Escola Secundária de Maria Lamas

The Gil Paes School Group is located in Torres Novas and includes a secondary school, a basic school, four schools and a kindergarten with 232 teachers and 2043 students. There are about 180 students with Special Educational Needs, with 18 Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) students, with support of 22 teachers of Special Educational Needs. The Gil Paes School Group is a local reference in the area of Early Intervention in Childhood and for ASD. With students between the ages of 3 and 17, it seeks "a comprehensive education of the student that takes into account the training in the areas of critical thinking, humanities, aesthetic and artistic culture, science and technology and education of the body and of the sport ", as it can be read in its Educational Project.
The Gil Paes School Group is participating as a pilot school in the European Go-Lab, PLATON, OSOS and Digital Schools of Europe projects in collaboration with the NUCLIO - Interactive Astronomy Center, in order to promote innovation and modernization of methodologies and technologies education. During the academic year 2013/2015, several teachers and students participated in the Comenius multilateral partnerships between schools "Dive in the Sky", developing activities in the field of Astronomy, in partnership with 4 European countries: Austria, Bulgaria, Lithuania and Turkey. This school year began the teaching of Programming and Robotics in all classes of the 5th year, continuing the work developed in this area in the first cycle.
The experience with students with ASD began 10 years ago, in the 2008/2009 school year, with a Teacch Unit for basic education, which is attended by 9 students. This Teacch Unit is recognized as a center for sharing inclusion practices because PEA students are integrated in class with their peers and participate in class activities. More recently a Teacch Unit for primary education has been created. We are a reference in the local area for Early Intervention in Childhood and for ASD. Therefore, we have two Teacch Autism Program Units, one for the elementary level pupils (Unit 1) and another for the pupils attending years 5 to 9 (Unit 2). There are 6 SEN teachers working at the Teacch Autism Program Units, in a rotation system, helped by 3 teacher assistants. We have had 6 pupils in average per school year at Unit 1. Recently, we have more pupils with ASD at Unit 1, 9 pupils in this school year, and we predict that for the next two school years these numbers will not change, accordingly to the information given to us by the local Early Intervention in Childhood organization.
About the work developed with these ASD children and the success they have had, we can affirm without vanity, that it is due essentially to the direct or indirect perspective of inclusion of the SEN teachers responsible for Unit 1, due to our Headmasters at the different schools, due to the created and established dynamics amongst the teachers and the pupils and also due to the involvement of the children’s parents in their education and development, in a logic of interactive proximity between family, school and the community. We can refer that these pupils are integrated in classes with their peers, even though their functional and ability profile is different from the rest of them, but they learn with and from their peers, participating in every activity planned for that class. 
Unit 1 is a resource for the school in which is and it is visited by the surrounding educational community and recognized as a center of sharing within the inclusion practices. The experience with the Teacch Unit for pupils from years 5 to 9 (Unit 2) is more recent, but it has followed the type of work done previously, having in mind the personal autonomy of the pupils and their inclusion at school with their peers and in the community.

The work developed in the Teacch Autism Program Units is done towards the needs of each pupil. Situations of individualized teaching are promoted so that the pupils can develop their communication, their social interaction and autonomy, as these are the most compromised areas of ASD pupils. So the TEACCH method and other models of educational interventions, which we think necessary and effective, are used accordingly to the learning profile of each pupil.
The Unit is a place of learning open not only to the pupils that need a specific educational response, but also to their peers, this way these can acquire moral and social competences, therefore promoting the development of a more responsible, cooperative and participatory citizenship.
We aim to organize, for the ASD pupils, educational environments that are stimulant; that reflect their interests and needs and also their families’ needs and expectations; that respect their learning rhythms; that view their future development; that provide learning situations so that they feel motivated to learn and acquire as much personal autonomy as possible.
We always appeal to the involvement and participation of their parents or tutors, because we believe that the relationship between school and family is one of the guaranties of a successful intervention.
So it is considered essential the existence of various support educational materials that can contribute for the development of skills and abilities, whether they are technological (computers, educational software, alternative communication software, colour printers), audio-visual materials, differentiated didactic materials and others.
As experienced, there are several difficulties in accessing specific materials and innovating technologies that help with the development and the training of the acquisition of social and personal skills. In the market it is really difficult to find these types of materials and when they exist, they cannot be personalized and adapted to the specificity of each child or teenager so that it is possible to give them a better and more effective way to improve their autonomy and, consequently, their social inclusion in life after school.
Therefore with the access to technology (as robotics and programming), despite it is not much used in the daily work with these pupils, we pretend to create for them other types of learning opportunities and lead other pupils, without ASD, to idealize and build robots capable to give a contribution for better the levels of personal autonomy of ASD children.
Hence, for the execution of this project we have two SEN teachers, both with a specialization in the motor and cognitive domains and a masters degree, one on teacher’s development and formation and the other on mathematics, an IT teacher and a Physics and Chemistry teacher with experience in robotics and in progressive types of learning.