Whole School Support Team

As a department, we have created the following guiding statements to set out what is important to us, what drives what we do, and how we do it. These back up ISHR's Vision for Learning as we fall within the 'Wellness' pillar.

We firmly believe all students can learn. It is our job as educators to facilitate this by doing the following: 

• Foster an inclusive environment where each student is challenged and supported at their individual level.
• Meet the needs of individual students while maintaining a high standard of achievement across school sections.
• Meet students at their current level academically and foster their social/emotional development and self-esteem.
• Model effective collaboration of staff to encourage positive social interactions between students.
• Use assessments as tools for teachers to shape the next steps in student learning. 

In order to ensure the above statements are satisfied, we commit to the following actions:

• Value parent input and collaboration as they are the expert on their own child.
• Use current research to guide our best practice teaching and counselling methods.
• Use clearly defined operational targets to measure progress and adjust the educational plan as necessary.
• Create an effective environment for learning by sharing all relevant personal and school information about a child’s learning profile in order for the team to best meet the child’s educational needs.
• The school team will always put the best interest of the child first.  We will make educational decisions based on educational history, record review, classroom observations, assessment information, and other performance measures.

At ISHR, we use a tiered approach to supporting students; this is sometimes referred to as a Response to Intervention (RtI) model. This is a multi-tiered approach ranging from early identification to intensive support of students with learning and/or behavioural needs. Students are provided with interventions at differing levels of intensity in accordance to their level of need. These services may be provided by a variety of personnel, including classroom teachers, LE teachers, LAP, EAL, Counsellors, advisors, homeroom teachers, and specialists. All students at ISHR benefit from tier 1 intervention. For students needing a more targeted level of support, tier 2 interventions such as ‘push in’ in-class support will be provided. This might also include infrequent counselling support. Should the student require more intensive support, they would qualify for tier 3 intervention. More details of this process can be found in our Whole School Support policy.

With all students, the goal is always to support them in a way that develops capacity and not dependency. With this in mind, we aim all students to eventually be devolved to tier 1. Examples of tier specific intervention is shown below.