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Welcome to The New Ways Learning Centre – a specialist service for learners to develop the skills they need to learn, achieve and succeed.
New Ways to learn, New Ways to achieve, New Ways to succeed.
A BIT ABOUT US
We are a small and friendly team that welcomes referrals from schools and parents to support learners with a wide range of special educational needs and/or disability.
We offer small group teaching sessions run by specialist teachers and learning support assistants planned to draw on learners’ strengths to target their areas of difficulty.
Morning and afternoon sessions take place at the centre which is situated in Ashbourne centre.
WHO WE SUPPORT
Learners may already have an existing formal diagnosis of need, but this is not a requirement for support. Likewise, they may have an Education Health Care Plan (EHCP) or be recorded as receiving SEND support from school. However, assessment and evidence from The New Ways Learning Centre can be used to support school requests for further assessment or funding from the Local Authority. Parents can request support for their child directly and any support can be additional to teaching and learning opportunities provided by their school. Schools (and sometimes parents) can request morning or afternoon sessions for individual learners, or small groups, that focus on developing skills through a shared placement process – this can be school or parent funded but all parties must be in agreement.
Come and visit us at The New Ways Learning Centre and see the support we can offer.
WHAT WE DO
Some of our centre based or in school sessions include:
Attention Autism:
Overseen by a fully qualified Attention Autism higher level practitioner, this structured and staged program aims to help learners develop joint and sustained attention and be able to shift focus and location whilst maintaining concentration on the task in hand – essential skills needed for the classroom and wider environment.
Drawing and Talking therapeutic intervention:
A 1:1 12-week programme of sessions aimed to support learners to process ‘difficult’ or ‘uncomfortable’ emotions that may be casing anxiety or distress in some way. Learners use their ‘right brain’ creativity to work though situations that have been unresolved or unprocessed by left brain activity (such as through conscious language).
Nurture Groups:
These sessions aim to help learners build early developmental social interaction skills that help them to form secure attachments with adults and peers around them.
Study Skills:
Aimed at learners with specific learning difficulties such as dyslexia, dyscalculia and ADHD (or related needs), these sessions focus on developing skills needed for effective learning and progression by targeting executive functioning difficulties such as study skills and revision techniques, memory and recall, organisation, time management etc.
Dyslexia / Dyscalculia Specialist Sessions:
Focussed sessions using multisensory teaching practices to target phonological awareness, the skill that underpins all reading and spelling, alphabetic principle, phonics and reading and writing strategies. For dyscalculia, number sense, the fundamental building blocks for maths development is the key learning activity before moving on to reasoning and computation strategies.
Advanced Dyslexia Sessions (usually KS3+):
Further advanced skills are practised to automaticity allowing learners to become independent readers, writers and spellers. Planning and reviewing techniques are developed and learners learn actually what to do with the extra time they have in exams!
Transition (usually Y6):
Sessions to support learners that experience worry or anxiety, or just need a bit extra confidence, to move through the transition to secondary school successfully.
Friends for Life:
Group sessions using cognitive behavioural therapy techniques to help learners develop their emotional literacy, build their resilience and coping skills and understand the relationship between their thoughts, feelings and behaviours
