd Year teaching a group of 6 boys at the Tamaki Primary Satellite. 

I've been working each year on a different aspect of their playing skills to try and improve their ability to take turns, share, respond positively to not wining and engage with the other people in their group. 

2018 - I focused on Lego Club which encouraged the students to respond to a leader, to finish and to communicate in a positive way.

2019 - I focused on board games so the students learnt to take turns, share and follow the rules given. 

2020 - This year, I am hoping to extend their playing skills further by using Engage games to develop their self regulation skills and interactions with mainstream peers. 

2nd Year at Tamaki Primary- Board Games

Having the same group of boys for the 2nd year was the perfect opportunity to further develop the boys play skills. I really wanted to develop their ability to play board games as I had removed them from my learning rotations the previous year. I really believe board games can improve student achievement but had removed them from my literacy and maths programmes due to behaviour. I was ready to try again based on the success of LEGO club! 

We taught the boys how to play a variety of board games based on their ability - snakes and ladders, connect 4, junior monopoly and junior scrabble. We introduced the rules of the games slowly so it wasn't too overwhelming and we used visuals to help with communication.  

                                                      

 








We were again faced with challenging behaviour, out bursts and meltdowns for a long time while students learnt to transfer the skills learnt at LEGO club. It was a challenge for the students to accept being patient and waiting for their turn, loosing and adapting to the   rules for a new game. 

By the end of the year, I could include these games into my literacy and maths rotations, knowing it would end in a successful session. The adult support was minimal by the end of the year and often we could watch from a distance. 

                                   

The most amazing outcome of this learning was that by the end of the year, three of the students frequently asked to play these games in their free time and two of them used the wall displays to make their own scrabble games!! 

First year at Tamaki Primary - Lego Club

The first year at Tamaki Primary Satellite, it was apparent early on that these students had limited skills with playing. The 6 boys found it really hard to share, take turns and play with anyone. Even parallel play often ended in uproar! So we went back to basics and worked on these skills regularly within the class programme. 

LEGO is an amazing resource to use with autistic children so after lots of researching, the class Occupational Therapist and I came up with Lego Club. We created the rules around what we wanted to achieve and made sure it was included at least weekly into the timetable. 

The rules were read before every session and I observed the students based on these rules eg respond positively to the leader, share the pieces and break up their creation after each go. The leader was asked to choose what everyone had to make from a selection of black and white pictures, but it didn't have to match the picture so there were allowed to be creative. The students were encouraged to comment positively on one creation, then they had to be broken up and a new leader was chosen. 

It took a LOOONG time to have a LEGO session that was free of melt downs and outbursts!! By the end of the year, I had managed to create a group of students who responded positively to a leader, to breaking up their creations and to someone using the piece they wanted.