All young people in Post-16 at Prior's Court have access to a daily structured snack time in Bradbury Hall, our dining room area. This is intended as an opportunity to build upon skills they learn during snack times in Lower School, which is carried out in individual classes.

Upper School snack time simulates what it is like if you were waiting in a queue at a café with lots of other people, choosing what you would like to eat and then taking it to a table to sit with other people. This allows the young people to develop skills such as turn-taking and making independent choices, whilst promoting the use of communication systems. These skills can then be applied within the community, such as when visiting restaurants or cafés .

Communication opportunities are built into the structure of snack, with the young people being encouraged to use their own communication system to make their choices, which can be seen on a ‘menu’ style visual. Additional visuals are provided on the tables across the dining hall, to provide additional opportunities for language modelling within meaningful context. The young people are also supported to make healthy eating choices, get a drink for themselves and then tidy their plate and cup when finished.

Successes so far

Since being fully introduced with support from our Speech and Langauge Therapy team at the start of the 2022/23 academic year, successes so far have included:

• Young people from different homes will now sit together at the snack tables.
• The structure of the environment during snack has created a calm atmosphere, despite a large number of young people and staff in there at any time.
• One young person has an additional task to support tidying all of the equipment and visuals used during snack, which has given him meaningful purpose and opportunity to expand skills learnt during his vocational Hospitality sessions.
• Young people who transitioned from Lower School to Post-16 this academic year have quickly become familiar and comfortable with the new snack time routines and are starting to try different foods!

Read more about our approach to learning in action