Task 2D

Task 2D – Inquiry

What in your practice gets you really enthusiastic to find out more about?

On looking deeper into myself and really thinking about the above question, I guess the answer has to be ‘The Children’. This may at first seem a little odd, however I find myself thinking ‘if I were not enthusiastic about the children I work with, then why would I be a teacher?’ Working as a HLTA and a SEN ATA, it really is the children that get me enthusiastic about my role. Let’s look at my role as a SEN ATA and how the children have made me more enthusiastic on a daily basis and make me want to research some of their own thoughts and ideas.

            On undertaking recent assessments on ‘Provision Mapping’ with my SEN children, Bertie came up with some very interesting points for me to write down.

Quote from my journal

‘Bertie, can you tell me what it is that you like about school at the moment?’

‘Meerkats’

Looking back at Bertie’s last PM from Jan 2013, the thing he enjoyed most about school at the time was ‘Minions’.

This got me thinking – ‘Why Minions and why Meerkats?’

On the day Bertie’s assessment was done in January, I had just made a ‘pointer’ with him for his reading, from a lollypop stick. He had painted this yellow and made it look like a Minion. For the entirety of last term, Bertie was Minion mad. Quick writes were about Minions. Minions would appear in his Viking tales, there were allegedly at the Viking Village we had visited. They were EVERYWHERE!  Equally so, on the day of Bertie’s latest assessment, we had been learning about Africa, and all the animals we will be seeing on our trip to the safari park later this term. He became fixated on the Meerkats!

This really got my mind spinning with thoughts and ideas about why Bertie becomes fixated on one thing for such a long period of time. I was eager to find out more. Surely there had to be some reason as to why this was a common theme amongst my SEN children? I want to know why this fixation happens and I want to know how, if at all it can be broken.

This lead nicely into the next question…….

‘Who do you admire who also works with what makes you enthusiastic?’

On wanting to know much more about Bertie’s (and others) fixations, I arranged to meet with my SENCO, Lisa. After a lengthy discussion regarding Bertie’s Provision Mapping, we decided to look further in to this. My admiration for Lisa is, I think, because of her wealth of knowledge about SEN children. I often fine myself reaching out to her for inspiration/ideas or help. Our research on reflection of previous years Provision Maps has provided most of the evidence we needed to get Bertie put forward for a statement. Although Bertie shows NO other signs of Asperger’s, the theme we have identified is a fixation on one single thing for a long time, which is one of the biggest leading factors for a diagnosis of Asperger’s. (Bertie has only been at our school since the summer term of 2013. Research came in the form of contacting his previous school for their Provision Maps from foundation stage to KS2)

Fixation on One Activity

Many children with Asperger's syndrome are preoccupied with a single or a few interests and focus on them for hours on end. As Circle of Moms member Karen R. shares: "The most common report from every parent I know . . . is that their kid fixated on something (their cars, their blue toys, their books) and played or attended [to] that thing for an outrageously long time."

My line of enquiry will be something i will have to ponder further.