At Thomas Coram Nursery school, we have been working for a long time with children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) or those with traits consistent with autism. In the past few years we have felt that the number of these children has noticeably increased. The pandemic had left some of the families of these children more isolated than ever before. We wanted to do more for them and their children, and this made us think about our whole approach to inclusion.
As a maintained nursery school with around 150 children on roll, we are fortunate to have large outdoor spaces and open-plan classrooms. For most of the day, children move freely indoors and out. For some children with ASD, this level of free choice works well, but for others, a busy, noisy and highly social environment can feel overwhelming and difficult to manage. We have been developing our curriculum for children with ASD over the years, but realised there were some problems with our approach.
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