Autism and the Primary School Programme (Parent) Holy Evangelists' Primary School and Nursery Class, Dunmurry

Supporting Autistic Learners

This session offers a nuanced, strengths based exploration of how autistic children experience, understand, and engage with the worlds. Rather than viewing difference as deficit, the training foregrounds autistic cognition as a valid and valuable way of being. Drawing on evidence informed practice, the session highlights that often visual approaches can align well with the learning preferences of many autistic learners and demonstrates how thoughtfully designed visual supports can enhance meaning making, reduce cognitive load, and promote emotional safety and inclusion across all learning environments.

Participants will deepen their understanding of:

• Why visual approaches are not merely "supports", but powerful communication and teaching tools that align naturally with many autistic learners' cognitive preferences.
• How visual supports can enhance understanding, autonomy, communication, and wellbeing across home, school, and community contexts.
• How visuals can be integrated with relational, environmental, and pedagogical approaches to create predictability, coherence, and felt safety.
• A flexible repertoire of visual strategies that honour each child's individuality, respecting their strengths, interests, sensory profile, and developmental pathway.

Autism and Communication This session invites participants to re-examine communication through a neurodiversity affirming lens. Rather than positioning autistic communication as disordered, the training explores communication as a two way interaction shaped by neurological difference, context, power, and expectation. Participants are supported to move beyond comparison with neurotypical norms and instead develop an appreciation of autistic communication styles as logical, purposeful, and meaningful. Participants will: Explore contemporary theories and frameworks that explain differences in autistic and non-autistic communication, including monotropism and gestalt language processing. Reflect on their own communication preferences and implicit expectations, considering how these may either facilitate or constrain connection with autistic children. Learn practical, respectful strategies to support both understanding and expression, focusing on access to communication rather than "performance". Develop confidence in adapting their communication to be clear, predictable, and attuned, across home and school environments.

Autism and Sensory Processing This session centres sensory processing as a core aspect of autistic experience and identity, rather than a problem to be managed or reduced. Sensory differences are explored as access needs that shape how autistic children participate in learning, relationships, and daily life. The session examines how sensory environments can either enable presence or function as barriers that exclude, overwhelm, or silence autistic children. Participants will be supported to: Understand sensory processing differences across all sensory systems, including interoception. Recognise how sensory environments often privilege some nervous systems while marginalising others. Identify how sensory overload can lead to withdrawal, distress, or reduced participation, not simply as behaviour, but as communication. Make practical, respectful adjustments to environments and routines that support regulation, dignity, and sustained participation both in school and at home.

Autism and Understanding Anxiety This training approaches anxiety as a contextual and relational experience, often emerging when environments place sustained demands on autistic children to adapt, mask, or function without adequate support. Rather than viewing anxiety as an internal flaw, the session highlights the role of environmental unpredictability, sensory overwhelm, communication barriers, and relational misattunement, particularly in primary school settings. Participants will explore: How anxiety is experienced physiologically and emotionally by autistic children. The cumulative impact of masking, fatigue, and unmet needs from an autistic perspective. How anxiety often reflects threats to safety, predictability, and belonging. Practical supports that reduce anxiety by changing expectations, environments, and adult responses, thereby restoring a child's sense of agency, belonging and security.

Autism and Reframing Behaviour Behaviour is reframed as meaningful communication arising from nervous system states, environmental demands, and relational context. The focus shifts from managing behaviour to creating conditions where regulation, participation, and connection are possible. Drawing on neuroscience and interpersonal neurobiology, participants will: Examine the paradigm shift from "behaviour management" to understanding stress responses and adaptive behaviours. Explore how power, expectations, and lack of access can escalate distress. Understand neuroception and the central role of felt safety in learning and emotional regulation. Reflect on how adult regulation, environmental predictability, and relational trust support co-regulation. Consider how honouring autistic behaviour as adaptive preserves dignity, protects joy, and affirms the child's rightful place within the learning community.