Archives for "School"
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?
OFSTED Report
The special school that I have volunteered at for the last five years had a full OFSTED inspection last month. It was nearly 10 years ago when the school had its last full school inspection. When I asked how it had gone the school said fine and they were very pleased that the inspector was extremely knowledgeable on special schools.
Last week I was given the inspection report, the school secretary had printed off a few too many and I’m not surprised because they got an outstanding. The opening line of the report said this is an outstanding school. The report is very fair. One of the comments should be true of any school special or not, that the children feel happy and safe, love coming to school every day they attend whenever they can, work hard and behave outstandingly well.
As a parent and governor I have read many letters from inspectors and I have to say they’re all pretty much the same. I imagine it is a standard letter however this one was very different.
The inspector asked the teachers to explain to the students by any means they can, using symbols, pictures or by telling the parents that…
This is an outstanding school
You are well taught and make good progress in your learning
You grow up as delightful young people who try to help each other
You are well looked after and enjoy school
Your headteacher and her staff are very good at their jobs
I do appreciate that inspections do need to take place. Teachers and governors always get in a bit of a state when one is announced, but now the school can celebrate its success and keep working towards maintaining its high standards.
I know it is the fashion now to try and include as many children as possible in mainstream school, this school might well buck the trend and I can imagine parents clamouring to send their children here.
At the moment it is very difficult to send your child to a special school it seems to me that a child must fail in mainstream before they are allowed into a special school.
Some children might need a couple of years is a special school/nursery and then they may be ready to make the transition to mainstream.
I think a more flexible approach is needed to provide an education for these very special children.
Pair Sticks
Why do teachers ask children to get into pairs?
My daughter came back from school this week in tears, she cannot understand why it is always her that the teacher has to put into a pair. Getting into pairs is great fun if you are in a group with your best friend – however is it always a good idea to always be working with the same friend? My daughter is not socially mature enough to be able to anticipate when the teacher might ask her to get into a pair. Other more socially mature children make sure they are standing next to a friend or have even pre-arranged it before the lesson.
In my Brownie group if the girls need to work in pairs I will ask them to pick a partner that does not go to their school, or is of a different age, or is of a very different height. I appreciate that teachers do not have those differences. When I mentioned to a friend who is a secondary school teacher that my daughter was struggling with this, she was surprised that teachers still asked children to find a pair. She said that in her lessons she deliberately picks the pairs for the children or uses her pair sticks.
When I asked what ore those? She said they are lolly sticks with numbers on them, each student takes a stick and partners the other student with the same number. Oh I wish all teachers were as kind as my friend. I have immediately made my own pair sticks for Brownies, dare I make a set of other teachers at my daughters school?
I have decided that I can’t but I will mention it at the next parents evening. However I can try to give my daughter some coping strategies. I have explained to her that other children will have pre-arranged their partner. When I told her this she looked utterly surprised, but I do think that she has taken it on board and let’s hope there are no tears tonight.
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.
Besides the Sea
Last week I went on a grand expedition to a funfair at the seaside.
I had been invited to help as a volunteer on a school trip. As this is a special school and since the children that were being taken were all on the autistic spectrum it was felt that a ratio of one child to two adults would be sensible.
Very calmly the children, teachers and volunteers all boarded the buses. The children were amazing they got into their seats, put on their seat belts and stayed sitting calmly and quietly for a long drive to the coast. On arrival the children had a snack on the bus and then we went to the toilets. Visual timetables were read, then we were given wristbands so that the children could go on the rides for free. Some were happy to wear the bands but most removed them quickly! Then it was down to the funfair. The children were desperate to go on a ride.
The first one was the log flume. We joined the queue climbed the steps and then had to climb into a log boat. For some children this was okay but for others the step down into the log boat was enormous. They wanted to get into the log boat but just could not actually take the plunge. The man operating the ride stopped it so that the log boat was not moving, but still it was too much. Eventually after about 20 min one of the carers picked up the teenager and put them in the log boat! You should have seen the look of delight on the teenager’s face. Round and round they went, the kind operator let them stay on many circuits. Later this teenager managed to climb into the log boat independently, the reward for doing so outweighed the terror of climbing in.
I then took a young boy on the dodgems. This is a child with very little speech, still in nappies who really struggles to control his behaviour. However on the dodgems he was amazing: he could steer within millimetres of other dodgems, control the speed of the car with a foot pedal with incredible accuracy. He also understood that he had to put on the seatbelt and he then at the end climbed calmly out of the car. WOW.
We had our picnic lunch overlooking the sea. After lunch we went to a soft-play area where the children could move about more freely without their harnesses, as there was absolutely no risk of them running off! A final visit to the toilets, and back on the bus for home.
It was a truly amazing day organised by the British Lions, it was wonderful for these children to be given the opportunity to experience a day out at a funfair. The whole of the funfair that day had been given to special schools. There must have been about 100 children there, all of whom attend a special school. It was also very brave of our school to allow us to go, our children are unpredictable even in an environment they know, so to take them to somewhere new is a particular challenge. I felt very privileged to be included on the trip and the children’s experience of the day is something I will always remember.
A few days later reflecting on why the trip had been such a success was, I think, due to the tremendous amount of planning that had gone into it.
The children’s teacher had visited the funfair the weekend before. Having had a good look and trying to imagine all the possible scenarios he felt that our children needed a safe space to go to if they were not coping with the experience. The owners had kindly offered us the soft play area just for our school to be available all day. The fact that it was not needed during the morning does not mean that it was not essential, we all knew that we had somewhere to take a child that needed to “chill out”.
Some activities had to be ruled out as the risk of an incident was too high. For example a walk on the beach, which may seem simple to a neurologically typical class outing is too much for our group. Nearly all the children love water and it would have been too difficult to stop them running into the sea!
It is a huge responsibility to take any group of children on a trip and often it is easier not to bother. Today with all the ”risk assessments” it is getting harder for any children to have experiences outside the classroom. However it is nearly always worth the effort and stress. The head teacher must have rung us every 20 mins to make sure we were all safe. We were and we had a great day.
Immersion
Due to various commitments I have been unable to help at the special school on my normal afternoon, so I volunteered to help on a different day. The staff looked delighted and asked if I could help at the swimming session at the public baths. I asked if I was expected to get in the water and they laughed and said “yes!” I have to say, while I can swim, I’m not what you would call a strong swimmer – I swim best if I can touch the bottom and I never get my hair wet.
The afternoon arrived and I turned up nervously with my swimming things. The students were all very excited climbing into a minibus. We volunteers had to run to the swimming pool as the students got out of the bus. A bit of a hitch as the lesson before us had not yet finished, our students were expecting to swim and the energy in the reception area was difficult for them to manage.
Next up, the changing rooms: All of the students are male so we use the men’s changing area, but it still caused quite a stir as most of the carers are female and men were changing from last session. The children changed quickly and mainly independently into their swimming things. The carers, in shifts, also changed.
We then went through into the swimming pool and to my amazement all the children went happily down the steps into the water. The session was fantastic all of the children had a go at floating, kicking, putting their face in the water, blowing bubbles, splashing, laughing and generally having a good time. Even I managed to get my feet off the bottom. One of the students loved to spend all of his time under the water. He would just sink to the bottom of the pool and lie on floor face down there not moving. This made me very nervous, but the water was just too deep for me to be able to reach down and pull him up without putting my own head under.
I asked him to stay above the water. He agreed and instead he stood bent at the waist so that his head was submerged. I wonder why he enjoys this so much. Is it because you can hear nothing under the water or that everything looks different? Others love the light in the water droplets and spend much of the session sprinkling the water to catch the light. It was wonderful session, well worth getting my hair wet!
Irlen Syndrome
My daughter has been using her rose pink coloured overlay in school for a week now. I thought that I ought to inform her teachers that she has Irlen syndrome. I emailed the head of learning support at school explaining. She knew all about coloured overlays and obviously passed this information on to my daughters’ teachers. Two of her teachers have already printed worksheets and tests on pink paper! Aren’t they wonderful, I cannot believe that a school can act so quickly and can be so supportive.
I have now found a very good website that explains Irlen syndrome. It is a specific type of perceptual problem that affects the way the brain processes visual information. It is not an optical problem. For those with Irlen Syndrome, the brain is unable to process full spectral light. This can result in distortions in the environment, printed page and lead to physical and behavioural symptoms.
It can be exacerbated by environmental factors such as lighting, brightness, glare, high contrast, patterns and colours. Irlen Syndrome affects people of all ages.
Studies have shown that 12-15% of the population are affected by Irlen Syndrome. However, it is largely undiagnosed because it is not an obvious problem and it is not identified by standard eye tests, my daughter has regular check-up’s at the opticians and it was undiagnosed. Also sufferers think that the perceptual distortions that they experience are “normal”. They assume that everyone else perceives the page and the environment as they do.
There are many symptoms of Irlen Syndrome which include problems with; attention and concentration, effects on reading and writing, headaches, underachievement and behaviour problems to list a few.
It is difficult to say how many of these my daughter suffers from, however what is clear is that since she has had the overlay she has spent far longer reading. The wonderful thing about the overlays is that it is a simple fix to helping her get closer to achieving her full potential. The coloured overlay will not help her spell, that she will still have to work very hard at that.
Most of this information I have got from the very clear website www.irlenuk.com
This website has a great page on Myths & Facts and some lovely Testimonials. My advice to any parent of a dyslexic child or in fact any child who is struggling to read it is worth contacting your GP to get a referral to see an Orthoptist. I don’t know if we’re just lucky where we live that the Orthoptist automatically tests for Irlen Syndrome or whether that’s something you have to ask for.
I now need to research binocular vision and reduced convergence and make sure my daughter is doing her eye exercises!