“Reducing barriers to expand horizons.”
At Woodeaton Manor School we believe that all our pupils have the potential to achieve.
When our pupils join us, they are faced with challenges and barriers that seem insurmountable. They have developed ways of coping that are unhelpful and have views on education and learning that have been informed by their previous negative experiences.
Our mission is to help our young people develop positive behaviours and attitudes and learn how to mange their anxieties in a way that enables them to achieve.
We do this by providing a nurturing environment with equal emphasis on the three different, but equally important, aspects of our curriculum:
Emotional
Our emotional curriculum is designed to help our young people understand what makes them who they are.
It helps them understand their strengths and differences and to understand why they react in certain ways in certain situations. We then think about more helpful and appropriate ways to manage.
“If I could have my time again, what might I do differently
to get a more positive outcome?”
This all starts with an understanding of ourselves, being able to identify our feelings and knowing, when we start to become anxious, the strategies we can employ to continue to do what we need to do to be successful.
“When we make good choices, good things happen.”
Social
Our social curriculum is designed to help our young people understand themselves in the context of other people.
Quite often our young people have been and felt isolated. Some have been excluded from previous schools, worked outside of their normal classrooms, been on reduced timetables, not been invited to playdates or school trips, etc.
As a result of their diagnosis, many of our young people find it difficult to understand social situations and the motivations of other people.
Our social curriculum is designed to enable our young people to move out of their ‘safety bubble’ and be able to go to new and exciting places that they’ve not experienced before using the strategies they have learnt. It’s also designed to help them understand others.
“The things we say and do can affect others –
let’s make sure we have a positive effect.”
Academic
Our academic curriculum is designed to fill the gaps in learning that many of our young people have. It also provides them with the qualifications that will unlock the next part of their learning journey.
We run a number of intervention programmes to help with numeracy and literacy. For our older pupils we offer a range of externally assessed qualifications as well as day-release courses.
“Right time, right place; try your best and be kind.”
More details of our curriculum can be found on the appropriate page on this site.