Out and About
At Columbia Grange, we pride ourselves in offering children as many opportunities as we can.
Children enjoy exploring the local area, visiting a range of shops, supermarkets and parks while developing their knowledge of highway safety. While all classes have access to the school bus, some classes will use the public bus as well as walking to more local destinations. We recognise the importance of teaching skills in school, then providing children with opportunities to apply these skills in the local area. All offsite visits are fully risk assessed with individual pupil needs, interests and behaviour considered, as well as the activities planned.
Cookery Skills
Children enjoy taking part in cookery sessions, making use of the food technology room in school. Staff plan progressive lessons, teaching a sequence of skills while allowing children opportunities to apply their knowledge and consolidate learning. Cookery lessons provide great opportunities for children to explore a range of new foods, while applying skills such as weighing, measuring and reading from other areas of the curriculum.
Access to this area affords us the opportunity to work upon the particular areas of need any given pupil has. Restricted and unbalanced diets are common experiences for autistic children. The use of this area allows us to introduce foods with colours, texture and aromas that are new to our pupils, without upsetting their established lunchtime routine. We also use this time to introduce the use of utensils for preparing and eating food. This can be a long and steady process, but we consistently experience good outcomes without potentially reducing the dietary intake of pupils at lunch times.
