Care and support

Individual Work Sessions

• New skills are taught to children working one-to-one with an adult. Tasks are broken down into individual, sequential steps.
• Opportunities are provided for consolidating and developing newly acquired skills within a small, established group setting.
• When teaching new skills the adult may sit either opposite or beside children. To improve eye contact and motivation staff may sit across the corner of a table.
• Children are given one task at a time and all materials are provided so that they can focus on the key skills being developed. All other items are removed to minimise distractions.
• Where children are resistant to adult direction, have a short attention and concentration span for teacher-directed activities or are easily overwhelmed by a large quantity of materials, special teaching techniques may be used, such as physical prompting and backwards chaining. For example, the adult may employ physical prompting or backward chaining where the child will be required to work “backwards” to place the last piece of a puzzle, then the last two and so on.