Student Age: 4 years old

• What Challenges were you facing before starting the interventions?
   
• Not Knowing the child’s specific needs, what would assist the child to be focused.
   
• What was the child’s sensory profile, what did it look like in the classroom? How did that translate into experiences.
   
• What were the kinds of actions we could undertake with the child to assist them to calm and refocus
   
• What materials and resources could we use to assist the child to focus? How do we use them more importantly
   
• What could we do to ensure our classroom was suitable for the child’s needs. How could we set it up, where could quiet spaces be and what would they look like.
   
• What were the child’s interests? What actual learning experiences could we engage him in that would interest him and provide that appropriate challenge for learning?  
   
• How could we use the communication device that was introduced by his speech pathologist?
   
• What pictures and sequence of each day’s events charts would be useful?
   
• What were the parent’s expectations and how could we meet these?
   
• How can we liaise with the child’s family to ensure the child’s needs came first?
   
• How has my guidance helped your student’s interventions?
   
• I think because Luciana knew the child and his family she could share her knowledge about the child as well as her professional and practical knowledge with us and also how we could adapt our classroom to suit
   
• In the early days, Luciana helped us with ways to help him calm, such as walking in a circle to ring a ring a rosie, and to listen and engage with what music he liked
   
• Wrapping the child in a blanket like a sausage roll and have them unroll
   
• Swinging was helpful for the child to receive the vestibular motion he required and to help calm him
   
• Applying pressure to his joints and places where he was seeking feedback, using a foot roller at meal times
   
• Demonstrating how to do these things first hand with the child was very beneficial
   
• Showing us how to assist the child to follow a request was useful
   
• Showing us how to support the child at storytimes and music times and provide important aural and visual feedback to help the child make sense of the story and musical responses
   
• Information about the child’s diet was useful especially when it changed dramatically and being that liaison person with the child’s family was very useful.
   
• In what ways have you as a teacher benefitted from my services?
   
• Firstly, feeling more relaxed on those days when Luciana was with us because we would have some guidance and support from a knowledgeable source was a big plus, especially when we felt the child’s wheels were falling off, it helped keep our stress levels down knowing she was calm and could show us what to do. Provide us with options.
   
• The practicality of showing us how to work with the child increased our confidence for future times as well.
   
• The sharing of our program and was going to happen was useful so that Luciana could adapt things so it would work for the child better, i.e if we were having a fire drill she showed us some good ways to prepare the child for what was going to happen. These abstract concepts can be tricky to navigate but having an experienced person with practical ideas was so useful.
   
• Luciana’s ability to always think ahead and what we could put in place to assist the child.
   
• Her ability to communicate with the child’s family and us in the child’s best interest. She would be that connection between home and kindy and that can’t be overestimated in establishing and building relationships.
   
• Growing together, learning from each other was so beneficial
   
• Talking through issues was very useful. Having that time each visit to talk about current happenings and devising solutions.
   
• The most valuable aspect of our sessions for you
   
• The practical element and demonstration of how to work with the child was extremely beneficial, translating the child’s goals into actions.
   
• It’s often a situation where one has to work it out as you go along, but having Luciana’s knowledge, especially of the child and the child’s needs helps the team to find ways to work much sooner than we would otherwise, following Luciana’s lead.
   
• Luciana’s problem solving ability – if this didn’t work, what else could be try. She had a myriad of ideas and tricks in her tool box.
   
• Would you recommend Luciana’s services to other parents and to other teachers/inclusion support workers?
   
• Most definitely because of the practical approach
   
• It added more skills to our tool kit
   
• We started to feel more confident
   
• Families need this kind of liaison between home and kindy. It really works.
   

Having Luciana with us has been nothing short of amazing. Never before have I ever experienced such a level of support and knowledge such as what Luciana’s demonstrates and shares with us. Every child with additional needs should have that rich level of support in their educational environment. Short of every ISA have specialized skills having someone like Luciana fills that gap beautifully.