Teaching

The latest edition of the Good Schools Guide praises Calder House's “amazing success rate” in returning pupils to mainstream education and describes us as “a happy school where children can regain their self esteem”.

“George has been given back his self confidence and dignity.”

Former pupil’s parent

Teaching

Calder House has six large classrooms each denoted by a different coloured floor. Coloured dots on their timetables show pupils which classroom they need to go to for each of their lessons. In this way, we ensure that even pupils who have difficulty reading their timetables always know exactly where they are supposed to be during the school day. During the day the pupils move between these classrooms. We have individual desks in each class as we find pupils concentrate better when they are not sharing – although the desks are designed that they can easily link up for specific group activities. Large display boards make it easy for staff to create colourful classroom displays of pupils work and visual learning aides.

Our school hall is large enough to accommodate the whole school and visitors for assemblies. It contains our whiteboard and also all the equipment used by our physiotherapist for her gross and fine motor activities. The hall provides ample space and privacy for physiotherapy and has a sprung floor for this purpose. It also contains our music equipment and is large enough for group music lessons and the choir.

We have two dedicated one-to-one rooms which are the bases of our speech and language therapist and one-to-one specialist teacher. These are cosy rooms with large windows looking out onto the fields. They have lower ceilings than the rest of the classrooms and are designed to promote a feeling of trust and security. The design of these rooms encourages pupils to confide any difficulties they are experiencing to the staff.