Model Farms High School Support Unit
ASD SUPPORT CLASSES
The support unit currently has two specialist classes for students who have Autism Spectrum Disorder or Asperger's Syndrome and for whom full participation in the mainstream setting is currently not the best option.
The classes aim to provide the students with the opportunity to learn new skills in a highly structured environment as well as providing as much access to mainstream classes and curriculum as the students are capable of achieving. It also provides the students with ongoing contact with their peers and involvement in whole school and year group activities.
The program focuses on providing a high quality education that will allow the students to reach their full potential. As well as providing quality academic educational programs, our goal is to provide students with the skills and strategies to support their emotional wellbeing, develop their social skills, manage their own behaviour in appropriate ways and prepare the students for life beyond school.
The ASD classes are accessed by up to 7 students who have been placed through a regional placement panel. Where possible the students will follow the high school timetable for the appropriate stage of students. Whilst in the ASD class the main emphasis will be on the development of literacy, numeracy and social skills.
The aim of the ASD classes, however, is to integrate students as fully as possible into mainstream classes in order to maximise their access to the full high school curriculum and the specialist teachers who work in those subject areas.
The staff of the support unit has high expectations of and for the students. We expect the students to reach their full academic potential by providing high quality programs of work and the support unit staff will assist the mainstream teachers to make adjustments to their programs and teaching strategies where appropriate.
We expect the students to behave in an appropriate manner, developing self management and social skills. We achieve this by providing social skills and behaviour management sessions as part of the PDHPE curriculum.
ASD CLASS MODEL
The role of the ASD support class teacher is to provide education across the KLAs Stages 4, 5 and 6 for the class of 7 students. The research into best practice indicates that where possible and appropriate ASD students should be integrated into mainstream classes in order to reach their highest potential and be taught by the KLA stage teachers with expertise in that area.
At Model Farms High School we are carefully constructing a format to provide maximum flexibility to meet students' academic and emotional needs in order to achieve high student outcomes. We can do this in a number of ways:
- Student attends mainstream alone
- Student attends mainstream with an SLSO
- Student attends mainstream and follows a Life Skills / individual program of study
- Student attends support class and follows a mainstream program of study
- Student attends support class and follows a Life Skills / individual program of study
- Student follows a combination of the above