As part of the Total Communication project, ‘Speaking Out Being Heard’, we spent three weekly sessions at Newbridge SEN school in a year 7 class, to use our signalong resources and observe their baseline signalong skills to become
co-trainers and communication advocates for others.
Communication advocates aim to ensure that people can communicate effectively, by providing support for different communication strategies like signalong, and make sure that these individuals have the opportunity to be heard and be included in meaningful conversations regarding their wants and needs. Throughout these sessions, the students were highly engaged and showed great enthusiasm in signing and wanted to continue learning.
‘Speaking Out Being Heard’ is a project funded by the National Lottery Community Fund, and with this we were able to run three sessions at Newbridge with the focus on observing their baseline signing skills and introducing core vocabulary so that they can become co-trainers and communication advocates for their peers. Our aims were to demonstrate the key signs for the topics food, Christmas, feelings, and personal care and body parts.
To find out which words would be most useful and impactful for these students, we collaborated with their class teacher, Samantha Coleman-Cellis, who gave us insight into the words that would be most important for these children.
The Total Communication team had also taken feedback from parents at previous training sessions. Being able to demonstrate the signs for these key words is essential in helping the individuals to express their needs and develop positive relationships through social interaction, while also making sure that they can support their peers to be independent and empowered to speak up.
During the first session, our main goal was to get to know the children so that we could build a good rapport with them and gain an understanding into their lives and what they understand about signing, if anything. After spending this time with the students, it became clear that they all appeared to have some understanding into the importance of signing to support individuals to communicate effectively. All the students also seemed interested and motivated in learning signing and were keen to learn more. Then, during the other two sessions, we each focused on trialling the signalong resources we created, thanks to Total Communication Services CIC (TCS) and the National Lottery Community Fund, such as memory pairs for feelings, a board game for Christmas, dominoes for food, and a memory “I went to the shops” game for personal care and body parts. These topics were chosen by TCS to ensure the children can help others to express their emotions, wants, and experiences, while also understanding themselves and their bodies. This is an important aspect for both safeguarding and empowerment, which the signalong sessions will continue to support. With this in mind, we made sure that our resources were both educational and enjoyable to each student so that they were motivated to actively engage and retain the knowledge.
In the final session, we observed and recorded their baseline signalong skills to support the teacher in developing her pupils’ skills to become communication advocates. During this, we would demonstrate the signs and then see if they were able to recall the signs and could use the correct handshapes, direction, placement, movement, and orientation. It is important that we focused on these aspects to ensure that there are no miscommunications and so that they can then
co-train their peers effectively. From observing the students, we were able to notice their enthusiasm for the signalong sessions and the ability to learn signing, which reflected in their performance and the fact that they stated they really enjoyed the experience with the Total Communication Services team and the project.
Overall, Samantha, the teacher felt that the sessions and films we produced, “will enable the student to practice signs, build confidence with signing in front of and with new people, build on their self-esteem and enable them to practice the games which could be used in the signalong training sessions”. From this, we can understand that our resources will be helpful in the co-training and helping the students to support their peers, leading to “benefits of a total communication environment”. In the future, we think it would positively impact the individuals at the school and potentially other children, with the help of additional funding, to create an inclusive environment where everyone has the opportunity to ‘Speak Out Being Heard’.
Example of some of the resources Emily developed:
Memory Pairs
Rules:
This game can be played in small groups.
Setup:
Shuffle the cards and place them face down.
Gameplay:
1. First player turns over one card, does the sign for that card (e.g. happy) then turns over a second card to see if they
are the same or different.
2. If the cards match, do the sign for “same”, if the cards do not match, do the sign for “different”.
3. If they are the same, the player keeps the pair and gets to have another turn, using the sign for “again”.
4. If the cards are different, the player turns the cards back over and the next player starts their turn.
5. The players continue taking turns and practicing the signs until all pairs are matched.
At the end, the player with the most pairs wins the game.
Symbols from https://boardmakeronline.com/ [boardmakeronline.com]
Boardmaker and PCS symbols supplied by: Tobii Dynavox Ltd. Sheffield Science Parks, Cooper Building. Arundel Street, Sheffield, S1 2NS Email: sales.uk@tobiidynavox.com
Tel: +44 (0)114 4810011 [boardmakeronline.com].
The Picture Communication Symbols ©1981–2018 by Tobii Dynavox. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. Used with permission. Boardmaker® is a trademark of Tobii Dynavox. www.boardmakeronline.com [boardmakeronline.com]
The Speaking Out Being Heard project has been supported by the National Lottery Community Fund. We have a number of activities which we have been delivering over the last 12 months. The project then developed and with the help of 4 Speech & Language Therapy students from the University of Manchester we were able to extend the scope. The students were on placement from mid-November to mid-December.
We:
· Provided training and supported staff from Pathways to Opportunities to implement Signalong in their day centre via
6 Signalong group sessions.
· Developed resources for families and staff to use with Pathways and New Bridge School
· Worked with the young people and teachers at New Bridge to develop resources
· Made 4 short films with the help of DISC college in Manchester
· Consulted self-advocates about their views on the next steps for our project
The students began their placement with a Signalong workshop delivered by Alison and Helen. They were lucky enough to be given access to the Signalong library by Signalong for the duration of the project. One of their first tasks was to look at feedback from the participants and produce a summary from the workshop.
Alison Matthews
S<
Director TCS
One of the satisfying things about working in a place you were once very familiar with, is the opportunity to revisit
and re-vamp previous work.
The Total Communication policy and guidelines were initially developed in Oldham and the main authors were myself and Helen Newman, in our roles as Speech & Language Therapists in the NHS.
Last year we reviewed the document and decided that it needed to be updated. With the support of New Bridge School,
I was able to spend some time working with Helen, adapting the policy and providing new guidance in the form of grab sheets. It was reassuring to know that many of our initial ideas were still relevant.
Helen and I are pleased with the results. It’s not perfect, but as a shared outline of the values underpinning and the approach to total communication, we think it works well. We think it contains most of the approaches we use but there will inevitably be some we need to add, maybe in another 18 years!
Alison Matthews
