What is Jigsaws ?

'Jigsaws' is a City of Nottingham project aimed at providing a child-centred education for a group of children who need extra support to reach their full potential. The project is based in a cluster of schools in Radford, Lenton and Dunkirk, and is currently providing support for twenty Key Stage One pupils from these schools. The children form two groups which are based at Lenton and Douglas Primary schools for two days each.

What is its purpose ?

'Jigsaws' aims to help children whose behaviour is affecting their learning, and are having difficulties adapting to school life.

• Some children have had problems during early life such as moving house, seeing the break-up of a relationship, or the loss of a parent, carer or family member.
• Some children have undiagnosed special needs, such as hearing or sight problems, a language disorder, Dyslexia, or perhaps Asperger's Syndrome or Attention Deficit Disorder.
• Some children find it difficult adapting to large classes and expect the teacher to be there just for them.
• Some need support and time to adjust, gain social and concentration skills, become more independent, secure and happy.

All of the children show the potential to achieve more than they are doing in their base classes, for whatever reason, and are put forward with this is mind. WIth these 'jigsaws' we know all the pieces are there. They just need putting together.

What do we provide ?

We try to provide an environment that has elements of both the home and the classroom, and provide a curriculum that includes structured, and practical first had experiences, along side a broad and balanced curriculum. We put particular emphasis on several areas.

Language Development - We encourage the children to express their wants, needs and feeling in words, and - if neccessary - teach them the 'scripts' to help them do this. We also check they have understood by asking them to repeat back instructions.

Task Completion - We provide the children with achievable tasks which we ensure they finish. If a child is not able to stay at a task long enough to finish it, he/she will not learn from it and cannot progress.

Structure - We give the children as much structure as we can to help them develop a sense of predicatability and security. If the children know what is going to happen and when they will accept it when it does, and not become upset.

Boundaries - We give the children very clear boundaries and have very precise expectations of aceptable and unacceptable behaviour.

Personal Targets - Each child has a personal behaviour target linked to their Individual Education Plan. Each child knows their own target and these are reviewed twice daily, with the children deciding whether or not it has been achieved.

Modelling - We constantly model behaviour, language and skills to give the children first hand examples of what we expect from them, and encourage them to try these models for themselves.

With a teacher and a learning support assistant with ten children we are able to observe and develop these aspects very closely.