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Speaking Out Being Heard - Working with the young children at Newbridge

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.


Emily Marsh Speech & Language Therapy student University of Manchester
Emily Marsh Speech & Language Therapy student University of Manchester


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.



Memory Pairs
Memory Pairs


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]








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