Aurora White House School

Our day starts in an unhurried, purposeful manner to prepare the children for their day and allow them to 'settle' after, what is for many, a long taxi journey. We walk up to the White House together and then enjoy a settling period and check in with the children, prior to coming together to complete the register and talk about the day ahead. If children have a particular need e.g. a movement break or breakfast we can accommodate that need during this time.

Our learning is structured through the day with a mixture of transition activities between learning and down time breaks where children can enjoy the magnificent outdoor environment or be together (or alone if required, but always in an agreed place) and enjoy some time before learning starts again.

With small classes and a high child: adult ratio we can offer specialist interventions both within whole class and group learning and individual work. Children are supported in their learning and make progress because of this. Our specialist in-house clinical team also offer a variety of one-to-one therapeutic interventions.

We embrace the THRIVE approach to help us develop confident, curious, creative, and capable children who are open to learning and better equipped to deal with life's ups and downs. THRIVE is all about building effective relationships and fostering positive experiences to develop children's social and emotional wellbeing. The THRIVE approach is at the heart of what we do.

Our children learn best with short, focused lessons and frequent activity breaks and reward time. As children become more attentive to learning we can increase the length or frequency of lessons and activities. Activity breaks play a key role in this approach to learning, they are also crucial to learning itself with children learning patience and concentration, acquiring new skills, exercising, persevering, and building friendships.

Many of our children experience difficulties with communication and building and maintaining friendships. We build in opportunities for children to learn new social skills, develop friendships and have downtime before the next lesson or activity. The social aspect of learning is important to us.

Reflection on Success is celebrated at different times of the day and in many ways and helps to develop perseverance as learners and a willingness to celebrate the success of self and others. Some of our reflection time is linked to our reward system and the 5 Golden Rules, at other times it is opportunistic and allows us to celebrate success in its many guises.

We wrap up our day as it started, together. Each class has different routines for home time, all designed to meet the needs of the individual children (we can be creative e.g. with children having movement breaks in different guises) before the journey home). Whatever the class or individual routine is we always end the day walking down the drive from the White House to the taxi rank.