Individual Education Plan (IEP)
An Individual Education Program (IEP) is developed for a new child within the first six to eight weeks of class commencement. The IEP is based on formal assessments and observations of the teachers and therapists and covers many areas of the child’s development – social emotional development, language and literacy skills, fine / gross motor skills, cognitive development and self-help skills, among others.
The IEP describes goals in three or four high priority areas and serves as a way of monitoring the child’s progress to these goals. It is also an on-going record of the child’s growth. The IEP is a guide to keep the teachers and therapists who work with the child on track. It helps the teacher link the student’s high priority learning needs to the regular curriculum. The IEP is meant to be flexible so that goals can be changed if they are not sufficiently challenging, or modified if they are not achievable.
Our curriculum has four levels
- Understanding and Applying
- Applying and Mastering
All activities are applicable at all levels to avoid marginalising any child.
Taarana provides both educational and therapeutic programs as part of the holistic approach to the Individual Education Plan.
- Our classes are conducted in a highly structured learning environment with a functional curriculum which is thematic.
- Our student to teacher ratio of 10:3 in a class ensures individual attention to our students.
- Our teachers are trained and experienced in special needs development and education. Pre-requisites to teach at Taarana are passion and a positive mindset to motivate and facilitate ‘I can’ attitude in the students.
- Our program includes training in social environments to help students develop social skills in real life situations. These include dining, field trips, indoor and outdoor activities and duties.
- Our focus on performing arts helps enrich the self-worth of our special students, who often have poor self-esteem prior to joining us, due to negative feedback from external sources.
- Our specialised programs include music, swimming, taekwondo and yoga.
- Our Physical Education program prepared by the Occupational Therapist encompasses structured games that helps students develop gross motor and social skills.
- Our functional curriculum includes pre-vocational activities such as cooking, gardening, and craft that help students develop functional independence.
- Our classes are integrated to include students with different disabilities using peer models as an essential teaching strategy as each has strengths that complement each other.
- Our Occupational and Speech Therapists monitor an individualised school base intervention program reinforced on a daily basis, by teachers to supplement the school curriculum and to further enhance the progress of the students.
Through our individualised program we aim to help prepare as many students as possible for inclusion program in the mainstream schools.