Ullerødskolen is a structured ”helhedstilbud”. “Helhedstilbud” means that school and sparetime activities are an integrated part of a schoolday. We believe that children and youngsters with this disorder need to work cognitively with both ordinary educational subject matters as well as dealing with social life and personal development.

“Structered” in our system refers to two things. On an overall level we work very goal oriented with the students. We focus on make learning visible; this is what I want you as a student to learn/get out of this activity. If getting to the goal/accepting the goal/ understand the need of the goal is difficult, we- student and educator –in cooperation find a way to get there. Our pedagogic methods to reach the goals are also structured. We use visualizing support systems (pictograms, PECS, small social stories) to help students master their tasks. We use methods from CognitiveAssertiveTraining (for more info see CAT-Kit http://www.catkit-us.com/) Classroom organisation are TEACHH- inspired; eg. Individual workbooth, visible timetables, time measured activities.

A team of teachers and paedagogs are connected to each class. It is always the same people working with the class for the whole schoolyear. Their job is to create predictability and continuity in the students´ daily life. We work deliberately on training students´ flexibility, by “structuredly” changing schooldays with cross curricular activities and all school activities such as sportsdays, Reading days and English days. A week a year we suspend all regular classes, mix the whole school in different teams across the age groups and teach in workshops under a common topic.

We take student influence very seriously. We work with democracy not only on an educational level but also in everyday school life. We encourage students to make individual agreements with their teachers if things are difficult – instead of just avoiding challenges. We work with students “ownership” of agreements. We have “belonging to a group” as a fundamental criteria for each individual; if for different reasons a student is incapable of that, it will always be an underlying goal to get him/her there. We work at creating a functional student council and encourage students to use it.