New Year, Old Routine: The Comfort in Keeping it Consistent

The New Year is a time of change and upheaval. This can prove tricky when your TACPAC receivers rely on routine and repetition! At the very least, your receivers will have had a break from their routines, and possibly their TACPAC sessions. Here are some top TACPAC tips to ease you both into the New Year and the new term.

Take Time to Assess Your Situation

To be as prepared as possible for a new term with your TACPAC receiver, take stock of your situation. The key thing is to keep everything as consistent as possible from the previous term. Has anything changed?

Coming Back from a Break

If you are working with the same receiver as last term, then you have a head start! Try to find out:

whether your receiver had any TACPAC sessions over the Christmas holidays with parents or carers.
if so, what did they cover?
was it a continuation of what they were doing at school in your TACPAC sessions?
what were their observations?
can you incorporate anything they did at home into your work at school?

Whether or not your receiver had a total break over the holidays, take things slowly when you see each other again. Don’t push them to engage or rush them to slot straight back in to where you were before Christmas. Go at their pace. Don’t take anything for granted! Take time to observe what they remember, and don’t forget to show them that you have noticed.

Managing New TACPAC Relationships

Establishing whether your receiver continued their TACPAC sessions over the holidays is also useful if you have a new receiver. Information from their parents or carers, together with handover notes from their previous TACPAC giver, should provide a picture of how comfortable they are with using TACPAC and give you a good idea of their sensory language, likes and dislikes.

If you or your colleagues are new to TACPAC, or if you need to refresh your memory after the holidays, the TACPAC Essential Training courses are a great way to learn about the importance of the basic beat and sensory alignment. You can also watch the videos accompanying your TACPAC Set on our website.

Get into Good Habits

Whether you are familiar with your TACPAC receiver or starting a brand new TACPAC relationship, consistency is key. This isn’t just keeping your sessions as similar as possible to what your receiver knows and expects, but also means getting into good habits to ensure that all your TACPAC sessions have the same fundamental elements:

Download the TACPAC symbol for your Now and Next board, if you are using one, so your receiver knows when it is TACPAC time.
Use your DO NOT DISTURB sign – your colleagues might also need reminding of what they need to do when you are having a TACPAC session!
Stick to the basic beat – aligning touch with the basic beat is what TACPAC is all about. It helps your receiver feel safe and held because they know what is coming next.

Share your story!

What has been your experience of restarting – or starting – TACPAC sessions in the new term? Do you have any tips or tricks that you think might help?

Email us to share your ideas, stories, photos and videos: info@TACPAC .co.uk

Download Your TACPAC Symbol

Read more about using a TACPAC Symbol on a visual timetable to promote clear, consistent communication:

https://TACPAC .co.uk/news/how-to-use-a-symbol-with-TACPAC /

Download your TACPAC symbol for use on your Now and Next Boards.

You can read more about Now and Next Boards here: https://www.twinkl.co.uk/teaching-wiki/now-and-next-board

Back to Basics with TACPAC Essential Training

To learn more about the building blocks of successful TACPAC sessions, sign up to one of our online training sessions: https://TACPAC .co.uk/TACPAC -online-training/.

By Laura Cozier|2024-02-22T17:56:41+00:00January 3rd, 2023|Articles|0 Comments

I found the training was delivered well and matched my school’s cohort very well. It was thought provoking and gave me many ideas on how this can be rolled out and introduced. It also enabled me to get a clearer idea around the intent and the purpose of TAC PAC as a communication strategy and how this can be explained to outside agencies such as ofsted.

Cheryl Louis, Treehouse School

I thoroughly enjoyed the whole training day from start to finish. Vanessa was an amazing instructor and pitched the course well with both theory and practical. She was extremely helpful in answering questions relating to my context and I can’t thank her enough. I feel confident in taking this intervention forward in my class of complex P1 learners.

Charlotte Johnstone Teacher Park School

It was really informative. I would encourage parents and other professional to go through Tac Pac training. Found it really innovative. Most surprising fact that it can be done with household simple stuff and doesn’t need to be expensive, very much handy and easy to use for parents/other caregiver and professionals.

Online Training Delegate,

The learning of the importance of the beat and uncovering some of the myths that we had previously been doing in our school so now they can be corrected. I feel I can relay the appropriate content learnt to other staff within my setting now.

Eimear Corrigan, Teacher,, Palmerstone School, Liverpool

I have been working with children with special needs for the past seven years. I have been amazed at the transformation in children who have been exposed to Tacpac. As there are no trainers that I know of in the Perth area, I am interested in becoming a trainer to enable more children to reap the benefits of this wonderful program.

SEN teacher

Hilary, You have given much joy to many with your creation of Tacpac. You really have made a difference to the lives of many children and their families.

Sue Murray,BLENNZ School, New Zealand

Well delivered. I like that even though this training was virtual it still felt very interactive and a safe place to ask questions and have discussions. I do feel like I have the knowledge and skills to begin TACPAC ‘properly’ now (or at least after a few more practice sessions on my niece). Thank you very much.

Emily Parham, Speech & Language Therapist, OXLEAS

The activities were brilliant for being able to practise the movements to the music in a supportive environment. There was no part of the course that I didn’t enjoy and from which I didn’t learn. Although I have used TACPAC before, I hadn’t considered the importance of unknown music without any connotations attached to it for the receiver. This now makes perfect sense and was a revelation!

Ashley Chambers, Portage Practitioner, Kent

Great working with you all

Dom Knight, Oxfordshire Web Services

I messaged my manager during the break to tell her how amazing the training course is; I didn’t expect it to go into as much detail as it did. I liked how the course went into detail about the function of the Limbic System in relation to behaviour and response. I now want to do more research into the physiological aspects of behaviour in Autism to work on positive behaviour support within our homes

Tracey Hamilton, Homes Manager , Albrighton Care

New Year, Old Routine: The Comfort in Keeping it Consistent