SKILLS Pre-Academic Skills CPD & Parent Course 
Effective Methods to Teach Pre-Academic and Academic Skills to SEN Learners

Pre-academic skills - The first skills a child with special education needs, such as autism needs to learn.
Every child has a right to learn and gain knowledge, whether he is a typical kid or a child with disability. Learning does not start and is not limited to going to school and academic knowledge. A child is ready to learn academics once he has attained the core pre-academic skills.
Even before going to school, typical children learn a lot from their surroundings, by observation and as natural part of growing up. For children with autism the teaching process starts a step before. Children with autism do not naturally develop skills required for learning. They need to ‘learn how to learn’. Learning happens when the child
is able to attend to a task and sit for some amount of time with a teacher.  
Before starting with academic teaching, it is important to work on building the core skills required for learning. Some of these pre-academic skills are: attending, making eye contact, sitting still, waiting, imitation and matching.
View Pre-Academic Skills Curriculum to see what you will get when you purchase this CPD course.

Title: Using selected best evidence-based practices to teach Pre-Academic Skills to SEN Learners

If:

• you want to find out how a SEN teacher, a mainstream teacher, a special needs assistant, a therapist or a parent can effectively support an SEN learner in acquiring foundational and more advanced skills to help them get ready for pre-school or primary, post-primary or special school
• you want to implement the most effective selected techniques that are both attractive and motivating for your SEN learner to encourage them to collaborate with you, while learning not only school readiness skills, but also the important skills in other inter-related areas, such as: motor skills, receptive and expressive language, social emotional skills and play and leisure skills
• you consider it important to diversify the long-term therapeutic and educational processes and use comprehensive methods to target multiple areas with your child or pupils/clients
• you want to get confidence in how to effectively and correctly modify the activities, techniques and goals by gradual implementation of various elements of evidence-based practices in your work or life with a SEN learner
• you always do your best to adjust the activities and a level of difficulty, based on your learner's unique learning profiles and their individualised needs.

If one or more of those statements applies to you, take part in this meaningful and practical certified online training, during which you will learn how to smoothly implement best solutions that are easy to implement in the classroom, in the clinic and at home.

This online training on How To Teach Pre academic and Academic Skills Effectively is divided into 2 forty-minute blocks to allow for the most effective use of the training time while having your questions answered by a an expert SEN teacher who is a SEN therapist, an education & behaviour consultant and a mother of an ASD child. This training is for you if you want to get important knowledge on how to shape your practical teaching skills. Additional questions you may have can be addressed via email, a live chat during the course or during your 1-1 online consultations.

During your online training on Using effective methods to teach Academic and Pre-Academic Skills to SEN Learners, you will find out about:

• Prerequisites to develop Pre-Academic skills - core skills
• How to skilfully select therapeutic and teaching methods and what are they that will best help in work on pre-academic skills
• How to expand the learner's skills onto a few other related areas while still focusing on pre-academic skills
• How to skilfully apply teaching techniques and select activities to allow for the generalisation of skills
• How to select IEP goals and measure progress
• How to troubleshoot and effectively search workable solutions during your activities with your learner.

Detailed course programme:

• challenging behaviours and its functions
• motivational strategies in the classroom and in 1-1 work
• individualised motivational contracts with pupils
• significance of ongoing attention and approval provided to a pupil throughout the day 
• the significance of proactive activities.

A practical part of each SKILLS course will relate to creating behavioural contracts, motivational systems and proactive activities that are important to effectively teach specific SKILLS in your selected course/s. 
We will find out how to easier teach specific skills if we have the right system in place in our classroom
or at home.

Part 1

• The impact of a neurodevelopmental delay on the development of sensory motor functions, cognition, social emotional learning, language and social communication - why the early childhood stimulation of those areas is crucial in setting up any SEN learner for the best possible success in the school years and in adulthood
• Common deficits in SEN and related neurodevelopmental disorders and how to effectively target those deficits
• Warning signs in the dysfunction of neurological processes that lead to insufficient school readiness that impacts all other areas of development
• How to skilfully select some of the evidence-based practices to address SEL skills and match them to your learner's unique profile.

Part 2

• Stimulation of Pre-academic skills development based on implementing selected core and main activities and matching IEP goals and procedures to address the development of those skills
• Examples of IEP goals and selection of best educational and therapeutic strategies to stimulate pre-academic skills in a hierarchical sequence
• Useful activities and suggested materials as supportive components of any quality pre-academic skills lesson / session at home, in school or in the clinic
• Troubleshooting and examples of how to best resolve problems that may arise during a session / lesson
• Collaboration between family home and school / clinic - how to better carry out joint intervention activities to enhance generalisation of skills in a naturalistic setting and in the community
• Selected ready lesson plans from the list below to teach the following skills:

Core Area
1 Matching Identical Objects-Younger
2 Matching Identical Objects-Older
3 Matching Identical Pictures

Area: Attending
4 Keeping Hands Appropriate while Sitting - Younger
5 Keeping Hands Appropriate while Sitting - Older
6 Keeping Hands Appropriate while Standing
7 Making Eye Contact when Name is Called from a Distance
8 Waiting for Preferred Items
9 Waiting
10 Visually Tracking an Object
11 Visually Tracking a Person
12 Sustaining Eye Contact when Speaking

Area: Imitation
13 Imitating Sounds
14 Imitating Sounds & Words
15 Imitating Fine Motor Movements
16 Imitating Oral Motor Movements
17 Imitating Actions with Objects Paired with Sounds
18 Imitating Sequenced Actions with Objects
19 Imitating Block Structures

Area: Matching
20 Matching Shapes
21 Matching Objects to Pictures
22 Completing a Matching Book
23 Matching Non-Identical Objects
24 Matching Non-Identical Pictures
25 Matching Letters
26 Matching Numbers
27 Matching Words
28 Matching Categories
29 Matching Words to Objects
30 Matching Words to Pictures