Twilights
All Briarwood Twilights are booked via Humanitix.
Many Ways to Say It: Strengthening Everyday Practice (Advancing)
You know the methods — now let's put them into practice. This session builds on the foundations of multi-modal communication, helping staff apply strategies flexibly across everyday routines like transitions, mealtimes, and group activities. Explore how combining methods can support learners with more complex needs, how to recognise and respond when a learner initiates communication, and how to spot (and reduce) the everyday barriers that get in the way.
Take your communication practice from good to great!
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Learning Beyond the Classroom: Community-Based Approaches for SEND Inclusion
Unlock the power of meaningful, real‑world learning experiences for children and young people with SEND. This CPD session explores how community-based learning can enrich the curriculum, support progress, build independence, strengthen social connections, and promote genuine inclusion.
Through practical strategies, inspiring examples, and evidence-informed approaches, participants will discover how to design and deliver community learning opportunities that are accessible, purposeful, and aligned with individual needs. We will delve into risk management, partnerships with local organisations, and how to embed communication, life skills, and personal development in everyday environments.
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Many Ways to Say It: An Introduction to Multi-Modal Communication (Foundation)
Not every learner communicates with words — and that's okay. This session introduces staff to the many ways individuals express themselves, from signing and symbols to objects of reference and eye gaze. You'll explore a range of communication methods used across our setting and discover why getting communication right isn't just helpful — it's essential for a learner's ability to share their needs, make choices, and be understood.
Practical, hands-on, and relevant to every role — whether you're in the classroom, on the corridor, or supporting at lunchtime. Come along and discover just how many ways there are to say it!
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Makaton
This makaton twilight is only available to Briarwood Staff. This CPD session explores how Makaton can be used to support learners with communication and language needs across SEND pathways. Discover how you can combine signs, symbols and speech to help students express themselves and communicate fully with the world around them. This session explores core vocabulary, key word signing and the use of Makaton within everyday routines, stories and play to build confidence, connection and communication. Staff will gain practical strategies for embedding Makaton meaningfully across the setting and tailoring its use to individual students’ needs.
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Positive Behaviour Support: Analysing Behaviour & Applying Effective Support (Advancing)
This twilight session is an advancing level designed to equip learners with the skills to analyse the functions of behaviour and identify the factors that may contribute to it. Participants will develop an understanding of how observation and assessment can be used to inform effective support strategies and improve outcomes for pupils. The session also focuses on implementing preventative and proactive interventions tailored to individual needs, alongside developing practical approaches to co-regulation and emotional regulation within everyday practice.
This session combines essential theoretical knowledge with practical strategies and attendees' learning will be assessed through applied tasks at the end of the session.
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Making Observations Count: Supporting Assessment & Progress for Pupils with SEND
Relationships & Sex Education (RSE) is a complex and sensitive subject that requires high-quality, meaningful teaching approaches. This session will reflect on the importance of RSE, explore the approach to teaching this subject with SEND pupils and how we differentiate across cohorts to ensure the content is accessible and relevant. We also cover the importance of using clear language, as well as differentiating complex subject content themes. This session combines essential theoretical knowledge with practical strategies and attendees' learning will be assessed through applied tasks at the end of the session.
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Understanding Trauma: Safety, Connection & Regulation
This session will introduce trauma-informed practice as a relational and inclusive approach within educational settings. Participants will explore how trauma, stress and anxiety can affect behaviour, communication, trust, learning and regulation, with a particular focus on how adult responses can either reduce or increase perceived threat.
The session will introduce the PRRR model - Protect, Relate, Regulate and Reflect - alongside the Window of Tolerance and a bottom-up recovery pyramid to support staff in understanding why safety, co-regulation and connection often need to come before reasoning, reflection or correction. The session aims to strengthen professional curiosity, improve consistency in adult responses, and support participants to identify practical ways to build safety, repair and re-connection within their own setting.
Mandatory NCFE unit - Safeguarding in an Inclusive Environment: The Current Climate
This session will explore the evolving safeguarding landscape within education, examining current and emerging risks affecting children and young people. Participants will consider national safeguarding priorities, proposed developments arising from the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill and anticipated changes to Keeping Children Safe in Education (KCSIE), alongside the growing influence of artificial intelligence, online harms, exploitation, mental health concerns and contextual safeguarding challenges.
The session aims to strengthen professional awareness, promote proactive safeguarding practice and support staff in understanding how educational settings must continue to adapt to meet emerging risks and statutory expectations.
This is a mandatory session for the Level 3 Award in Inclusive Practice for Children & Young People with Complex SEND.
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Many Ways to Say It: Championing Communication Across Your Setting (Mastery)
Ready to lead as well as practise? This session is for staff who want to support colleagues, review what's working, and champion consistent communication for the learners in their care. Dig into the theory behind communication difficulties, learn how to coach others in your team, and discover how to influence practice beyond your own classroom — ensuring every learner is understood, wherever they are and whoever they're with.
For staff ready to go further — not just doing it well, but helping others do it too.
Please be mindful that this session has not been accredited and will therefore not count towards the NCFE Award.
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Sensory Processing: Understanding the Eight Senses (Foundation)
This foundational session will introduce sensory processing and how sensory differences can affect regulation, attention, communication and access to learning. Participants will explore the eight sensory systems - visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, gustatory, proprioceptive, vestibular and interoceptive - and consider how sensory seeking, sensory avoidance and sensory overload may present in educational settings.
The session will also introduce the Pyramid of Learning as a useful way of understanding how sensory and movement foundations can support higher-level learning, behaviour and participation. The session aims to build confidence in recognising sensory needs while avoiding the assumption that every behaviour is sensory, and to identify realistic, low-tech, universal strategies that support regulation and engagement.
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Recognising & Responding to Harmful Sexualised Behaviour in a SEND Setting
This session will develop staff understanding of harmful sexualised behaviours (HSB) within SEND settings, helping them to distinguish between developmentally expected and concerning behaviours, understand the additional vulnerabilities experienced by pupils with SEND, and respond confidently through safeguarding, reporting and supportive interventions. The emphasis is on creating a culture of prevention, professional curiosity and early intervention.
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Learning Never Stops: The Value of Continuous Provision
This professional development session is designed to support practitioners in enhancing continuous provision for pupils with complex Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND). Through evidence-informed strategies and practical examples, participants will explore how to create engaging, accessible, and highly individualised learning environments that promote communication, independence, sensory regulation, and meaningful participation.
The course focuses on adapting provision to meet a wide range of complex needs, ensuring that learning opportunities are purposeful, inclusive, and responsive to each pupil’s strengths and developmental goals. Attendees will leave with increased confidence in planning, delivering, and evaluating continuous provision that maximises progress, engagement, and wellbeing for all learners.
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Exploring Our World Through Science: Inspiring Curiosity & Discovery for Learners with SEND
Discover how science can spark curiosity, creativity and a love of learning for pupils with SEND. This practical twilight session explores how investigations, experiments, animals and real-life experiences can be used to develop prediction, observation and problem-solving skills. Participants will leave with practical ideas and increased confidence in delivering engaging, accessible science learning across the curriculum.
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Small Steps, Strong Foundations: Phonics from Pre-Phase Through the Levels
This practical and engaging twilight session explores the role of phonics in supporting children and young people with SEND to become confident readers and communicators. Participants will develop their understanding of the progression from Pre-Phonics and Level 1 through to Levels 2-6, with a particular focus on the foundations that underpin successful reading development, including communication, phonological awareness, symbolic understanding and early language skills.
The session will examine how high-quality phonics teaching can be adapted to meet a wide range of learning needs, using evidence-informed strategies, multi-sensory approaches and appropriately differentiated resources. Staff will explore the latest updates to the Twinkl Phonics programme and consider practical ways to bridge learning from early phonics experiences into more formal reading and writing. Participants will leave with increased confidence in delivering effective phonics teaching and supporting every learner to make meaningful progress in early reading.
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Small People, Big Impact: Practical PBS Strategies for Young Children
We are really excited to offer PBS for small people, a practical and engaging course designed to help you build confidence in supporting our youngest children with positive, proactive strategies. This course provides valuable tools and ideas that you can put into practice the next day! It’s a fantastic opportunity to enhance your professional development while making a meaningful difference in the young children you support.
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Building Cultural Intelligence: Strengthening Relationships with Pupils, Families & Professionals
In increasingly diverse educational settings, teaching staff require the knowledge, skills, and confidence to work effectively across a range of cultural, linguistic, and social backgrounds. This professional development twilight session explores the concept of cultural intelligence (CQ) and its practical application when supporting pupils with complex Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND), engaging with families, and collaborating with multidisciplinary professionals. Participants will develop a deeper understanding of how culture influences communication, perceptions of disability, family engagement, decision-making, and educational expectations.
Through reflection, discussion, and practical strategies, staff will strengthen their ability to build trusting relationships, reduce barriers to participation, and create more inclusive, culturally responsive learning environments. The session aims to enhance professional practice, improve outcomes for pupils with complex SEND, and foster meaningful partnerships with families and professionals from diverse backgrounds.
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Briarwood Techie Awards
The Briarwood Techie Awards are only offered internally and in-person only. They are run in an informal way to allow staff to improve their IT skills generally or more specifically, if there's an area/programme you require specific support with. There are three levels of award, all of which run concurrently in each session.T
The Bronze Award is focused on learning how to use a phone, device or laptop to access school systems and cover the basics, including:
- login to almost everything we use, including emails and other web-based software (SeeSaw, Behaviour Watch etc)
- Find, run and change PowerPoint on Teacher's Drive.
- Print something
- Take photos on a school device and transfer to the PC
- Learn how to run some simple games on HelpKidzLearn
The Silver Award is about learning how to better support the children, including:
- Create an "ICT Profile" for a child in your class - learn about their skills, motivators and next steps
- Make some Boardmaker symbols to support them
The Gold Award has four sections:
- Make an Interactive Boardmaker activity
- Make a "Choose It Maker" resource for your class
- Add Boardmaker symbols to a Twinkl Power Point
- Disconnect all the leads and dongles from a smartboard and plug them back in again.
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The Science of Learning in Practice: Understanding & Supporting SEND Students
Why does retrieval practice help pupils remember more? Why does cutting cognitive load make such a difference for learners with SEND? This session unpacks the key cognitive science principles behind effective teaching and learning — cognitive load, retrieval practice, dual coding, spaced practice, and scaffolding — and shows you how to turn the theory into practical, everyday classroom strategies.
You'll explore what happens when these principles are missing from a lesson, and leave with practical tools ready to try with your own pupil. Understand the science. Apply the strategies. See the difference!
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Number, Rhythm & Discovery: Sensory Approaches to Maths
This engaging engaging and practical session explores how sensory stories, music, play and exploration can be used to support early mathematical development for children with SEND. Through hands-on activities and real-life examples, practitioners will learn how to create accessible opportunities for children to experience number, pattern, sequencing, comparison and problem-solving in ways that are motivating, meaningful and developmentally appropriate. The session offers inclusive strategies that can be implemented immediately within classrooms, continuous provision and everyday routines.
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Understanding Autism: Foundations for Inclusive Practice (Foundation)
This foundation session will introduce autism as a neurodevelopmental difference and support participants to understand how autistic pupils may experience communication, sensory input, social interaction, predictability, change, anxiety and relationships. The session will promote a strengths-based approach and encourage participants to move away from deficit-based interpretations of behaviour.
Participants will explore how clear communication, processing time, visual support, predictable routines, interests, strengths and adult assumptions can either reduce or increase barriers to inclusion. The session aims to strengthen professional understanding and help staff identify practical adjustments that make learning and participation more accessible
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Introducing Thrive: Embedding a Whole-School Approach to SEMH Support
This foundation session will introduce autism as a neurodevelopmental difference and support participants to understand how autistic pupils may experience communication, sensory input, social interaction, predictability, change, anxiety and relationships. The session will promote a strengths-based approach and encourage participants to move away from deficit-based interpretations of behaviour.
Participants will explore how clear communication, processing time, visual support, predictable routines, interests, strengths and adult assumptions can either reduce or increase barriers to inclusion. The session aims to strengthen professional understanding and help staff identify practical adjustments that make learning and participation more accessible.
Click the date below to find out more and book your tickets.
Sensory Processing in Practice: From Observation to Action (Advancing)
Positive Behaviour Support: Leading Change, Improving Outcomes & Embedding Best Practice (Mastery)
Maths Mastery for Learners with SEND: Building Deep Mathematical Understanding Through Exploration, Representation & Play
This practical and engaging CPD session explores how the principles of Maths Mastery can be successfully adapted to support learners with SEND. Discover how Maths Mastery approaches can support learners with SEND to develop secure and meaningful mathematical understanding.
This session explores the use of concrete resources, visual representations, subitising, storytelling and playful learning to build mathematical thinking, fluency and confidence. Staff will gain practical strategies for making maths accessible, engaging and relevant across a range of SEND pathways.
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Positive Behaviour Support: Understanding Behaviour & Building Positive Outcomes (Foundation)
This foundation-level twilight session introduces the key principles and values of Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) and explores how behaviour can be understood as a form of communication. Participants will consider the factors that influence behaviour and learn how proactive, consistent approaches can help build positive relationships, increase engagement and support wellbeing. The session will focus on creating supportive environments that reduce barriers to learning and participation, enabling children and young people to thrive. Through practical examples and reflection on everyday practice, staff will develop their understanding of how positive, relationship-based approaches can promote inclusion and improve outcomes for all learners.
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Teaching Relationships & Sex Education in SEND: Meaningful & Accessible Approaches
This practical and informative CPD session explores how to deliver high-quality Relationships, Sex and Health Education (RSHE) for children and young people with SEND. Participants will develop their understanding of statutory requirements, effective teaching approaches and the importance of providing accessible, developmentally appropriate learning experiences that promote safety, wellbeing, communication and healthy relationships. The session focuses on using clear, anatomically correct language, visual supports, social stories, communication aids and practical resources to make RSHE meaningful and accessible for all learners.
Through discussion, case studies and hands-on activities, staff will explore key topics including public and private behaviours, relationships, puberty, human development, safeguarding and consent, while building confidence in responding to pupil needs and questions appropriately.
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Understanding Myself: Building Safety, Confidence & Emotional Wellbeing
This practical and engaging CPD session explores how the Myself curriculum supports children and young people with SEND to develop the knowledge, skills and understanding needed to stay healthy, safe and emotionally well. Focusing on the key themes of emotional literacy, self-care and safety, participants will examine how these areas are embedded across the Briarwood curriculum from EYFS through to Sixth Form. The session will explore how pupils can be supported to recognise and manage emotions, develop independence in personal care, understand risk and safety, and build the confidence needed to participate successfully in everyday life.
Through collaborative discussion and practical activities, staff will consider how to adapt learning for a range of ages, abilities and pathways, ensuring that all pupils can access meaningful and relevant experiences that support wellbeing, resilience and preparation for adulthood.
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Supporting Learners with Multi-Sensory Impairment: Inclusive Strategies for the Classroom
This in person only introductory session explores the various ways we can support students with multi-sensory impairment (MSI). We will focus on how MSI impacts pupils' access to learning, as well as the use of differentiated teaching strategies across the curriculum as a way to combat this. This session combines essential theoretical knowledge with practical strategies and attendees' learning will be assessed through applied tasks at the end of the session.
Click the date below to find out more and book your tickets.
