Archives for "Makaton"
Sign of the Times
Due to the fact that my 14-year-old daughter is extremely dyslexic she has not studied a modern language at secondary school. I’m convinced this is the right choice for my daughter and was extremely grateful to the school for not forcing her to continue with French. It does raise the question however as to what language could a child study if they struggle to write. I’m sure there are conversational classes but they tend to be geared towards adult learners.
This got me thinking and on one of my many dog walks I bumped into a friend I had not seen for a long time. When I asked her what she had been doing she said she was doing her level III British sign language course. She told me that she had done level I years ago but had not taken it any further. Wow I thought here is a language that has no written form and would be perfect for my daughter. I mentioned it to her school who looked as if I’d gone completely mad. So I started to do a little research myself. To my amazement I discovered that British sign language (BSL) was only recognised as an official modern language in March 2003, even though it is the first language of many British people. Around 70,000 hearing and deaf people use BSL in the UK, this means that it is used more than Welsh or Gaelic. Currently there is not a GCSE in British sign language which seems a shame – though you can do an NVQ in British sign language and there are tutors local to where I live.
Many years ago when my now 11-year-old daughter was two and a half and still not talking I was given the opportunity by her speech therapists to do a couple of courses in Mataton. I am a huge fan of Makaton, I am absolutely positive that without learning this sign language my daughter would not have made such rapid progress. Makaton is a language that uses signs (and sometimes symbols) to help people communicate. It is designed to support spoken language and the signs and symbols are used with speech, in spoken word order. When Makaton was originally developed in 1972 it only used speech and manual signs, but by 1985 graphic symbols were introduced for those who found signing difficult.
Today over 100,000 children and adults, use Makaton. Most start using Makaton as children then naturally stop using the signs and symbols as they no longer need them. However, some people will need to use Makaton for their whole lives. It is also a useful temporary language for example with someone who has had a stroke or want to tell their children off in public spaces or congratulate them from a distance, it is also very useful in swimming lessons!
When I was a child the TV show Vision On had a lady who signed BLS and today Mr. tumble on the TV show Something Special signs in Makaton. They are living modern languages, with job opportunities, in fact there is a shortage of BSL translators currently. In school there should be opportunities to learn BSL or Makaton. How do I persuade my daughter’s fantastic secondary school to include a sign language on the curriculum?
Another Year
It’s unbelievable, my youngest daughter is about to leave primary school. It just can’t be seven years ago that I took her to nursery, a child that had only just learned how to speak and would only talk to her family and one other child. We were still using Makaton sign language with speech when she started nursery and if my memory is correct by the time she left nursery she was still only speaking to the same child but now she also spoke to the teachers. Is it the same child who had a speaking part in her year six play? And she has done very well in the government SATs tests including getting a level 5 in speaking and listening!
To this day I have no idea why she did not speak. It was extraordinary. She had one word which was “mummy”, by which she meant “help”. She got by with one word and her fists. She was lucky enough to get speech therapy and we went back through the animal sounds teaching her to listen – which she was very good at. Asked to point at an object she could, asked to fetch something she could. She was able follow instructions and had a good understanding of language, but she just would not/could not use it.
After weeks of trying to get her to make animal sounds we realised that she still was not making the animal sounds but that she had made up signs for each of the animals. A dog, she would stick out her tongue. A duck, she would make a beak with her hand, and for a snake she would wiggle her arm. When I told the speech therapist this she suggested that we had a go at Makaton. Again I was lucky and very quickly went on a course run at my local hospital. Makaton was fantastic, suddenly she started to talk, single words at first and then she said her first sentence when she was 3 1/2 which was “no shoes now “. That sentence has such a symbolic emotion for me, I love saying it. Whenever I take my shoes off I whisper quietly to myself “no shoes now”. My daughter will still use fists over words if she’s tired or angry and we have to work hard endlessly saying “words not fists” however luckily she does seem to save her fists for her family.
I know that the move to secondary school will be huge for her, at primary school she has been protected by children who have known her since she was three. However my experience of secondary school is extremely positive and I’m excited for her.
My elder daughter, who is very dyslexic, will also have a large change next year. For the first two years of secondary school she has been privileged to be taught in a very small English group of just 10 children. At her school this is called learning support. This small group has been taught by the same teacher for two years and it has increased my daughter’s confidence and ability enormously. I am not sure what will happen next year and whether or not we will need to find her extra support. I believe that my daughter’s improvement in all subjects this year is partly due to the fact that the school was brave enough to let her drop French, her second language. This meant that she had three extra lessons during the week to catch up any work she had not got in her lessons and was able to do much of her homework during the school day. I do think it is extremely brave of the school to go against the government requirements and I am extremely grateful to her school for allowing her to have a different timetable from all the other children in year eight.
I know that both my girls and I are looking forward to the summer holidays, roll on Friday.