WOMAN: Run and crash.
BOY: Oh!
I'm Sasi Sivakumar.
And I teach at Modbury Special School.
Go!
And I'm Nikola Haskell,
and this is my 11th year teaching special education.
Waiting.
SASI: I have been at the school for 10 years now.
Charlie Stern. Run!
NIKOLA: Sasi and I have very high expectations for our students,
and together we've worked on many projects
developing very specific goal banks for our students.
My class has eight students, all of whom are male,
and they all have an intellectual disability
and some multiple disabilities as well.
SASI: We actually researched on this area,
and we've found that most of the children
have a sensory integration problem,
and because they are so visually reliant,
they seem to have a lot of sensory problem with other areas,
with their vestibular system and their auditory system.
NIKOLA: So today we were looking at balance,
which is a core muscle strength,
so a lot of the beginning stuff where you're jumping -
jumping actually stimulates and awakens the body.
So we're trying to really work their entire body
through the whole of the gross motor course.
Ready? You're going to crawl all the way to the bubbles and then blow.
Crawling.
NIKOLA: At the end of this exercise, the children are blowing bubbles
so that they can slow their breathing and their respiration down
so that they're calm enough for an academic task.
It's also an oral motor activity,
so it's stimulating all of the muscles in the mouth,
which also helps with speech.
Because we wanted all of our children to achieve success
and to know where they were going in their journey,
it was paramount that we broke the goals down
into very small and achievable steps.
If the goal that we negotiated with the parents
was we really wanted this child
to be able to write the first letter of their name,
so we broke that down, so we know we needed to look at the gross motor,
the fine motor and all of those pre-skills.
OK, I'm going to put the shapes in.
SASI: Because our kids with autism are so reliant on their vision,
so, what we're trying to do is to develop their other senses,
other than vision, so it's the touch senses as well.
Can you find the shape? Can you find it?
-There. -Put your hands through.
SASI: At the start, very, very broad goals were set for students.
We found that it was less than 50% achievement rate for these students.
Find the other shape.
By the end of the year, we found that we actually managed to get, like,
over 95%, 98% achievement rate for every student.
So we've got really high expectation
that we want every teacher in this...on this site
to have that sort of percentage.
So this is the copy of the quote that we've got to finish off the room,
so if you just have a look at the first item,
the vibroacoustic ball pool...
Initially, we just shared amongst our colleagues at this site.
And we were now...and we did as much training and development as we could,
and together we shared the information that we had,
and from there, we went to the wider school,
and we've actually given training and development to our whole staff,
and we had teachers from 150 different schools
across the state, and area schools, come in,
and we focused on movement programs, we had...
My specific one was on setting achievable and measurable goals
using high standards for the children.
Hey, Charlie?
SASI: It's really writing the right goal for the child.
Can you peel the sticker...
Yeah.
..and put it on the line?
If you just give a child a pen,
they will just use their large motor muscles.
If you give a peel-and-stick activity,
without thinking, they're having to use those fine motor,
so we generally do it in that order,
so they'll do some peeling and sticking.
They might trace the letter with their finger first,
which is a bit of motor planning, so that they can see
where they're meant to put the pen when they do it.
And then they'll have the pen, and so they've hopefully stimulated
and they're focused on their fingers
by the time they actually get to write that...
-What does that say? -'Char-ie'.
'Charlie'. Get your finger.
So we continuously have the high expectations
and we're continuously increasing the challenge,
so as they achieve one part of a goal, we move onto the next,
for the ultimate goal at the end.
Down...
So each step of the way, they're working towards that.
Around...
Breaking everything down into very achievable and measurable sections,
so that the staff also feel motivated that they're achieving,
the children know what the next step is
and the parents are very aware of the expectations.
High five! Good boy.