Scoil Mhuire’s Early Intervention and Primary Classes for children on the autism spectrum, funded and resourced by the Department of Education, are known as Rainbow. Our Early Intervention Class caters for pupils from three to five years and our Primary Classes for pupils from four to twelve years.
Each well-resourced Rainbow class has a maximum of six pupils, with one teacher and two special needs assistants (SNAs). The pupils in Rainbow also have access to an OT room, a sensory room, a sensory garden and a dedicated playground.
In Rainbow, we strive to provide a high quality, positive educational experience for our pupils, including access to a wide-ranging curriculum that is relevant and appropriate to their learning needs.
We work to ensure that each pupil develops to their potential in an environment that offers clarity, predictability and calm. We work to enhance the pupils’ communicative and social skills. In providing an autism specific learning environment within a mainstream primary school, we aim to facilitate meaningful inclusion in the school community.
As a pupil’s learning needs may change over time, their enrolment in Rainbow will be kept under continual review. Each pupil’s progress will be formally reviewed at the end of each school year, or at shorter intervals if required.
If you would like your child to be considered for a place in Rainbow, please contact Scoil Mhuire directly.
Rainbow Learning
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Work Stations and Task Boxes
At our work stations we learn a lot. We do literacy, numeracy and fine motor activities in our task boxes. We learn and practice skills with the teacher and the main goal is that we will soon be able to do them independently. These task boxes provide structured, independent and hands-on activities tailored to individual developmental levels with the primary goal to build independent work skills.
Lámh
Lámh is a manual sign system used by children and adults with intellectual disability and communication needs in Ireland. We use Lámh as part of our Total Communication Approach because it is designed to be used in conjunction with speech rather than as a replacement for it. With Lámh, speech is always used with signs and key words in a sentence are signed.
Children are able to use signs to ask for what they want, to answer questions and to take part in conversations. It helps the Lámh user to understand what is being said and to be understood.
Handwriting Without Tears
Mat Man is a friendly, hands-on character from the Handwriting Without Tears program used to teach children body awareness, sequencing, and foundational pre-writing skills. By building Mat Man using wooden shapes (big lines, little lines, curves), we learn to draw people, understand spatial relationships, and develop the motor skills needed for handwriting.
Attention Autism
Attention Autism is a learning approach that aims to help Autistic children develop attention and communication skills. It aims to develop natural and spontaneous communication skills through the use of visually based and highly motivating activities.
Attention Autism aims to provide children with a learning experience that they want to communicate about. There are several other aims that Attention Autism strives to achieve.
These include:
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To engage attention.
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To improve joint attention.
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To develop shared enjoyment in group activities.
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To encourage spontaneous interaction in a natural group setting.
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To increase non-verbal and verbal communication through commentary.
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To build a wealth and depth of vocabulary.
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Most importantly, having fun while learning.
Fun Activities
Trips
Sensory Room Upgrade
An Chistín Eile
Rainbow in times gone by
