MSI Unit Curriculum - Sense

Victoria School: MSI Unit CurriculumCurriculum requirementsIn order to meet their specific learning needs, a curriculum designed for pupilswith MSI must:• begin from a very limited knowledge base;• include the teaching of strategies for interacting with the social and physicalenvironment;• provide frequent repetition and redundancy of information;• be accessible by pupils with any combination of sensory impairments;• emphasise a sense of self, agency and negotiation;• offer breadth, balance and relevance;• link learning opportunities to support the generalisation of concepts;• encourage progression in terms both of new learning and of the extendedapplication of existing learning.Pupils with MSI need to learn how to interact with and understand the worldaround them. Many need to develop compensatory strategies for learning (forexample, learning to use information gained through touch to supplement poorqualityvisual information). These strategies manifest as functionally equivalentbehaviours – behaviours which use the same abilities, or serve the samepurposes, as different behaviours used by typically developing children.The MSI Unit Curriculum aims to give pupils the awareness, experience andlearning skills they need to access National Curriculum programmes of studysuccessfully. It is primarily an access curriculum for pupils with MSI working at PLevels P1-P8, underpinning the National Curriculum for this group.It is also a developmental curriculum, aiming to assist pupils’ developmentespecially in areas where MSI causes particular disadvantage. This may beby helping pupils to acquire the concepts and strategies used by typicallydeveloping children, or by identifying and teaching alternative strategies andconcepts which will perform the same functions. Like other recently-developedcurriculum and assessment materials for pupils with complex needs, the MSIUnit Curriculum is rooted in a transactional model of development emphasisinginteraction between the individual and the environment.12