Riverside Facilities

 Other Learning Spaces and Facilities

Although all students have core base classrooms as outlined above, the school is, however, a unified social community in which break-times, lunchtimes, assemblies and a range of targeted lessons are shared by all students, regardless of the nature of their needs. (Class groupings in the school are organised on a needs basis with students with more complex needs grouped together for the purpose of most effectively targeting their communication and general learning needs).

In addition to the core classrooms, there is a food technology and design and technology/science room, and a specialist computer room. Art and music are taught in dedicated Riverside specialist rooms based in Woodside’s creative arts block opposite.

On the ground floor there is a hydrotherapy pool, a dark room, a soft play room, along with the school’s shared reception area, administrative offices, headteacher’s office and senior staff offices, a parents’ room, various meeting rooms and a large multi-purpose hall which allows for daily PE lessons as well as assemblies and other gatherings, (including whole-school events).  KS3 students eat lunch in the hall annex.

Also on the ground floor Riverside is equipped with a therapy suite with treatment rooms and facilities for speech and language therapists, (SALT’s), physiotherapists, occupational therapists, drama therapists, nurses, and there are room spaces for other visiting professionals such as teachers of the hearing-impaired and the visually-impaired, the school doctor, psychiatrists and clinical psychologists from the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service/Learning Disabilities Team (CAMHS-LD), educational psychologists (EP’s), paediatric dieticians and social workers from the Disabled Children’s Team, (DCT).

At the rear of the building there is a large playground space containing a cycle track, play areas, sensory raised beds and covered seating areas. On the first floor there is a sports terrace for both teaching and leisure activities, and a roof garden for horticulture. KS3 students eat lunch in two sittings in Riverside’s hall annex, and KS4 students in two sittings in Woodside’s Ash block adjacent to the school, in which Riverside have a dining room.

The school has four minibuses to enable staff to take students out on educational visits to places of interest, and to take advantage of various local facilities to support curriculum studies, independence training and vocational awareness.