This pages contains details about SEND school sessions.
For more general information to help you plan or book your visit, please see our SEND School Group Page

Please note, none of our sessions include live animals.

We are continually striving to improve our provision for SEND students at the Zoo. Our sessions can meet the needs of many different levels of learners with a variety needs, whether they are mild or complex learning difficulties or physical, emotional and behavioural needs.
Please ensure you provide any relevant information to our education team when discussing sessions to ensure we can provide suitable learning pitched at the appropriate level for your group.


Classroom Accessibility

Most of our classrooms are accessible to wheelchair users. When booking, please inform us if you have wheelchair users in your group. If there are multiple wheelchair users we may need to assign you to a specific classroom or modify activities to better suit your needs.


Explore! Session for SEND Groups

This session uses a variety of animal artefacts (including furs, feathers, and reptile scales) to allow students to explore and touch. Depending on the level of the group, the session can focus on:

  • Basic exploration or textures, shapes, etc. (active or coactive)
  • Matching games (e.g. matching colours or images to objects)
  • Describing objects (e.g. matching descriptive words and/or symbols with the objects)
  • Sorting objects (e.g. creating groups of furry objects, scaly objects, etc.)

If you feel that participating in any of these sessions can help you students work towards their targets under the engagement model do feel free to contact us to discuss this further and talk about how we can best support you and your students.
No live animals are used in this session.


Animal Careers Session for SEND Groups

This session is aimed at SEND Groups looking into Post 16 options working with animals. It highlights a variety of job roles, including ‘a day in the life’, and different career pathways, including non-academic routes.
Contact the education department at 01206332511, or 01206332512 or via email at education@colchesterzoo.org for more details.


Animal Enrichment for SEND Groups

This session offers SEND students the chance to discover some of the ways zoos can keep their animals both physically and mentally active. Students then have the opportunity to make their own enrichment items for one of the species at Colchester Zoo.
Contact the education department at 01206332511, or 01206332512 or via email at education@colchesterzoo.org for more details.

Please note, while student-made enrichment will be given to animals at the zoo, for logistical and biosecurity reasons this will not be done during the session, but instead zoo keepers will use this enrichment at a later point in time.


Other Sessions

If the sessions described above do not suit your needs, please have a look at the full range of sessions we offer. All of our mainstream sessions are available for SEND groups working at differing levels. Details on all the available sessions can be found from the ‘Education Tab’ of the website under the relevant age ranges. If you are interested in booking any of these, please contact the education department to discuss your groups’ specific needs and ensure the teaching sessions are appropriate for your group. Where possible, we can adapt and modify some of the sessions to better suit your needs.


Booking a Session

Please contact our education department at 01206332511, or 01206332512 or via email at education@colchesterzoo.org to discuss potential sessions or book a session for your group.

Booking a General Visit

If you are just visiting the zoo on a general visit, and you do not want an educational session, please complete our online booking form (click to open in new window).


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