LSS SEN Department

SEN @ LSS

The Special Educational Needs Department at Lawrence Sheriff School is dedicated, not only to assisting students in reaching their academic potential, but also in helping them to learn important social skills, giving them the confidence to form peer relationships and access the curriculum independently.

We offer numerous forms of SEN provision, from one to one support to peer mentoring and social groups at lunch and tutor times. It is our duty to form strong, trusting relationships with our pupils in order to ensure that their time at LSS is a healthy, happy and liberating experience.

Social Group/Lunch Group

Many of our students who may have a form of Asperger’s Syndrome or Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) can find the very basics of social interaction incredibly challenging. We therefore have set up several social groups for SEN students to meet and interact with one another once a week in a safe, peaceful environment. During these sessions students are encouraged to talk about their feelings as well as any anxieties/issues presented by the school environment. These issues are then discussed by the group as well as potential coping strategies and advice.

We also use these sessions to help students to work on their social skills, using fun activities to learn and practice various forms of social interaction from asking a friend round for dinner to understanding challenging   concepts such as idioms and irony.

At lunchtimes we have a less structured lunch club. Whilst this club is open to all students we have several ‘regular members’ who come along to play games and relax in a less socially intimidating environment than the playground.

Autism Awareness Committee

Just launched this year is our Autism Awareness Committee. At LSS, we feel it is of great importance to raise awareness of ASD in order to help our pupils to understand and be mindful of each other’s needs. The committee, staffed by pupils from years 7-13, meet twice every half term to discuss new ways in which they can educate and inform others of the ins and outs out autism, from making their own posters to put around school, to co-writing and delivering assemblies and debates. Not only is the committee vital in helping others to understand and empathise with pupils on the autistic spectrum, it is also a way of empowering those students by giving them the opportunity of having their voices heard and their story told.

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LSS @ Real Business Challenge

Real Business Challenge

On Friday 13^th February, a seven strong group of Year 9 and 10s travelled to Birmingham City Football Club to partake in the regional finals of the Real Business Challenge; a competition between schools to find the best young entrepreneurs across the country.

The team were faced with the long-winded challenge of designing and creating an app to inform people on the Los Angeles Special Olympics in July. However, it was more challenging than expected. As a group, we had to make decisions based on people’s strengths and weaknesses, but also to revolve around timed deadlines that certain pieces of work had to be handed in by.

The social media campaign was put together by J Lisztwan and J Mabey. As a pair, they applied their social media knowledge to create a pin-point plan based around the top four social media platforms. They also managed to come up with the app and campaign name whilst thinking of a suitable hashtag to use: #jumpmyhurdle. Alongside this, they, with the help of A Suresh, had the idea of setting up a twitter account to bolster the group’s presentation. This was aided by enlisting the help of Jackie Chan to boost advertisements across the platforms.

Another key part of the challenge was the poster. Y Aravindan worked on this aspect for most of the morning, basing it around a “more is less” idea. The poster was a picture of one of the special Olympians from team GB hoping to secure another gold medal this year. The Real Business Challenge team said that the poster is going to be put up on one of the bus stops outside our school in the near future.

The main part of the challenge was to design and create the centrepiece of the presentation: the app. J James and J Beaman were taken by Como, a company that allows you to build your own app, to learn the basics of the software. Once they came back, they began right away, working tirelessly for the best part of three hours creating the app. They came up with the idea of making a fantasy team of Olympians to follow through the Special Olympics. This was highly commended by the Real Business Challenge team.

Towards the end of the day, the groups, along with all other schools, had to present their ideas to a panel of five expert judges. They were all looking for different things: link to Special Olympics, presentation, viability of the campaign and app design. After much deliberation by the judges, the awards of Best App, Runner Up and Overall Winner were announced. The first to be awarded was the Best App, and one of Como’s employees took to the stage. He said that all of the apps had been quite admirable ideas, but one had stood out to him overall. The winner was eventually announced as Lawrence Sheriff School, and the app created by the team has been shortlisted to possibly be put into the Apple App Store and Android Google Play Store.

The second award was the runner up prize, and this was awarded to Hall Green School. The last award was the most highly received: Overall Winner. Not only would this mean being regional winners, but the winning team would be treated to an all-expenses paid VIP trip to London for the final. This included a Parliamentary reception and a trip to the west-end, as well as a meal out. As the presenter stepped up to take the microphone, the tension in the Jasper Carrott Suite was increasing. The winner of the regional final was Lawrence Sheriff School.

Congratulations to the team of: S Basford, J James, J Beaman, Y Aravindan, J Mabey, J Lisztwan and A Suresh, who will now progress to the national finals in London on the 17^th of March.

Sam Basford

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LSS & The Duke of Edinburgh Award

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Career's Events

Year 11 Work Experience - Week commencing Monday 3rd July 2017 (or subsequent weeks up to 17th July)

Our Year 11 students will be experiencing the working world in their chosen company during this week. Work Experience offers them the chance to see how businesses operate on a day to day basis, to experience and gain further knowledge about a career path they maybe interested in and to gain an insight into how different life is after school.

In previous year’s we have received fabulous support from many national and local companies across sectors including; Automotive, Medical, Finance, Design, IT, Engineering, Education, Local Authority, Law and SME’s to name a few.

Thank you to all involved for your continued support in inspiring our future generation. 
 
Year 10 Enterprise Conference – Wednesday 12th and Thursday 13th July 2017

Once again we will be hosting the Year 10 Enterprise Conference with the help from Inside Knowledge and Bright Futures, both specialist companies that deliver a wide range of Careers workshops and Independent Finance Consultant Ed Flack.
 
On Wednesday 12th July the students will be split into 4 groups for 3 interactive sessions working with a specialist trainer from Inside Knowledge to explore;

‘What employers want’ this will give the students a greater self-awareness about their personal qualities and skills.

‘Music Fest’ which is a fun team building exercise where students plan a music festival and

‘Grand Plan’ where students are tasked with developing a brown field site into a new town.

All of these sessions work to develop communication, team building, presentation, time management, leadership and decision making skills.

Thursday 13th July the students will work once again in groups this time with Bright Futures on ‘Skills for Work’ looking at CV writing, presentation and negotiation skills. Inside Knowledge will be delivering ‘Employability Skills’ an interactive session focusing on how you can develop yourself to be more employable and finally Ed Flack will be working with the students on personal finances. Covering budgeting for living costs, savings and teaching students the importance of financial planning on a personal level.

Please click here for Careers download section

Updated by Mrs A Warde on 27th September 2016

Year 10 careers assembly with award winning Sports Journalist Robert Beasley.
On Thursday 6th April at the prior request of Year 10 to meet a sports journalist, with the aim to be able to gain an insight into the career path of such a role, students had the chance to meet award winning sports journalist, author and TV sports pundit Robert Beasley.

Robert’s early life and school days were spent in Nuneaton and he told students how as a sixth former  he still had no idea what he wanted to do until an assembly with a local sports journalist talking about the work that he did changed his mind.
From there Robert took an apprenticeship with a local newspaper before developing his career further accumulating with him moving to Fleet Street, presenting for both the BBC and Sky and writing an Amazon bestseller on Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho.
Feedback on the assembly talk;

Anoop Johal;

In my opinion, the session was a lot better than I had expected. Personally, the main, key points he made that engaged my interest were as follows:

• His job was very enjoyable, relatively easy going and is hardly ever boring
• He was able to fly anywhere in the world with top class service and meet/make friends very famous people (including Cristiano Ronaldo) all for free
• He is able to go to any huge sporting events for free
• His salary was considerably high so he can enjoy his time outside his job as well as in it
• You do not need amazingly high-level requirements to become a sports journalist
  
  

Despite these great details about Rob's job, there might be a few minor disadvantages/precautions. Although this job is a super one and I could hardly fault it, there are many different types of sports journalists, and I reckon it will not be easy to get into the exact profession that Mr Beasley has done. However, if you have the right mind set and dedication like Rob, I think that it is more than achievable. Also, for this job, you would have to be quite intelligent and confident to interview and write about sports stars in a suitable style. Yet, another important aspect that Rob taught us concerning the profession is that you should write the articles in an informal style, so that everyday people would relate and understand it.
Overall, the experience for me was a good one because I learnt several new, valuable things from Rob Beasley and found out that a sports journalist could potentially be an option for me in the future.

Jack Dolly;
I’d never thought of being a sports journalist before or any sort of journalist because I thought it was a boring desk job.
However, meeting a sports journalist really changed my perspective on the job. 
The sports journalist was called Rob and he was friendly and enthusiastic when he spoke about what he does.
How he travels the world with many privileges, meets people that other people could only dream of and lives life in luxury with good pay and attending major sporting events. It sounds exciting and
a good way to meet new people.

He talked about how to get close with the people he interviews by asking questions other people wouldn't ask to get more personal with them and find out more.
Overall it was a great experience and has really fascinated me and got me thinking about a job like his.

 Career's Information, Advice and Guidance

Any student in the school can access impartial careers advice and guidance through the Inspiring Futures ASSIST facility, whereby Mrs Warde (for students up to year 11) and Mrs Halestrap (for years 12-13) can make immediate contact with a helpline and quickly receive comprehensive information from the Careers Adviser Team.

Mrs Jill McArthur (formally of Right Step Careers) is commissioned by the school as our Independent Career’s Advisor to take each Year 11 student through a guidance interview.  This year she will be working with them on an individual basis from June, whilst they are in their final weeks of Year 10 running through until January 2017.

Mrs McArthur can be contacted via Mrs Warde or on the following email; jillmcarthurcareers@gmail.com

We are very grateful to the School's Parents' Association for supporting our statutory duty to ensure the students obtain impartial careers advice and guidance, by funding our subscription to Kudos and other careers guidance packages from Cascaid (Loughborough University). These are used by Year 8 students prior to choosing their options subjects, to Year 9 in their timetabled Careers lessons and to other years as appropriate. Access is possible from home. Please email Mrs Warde for access information.

Careers resources are on display in the Library. Some of them can be booked out and all students are encouraged to browse through these informative publications. A good place to start is with the booklets entitled “Working In…” as they each feature the career paths and occupation details of real people in the areas they cover, e.g., “Working In Mathematics”.

Programme of Study and Off-timetable Events

Work on Careers, Work-Related Learning, Enterprise, Personal Finance and Personal Development takes place throughout part of the school year within one of the three weekly Form Tutorials. “STEPS” workbooks (published by Prospects) are used, giving the students a 5-year programme of activities covering budgeting, employability skills and decision-making (regarding courses and career choices). There are also events and presentations for which the timetable is suspended for a particular year group as well as visits to careers fairs, talks, challenges across the curriculum and activities in house groups from time-to-time.

Each student has a Lawrence Sheriff School Personal Development folder. This is stored in his form room and is used to build up a collection of resources and evidence from work carried out in the Tutorial Programme, culminating in the production of an up to date “cv” to assist with applications for a Work Experience placement, a place in the Sixth Form or other establishment and, ultimately, the personal statement for university applications or employment.

The following progression is typical although there are slight changes every year:

Partnerships

We are School Members of the Coventry and Warwickshire Chamber of Commerce and the Young Chamber and they ensure that, at our request, we receive support from a diverse range of businesses at our careers events.

We also have close working relations with Bright Futures, Inside Knowledge and several experienced business individuals to enable us to deliver a broad range of career’s advice and guidance across all year groups.

Achievements

We regularly enter teams into this competition in January. Results so far:

2011 – Highly Commended and our team were filmed for future competition communications.

2012 – No entries but Mrs Kisby helped judge the national final.

2013 – Regional Winners (one of our 5 teams)

2014 – Highly commended (one of our 5 teams).

2015 – 6 teams entered with one awarded ‘Highly Commended’.

2016 – The competition hasn’t been run this year but Step into the NHS materials is used instead in the Careers programme of lessons for all students.



Should you require any further careers information, advice or guidance please contact;

Mrs A. Warde
Careers Education, Information, Advice & Guidance (CEIAG) Co-Ordinator (
Head of Careers, Enterprise & Work Experience

Amanda.Warde@lawrencesheriffschool.com  

Office Hours; Tuesday 9.30am-3.30pm, Wednesday 9.30am-3.30pm, Thursday 9.30am- 4pm
(Term time only) 

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