High-Focused Interests

Provision and/or strategies: approaches, adjustments and specific interventions expected to be made by settings according to the ages and stages of the CYP

Universal

• Recognise that high-focused interests may support motivation, regulation, identity and wellbeing, and respond positively to these.
• Curriculum and assessment should be flexible, reflecting interests and strengths, and allowing diverse ways of demonstrating knowledge.
• Foster intrinsic motivation by designing tasks that are appropriately challenging, explaining the purpose of activities, providing autonomy, and using praise and reinforcement to support engagement.
• Use high-focused interests to support engagement while ensuring access to a broad and balanced curriculum.
• Use CYP's interests to motivate engagement and support learning, while gradually broadening topics and experiences.
• Gradually support CYP to extend and generalise their interests into new topics, activities and contexts.
• Support CYP to understand and reflect on their interests (e.g. when they are helpful and when they may need to pause or shift focus), and manage the intensity or frequency of these where they impact learning or social interaction.
• Provide clear, predictable routines for when and how CYP can access and transition away from preferred interests, with structured support to facilitate these transitions.
• Provide structured opportunities for CYP to share their interests with others in a supported and appropriate way (e.g. show-and-share sessions, interest-based group activities, supported presentations, small group discussions, or opportunities to contribute expertise within lessons).
• Use shared or similar interests to support peer interaction and social connection.
• Use structured peer approaches (e.g. cooperative learning or peer tutoring) to support interaction during learning opportunities.

Targeted

• Validate the CYP's interests through learning activities and rewards and reinforcement systems.
• Provide planned, predictable times to engage with preferred interests and use graduated approaches to manage the intensity and duration of engagement with preferred interests (e.g. timed access, negotiated limits, gradual extension of non-preferred activities).
• Provide in-the-moment adult prompting and coaching, and explicitly teach strategies for disengaging from or shifting away from preferred interests (e.g. "finish-pause-move on" routines, use of timers or visual cues), gradually reducing support as independence increases.
• Gradually guide discussion and engagement from the core interest to related topics:
  • e.g. trains → transport → travel → geography
• Use interests to facilitate peer interaction, e.g:
  • Shared projects
  • Clubs or group activities based on the interest
  • support as independence increases.