Co-Training in Sheffield, Snake Pass and School Trips

Our wonderful volunteers from the key stage 4 dance and drama pathway in New Bridge Academy, (Lumenus) supported us to teach our one day Talking Mats training course recently. We had been invited to provide the Talking Mats Foundation training course, for a group of Speech & Language Therapists and their Occupational Therapy and Physiotherapy colleagues in Sheffield. We talked to the Communication Advocate volunteers about them attending the training and providing some co-training. This was arranged as a school trip. We explored any concerns the advocates had about the day and learned that one of the things they were really looking forward to was driving over snake pass. Which we agreed has an apt title given its winding route.

The Lumenus students (Communication Advocates) have been working on talking mats and they are becoming very experienced at explaining the process and teaching others how to do a mat. We decided that they were ready to co-train, and we also wanted to showcase a movement piece they have created called ‘hear my voice’. The piece is about good listeners and bad listeners and during the performance there were quite a few tears from the audience as it really is a powerful message.

The Communication Advocates attended two courses in March. On the day, once their movement piece was complete the students worked with the therapists and taught them how to complete a talking mat. Feedback from the course participants was great-

“I particularly enjoyed the children’s dance/drama performance.”

“Meeting the students was an unexpected bonus.”

“Loved being trained by the students too.”

“Was great to have a go on the receiving end of a Talking Mat and see how it feels as a recipient and what’s important as a listener.”

“Presentation was super – never had an experience with co-delivery/training by students – they performed such a moving drama; it was such a brilliant experience of learning by interacting with the students.”

“Thank you for a really informative and inspiring day. Working with the young people was a very special bonus.”

“Young people coming to teach us was so valuable. Their performance was really poignant and beautifully explained

– good vs bad listeners and the impact this can have.”

“It was great to see the children and to have a chance to work with them.”

Following the training the students visited a park in Sheffield and luckily they had sunshine too, before returning to Oldham via snake pass of course. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_Pass

I asked the Communication Advocates for their thoughts on the trip.

Their comments were as follows:

What we thought of performing

· Fabulous

· Inspiring – inspired me to be confident

· I thought it was really really, really good. I felt sad because the bad listeners wrapped people up, but then I felt happy

because the good listeners unwrapped them

· Very, very fabulous, I want work on showing even more facial expression

· It was very important for people to listen

· It was good

What we thought of training the staff

· I felt proud because I’d never done teaching before

· I think working with the people on the course was good for me

· I felt uncomfortable teaching adults

· It was good to help the staff

The trip

· It was tiring

· I fell asleep

· I felt really happy

· I think going to Sheffield on snake pass was fun

· I loved the park!

· I love snake pass

Class Teacher Sophia Pilgrim said of her key stage 4 group

‘I’m immensely proud of Lumenus, how confident they have become. They have learned how to teach talking mats in such a short space of time’

Alison Matthews

With thanks to OL1-Oldham for funding towards the project.

Communication Passports as a tool to capture pupil voice in transition

Hey everyone! My name is Khadija. I am a 1st year student from the University of Manchester, and I just finished my first clinical placement with Total Communication Services CIC, based at New Bridge School and College. One of the projects that we worked on at New Bridge School, is Communication Passports. On the first day, I attended a meeting with Danielle Cotton and Valerie Bayley, both New Bridge School staff working on the student's EHCPS. Val explained that an EHCP is an educational and healthcare plan given to all the students at the school, that displays a set of personalised education and healthcare as well as social needs that are needed to be met for that student. We discussed a document called "all about me", which essentially provides meaningful information all about the student. This led to us coming up with ways to try and convert these into communication passports for the students.

The introduction of communication passports came about as part of the Pupil Voice Project. Many of the students have all about me profiles, which are digital documents held by staff. Total Communication Services CIC staff thought that these could be converted into communication passports. Communication passports are more widely used by adult services and are owned by the person. The benefit of a passport is that it stays with the person and can move between locations. It is owned by them and is a more accessible version of the all about me profile. The emphasis is also on how to communicate more effectively with the pupil. School leavers were identified as being a priority for this work.

Communication passports are a way of supporting people when they transition. They are a good way for students to provide information about themselves to others, especially if they have difficulty communicating in the first place. The students that we worked with specifically, are going to be transferred to a new environment, so having a communication passport to take with them will benefit them positively. Passports are also a way to start an interaction. The information included, can help the student and the conversational partner to start a conversation based on a certain topic in the passport.

We discussed ideas that allowed the students to get as involved as possible in the making of these passports. Even if they weren’t necessarily able to voice their opinion themselves, they were still able to provide input by telling us what colours to use, or certain pictures they would like to include and we involved parents as we realised that they knew the child best and their input needed to be central to the process. These were some of the ideas discussed to make sure the student was as involved as possible and their voice was heard in some shape or form. This helped a lot as it gave me a slight insight into how I would approach the students that I worked with, to make their communication passports.

I’ve completed 4 weeks on placement and worked with two students on their passports in this time. I had the opportunity to work with them once every week and learnt to make sure that they were engaged during our meetings and that they enjoyed this experience of making their passports and it is something to be celebrated. Some students had digital passports, and some had tactile passports, depending on their specific needs. We asked the teachers at the beginning of the project, which passport they think would be appropriate for the students. The students that I worked with specifically, were from the autism and interaction-based parts of the school, therefore, one required a digital passport and the other required a tactile passport. I really enjoyed working with the students and the staff members and parents to create these passports, as well as observing how the pupils communicated with the staff and vice versa. I gained lots of transferable skills by the end of my placement, which will benefit me in the future. A specific skill that I worked on was trying to build a rapport with people and make them feel comfortable enough to want to communicate with me freely, especially while I worked with the students and the staff to make the communication passports. I feel that I have gotten better at this and it is my biggest takeaway from this placement.

Khadija Hussain

First year Speech & Language Therapy Student

University of Manchester

Useful Reference:

• Personal Communication Passports: Guidelines for Good Practice

See website: http://callcentre.education.ed.ac.uk

For templates see: https://www.communicationpassports.org.uk

From Singapore to New Bridge School: My Experience of Cultural Differences Between Two Settings

Hi everyone! This blog will be about the cultural differences I experienced during my placement at New Bridge.

Firstly, some background information about me, I am Gwyneth, a first-year international student from the University of Manchester. I was born and raised in Singapore. Prior to University, I did a Diploma in Early Childhood Development and Education, where I took on Early Intervention modules in my final year. This allowed me to intern and work part-time at inclusive preschools.

Growing up in a slightly traditional Chinese family, coming to the UK, I experienced quite a bit of culture shock. Thus, after my first week at New Bridge, I remember speaking to one of my friends from Singapore, who worked at one of Singapore’s biggest autism schools, where I realised how much more advanced New Bridge was.

Despite having experience working in an inclusive preschool, it was still very different from what I expected when I entered New Bridge School. The first scene I remember when I entered New Bridge was the staff wheeling a student on an Acheeva bed. I remember thinking about whether it was an emergency, however, after getting a tour around the school, I realised that it was just one of the many mobility and assistive devices that the school provides. This was something that I had not seen in the schools in Singapore.

Moreover, the indoor pools in New Bridge used for hydrotherapy were very interesting to me, as Singapore did not have hydrotherapy within school compounds. The majority of the time, hydrotherapy would be carried out, out of the school and it would be additional charges that the parents would have to pay.

Additionally, New Bridge School are very open to inclusive topics. Allowing inclusive topics like LGBTQ+ to be discussed amongst students and teachers. When I entered the Lumenus class and the students were talking about the different types of gender and sexualities, I was taken aback at how knowledgeable the students were about the topics, as well as how the teachers just stood back and allowed the students to discuss it so openly. Coming from a traditional society like Singapore, topics like LGBTQ+ would not be open for discussion in schools. Thus, students in Singapore are not well informed about such inclusive topics. On top of that, New Bridge also carried out an event for Pride this year during Pride month. Upon hearing about that, I was pleased to see how open the school was.

New Bridge School also focuses more on holistic development and helping the students live as independently as possible. New Bridge School has different pathways for the students to excel in what they enjoy and what they are good at. Whereas, in Singapore, the curriculum is more academically focused, where most students are put through examinations. How this works is that it would take a special need student will take 3 years to complete 1 year of a typical student’s academic content. Needless to say, this was stressful for the students and my friend told me that during the examination period, the students at the special need school would have an increased number of meltdowns and self-harm.

During my first session with the Lumenus students, we observed how the students carried out the talking mats sessions. We were also told about how the teachers were planning to let them be the listener and lead the sessions, to gain the views of the other students in the school on the topic of “How I feel about school”. I thought that this peer interaction plan was good as it enables the students to get a chance to lead, and at the same time, they will get to listen to the other students’ views.

Through this placement, I definitely learnt a lot from New Bridge and its approaches, and I will definitely take this knowledge alone with me to my other placements and also back to Singapore if I decide to practice back in Singapore.

P.S. Singapore definitely has a lot of development and positives, but this blog was just mainly focused on the parts where I thought New Bridge was better developed. (I still love Singapore very much ♥︎)

By Gwyneth Teo