Learning Support & Extension

The Alice Springs Steiner School offers intervention programs for students requiring extra support, as well as extension opportunities for students who can perform above their expected class level.

Our Learning Support program is designed for children who are at risk in their literacy and numeracy learning. Within the school context, Learning Support staff endeavour to help the children with learning needs and differences in learning in an identified area in an inclusive setting. 

Strategies used at TASSS to enable this are:

• Educational Assessment Plans and Student Support plans, which emphasise collaborative planning to develop curriculum differentiation and assessment methods between class or subject teachers, parents, relevant professionals, learning support staff and other individuals.
• Ongoing monitoring of identified students in their class and learning setting to ensure learning is developing in the identified area.
• Regular assessment of students in a variety of areas throughout the years of schooling.
• Parent support and education around different learning needs.
• Small group and 1:1 withdrawal session with learning support staff in some cases.

The home-school partnership is vital to the success of the Learning Support program. Children with lots of support and encouragement from home consistently achieve better results. There may be a small amount of follow up work sent home from time to time with each child, designed to consolidate the understandings being developed at school. 

Extension Opportunities in The Classroom

Learning extension opportunities are available for students achieving above expected standards. Students who consistently demonstrate that they have mastered the standards of their current class level are challenged through explicit teaching in the classroom to progress to the next level of work. This can include a range of tasks designed to extend these students, including:

• Reading more extended and complex texts, and discussing these with peers in guided groups and literature circles
• Developing knowledge of more advanced vocabulary and elements of grammar and punctuation
• Being challenged to solve multi-step mathematical problems