Autism and the Primary School Programme (Professional) 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 learning in Primary School contexts. Rather than viewing difference as deficit, the training foregrounds autistic cognition as a valid and valuable way of being, with direct implications for classroom practice, curriculum design, and school culture. Drawing on evidence informed practice, the session highlights the strong visual processing profiles often seen in autistic learners and demonstrates how well designed visual approaches can function as core teaching tools, not add ons. Emphasis is placed on how visuals support access to learning, reduce cognitive load, and promote emotional safety across the Primary School Day.

Primary School professionals will deepen their understanding of:

• Why visual approaches are powerful teaching and communication tools that align naturally with many autistic learners' cognitive preferences in literacy, numeracy, and play based learning.
• How visual supports enhance understanding, independence, communication, self-regulation, and wellbeing within classrooms, small groups, and whole school routines.
• How visuals can be embedded into lesson structure, transitions, behaviour expectations, and classroom environments to create predictability, coherence, and felt safety.
• A flexible repertoire of practical, classroom ready visual strategies that honour each child's individuality, strengths, interests, sensory profile, and individual profile, strengths, interests, support needs, and learning journey

Autism and Communication This session invites Primary School educators to examine communication through a neurodiversity affirming lens. Rather than positioning autistic communication as delayed, disordered, or problematic, communication is explored as a two way interaction shaped by neurological difference, classroom context, adult expectations, and power dynamics. Participants are supported to move beyond neurotypical norms and develop a deeper appreciation of autistic communication styles as logical, purposeful, and meaningful, particularly within busy, language rich primary classrooms. Primary School Professionals will: Explore contemporary theories that explain differences in autistic and non-autistic communication, including monotropism and gestalt language processing, with clear links to classroom learning and play. Reflect on their own communication styles, questioning routines, and implicit expectations, and how these may either support or constrain autistic children's participation. Learn respectful, practical strategies to support both understanding and expression, prioritising access to communication over verbal performance or compliance. Develop confidence in adapting adult language to be clearer, slower, more predictable, and supportive across lessons, social times, and transitions.

Autism and Sensory Processing This session centres sensory processing as a core aspect of autistic experience and identity, rather than a difficulty to be fixed or managed. Sensory differences are explored as access needs that significantly shape autistic children’s participation in learning, relationships, and daily school life. The session supports educators to critically examine how typical primary school environments, noise, movement, visual clutter, transitions, and pace, can either support presence or act as barriers that overwhelm or exclude. Primary School Professionals will be supported to: Understand sensory processing differences across all sensory systems, including interoception, with clear links to classroom learning and behaviour. Recognise how mainstream classroom environments often privilege certain nervous systems while marginalising others. Reframe withdrawal, shutdown,, distress, or reduced engagement as sensory communication, not misbehaviour. Identify and implement practical, respectful environmental and routine based adjustments that support regulation, dignity, and sustained participation across the school day.

Autism and Understanding Anxiety This training approaches anxiety as a contextual and relational experience, often emerging when Primary School environments place sustained demands on autistic children to adapt, mask, or function without adequate support. Rather than viewing anxiety as an internal problem within the child, the session highlights how anxiety often reflects environmental unpredictability, sensory overwhelm, communication barriers, and relational misattunement within primary school settings. Primary School Professionals will explore: How anxiety is experienced physiologically and emotionally by autistic children in early and middle childhood. The cumulative impact of masking, fatigue, transitions, and unmet needs across the school day. How anxiety frequently signals threats to felt safety, predictability, and belonging in classrooms. Practical, school based supports that reduce anxiety by changing expectations, environments, and adult responses, restoring agency, trust, and emotional security.

Autism and Reframing Behaviour In this session, behaviour is reframed as meaningful communication arising from nervous system states, environmental demands, developmental stage, and relational context. The focus shifts away from behaviour management and toward creating classroom and school conditions that support regulation, connection, and participation. Drawing on neuroscience and interpersonal neurobiology, primary school educators are supported to critically reflect on traditional behaviour approaches and adopt practices that are developmentally appropriate, relationally attuned, and rights affirming. Primary School Professionals will: Examine the paradigm shift from managing behaviour to understanding stress responses and adaptive behaviour in young children. Explore how adult expectations, power dynamics, pace, and lack of access can unintentionally escalate distress. Develop an understanding of neuroception and the central role of felt safety in learning, regulation, and behaviour. Reflect on how adult emotional regulation, predictable environments, and relational trust support co-regulation. Consider how honouring autistic behaviour as adaptive preserves dignity, protects joy, and affirms each child's rightful place in the Primary School community.