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Placement at the Seashell Trust
- 2. “Our children, young people and adults have a combination of one or more of the following: a hearing impairment, a visual impairment, multi-sensory impairment, autism, physical disability and profound and multiple learning difficulties. All our children and young people have some degree of learning disability and, critically, all of them have little or no ability to communicate” (Seashell Trust, 2013) (Seashell Trust, 2013)
- 4. Communication • British Sign Language • PEC’s • Widgits • Olfaction (Seashell Trust, 2013)
- 5. Sign Language • All staff are taught how to sign • All staff and students who can sign are encouraged to at all times. (Seashell Trust, 2013)
- 6. PEC’s • ‘PECS begins by teaching an individual to give a picture of a desired item to a “communicative partner?, who immediately honors the exchange as a request. The system goes on to teach discrimination of pictures and how to put them together in sentences. In the more advanced phases, individuals are taught to answer questions and to comment’ (PECS. 2012. Online). (Seashell Trust, 2013)
- 7. Widgits • ‘Widgit produce a wide range of symbolsupported learning materials and symbol stories, including extensive topic-based packs 'ready to go' for special and mainstream education, developed by the Symbol Inclusion Project’ (Widgit, 2013. Online) (Seashell Trust, 2013)
- 8. • (Seashell Trust, 2013) • (Seashell Trust, 2013)
- 9. Olfaction • ‘Our students may be deaf, blind, have reduced tactile sensation, be unable to eat or even taste foods by mouth or be unable to participate in most vestibular and proprioceptive activities because of medical conditions like orthostatic hypotension or brittle bones. These means that the sense of smell may be the most powerful means of accessing our students skills’ (Blogspot, 2010) (Seashell Trust, 2013)
- 10. Seashell Trust The Seashell Trust is a fantastic organisation which a range of communication methods. The staff are successful in communicating with all students in their own individual ways.
- 11. References • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • Blogspot. Learning through the olfactory sense. (2010). Online. [Accessed on 21.12.2013] [ Retrieved from http://teachinglearnerswithmultipleneeds.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/learning-through-olfactory-sense.html] PECS. What is PECS?. (2012). Online. [Accessed on 20.12.2013] [ Retrieved from http://www.pecsunitedkingdom.com/pecs.php] Seashell Trust, (2013). Welcome to Seashell Trust. Online. [Accessed on 6.11.13][Retrieved from http://www.seashelltrust.org.uk/] Seashell Trust, (2013).Creative Studies. Online. [Accessed on 6.11.13][Retrieved from http://www.seashelltrust.org.uk/creative-studies] Seashell Trust, (2013). State of Independence. Online. . [Accessed on 6.11.13][Retrieved from http://www.seashelltrust.org.uk/state-independence] Seashell Trust, (2013).Leisure, Activities and Services. Online. [Accessed on 6.11.13][Retrieved from http://www.seashelltrust.org.uk/leisure-activities-and-services] Seashell Trust, (2013).What we do. Online. [Accessed on 6.11.13][Retrieved from http://www.seashelltrust.org.uk/what-wedo] Seashell Trust, (2013).Life at Seashell. Online. [Accessed on 6.11.13][Retrieved from http://www.seashelltrust.org.uk/lifeseashell] Seashell Trust, (2013).Royal School Manchester. Online. [Accessed on 6.11.13][Retrieved from http://www.seashelltrust.org.uk/royal-school-manchester] Widgit. Widgit symbol resource packs. (2013). Online. [Accessed on 20.12.2013] [Retrieved from http://www.widgit.com/resources/index.htm]
Editor's Notes
- The children, young people and adults at Seashell Trust “have a combination of one or more of the following: a hearing impairment, a visual impairment, multi-sensory impairment, autism, physical disability and profound and multiple learning difficulties. All our children and young people have some degree of learning disability and, critically, all of them have little or no ability to communicate”
- The children, young people and adults at Seashell Trust “have a combination of one or more of the following: a hearing impairment, a visual impairment, multi-sensory impairment, autism, physical disability and profound and multiple learning difficulties. All our children and young people have some degree of learning disability and, critically, all of them have little or no ability to communicate”
- All students at Seashell Trust have communication difficulties and to overcome this the Trust use a number of communication aids for example sign language, widgits and PEC’s.
- All staff are taught to sign to a very high level through 2 hour classes once a week. Also if students have the physical ability to then students are taught how to sign too. If students come to Seashell Trust from a none signing family then the family are offered sign language lessons to enable them to communicate with their child when they are at home and to encourage the students to sign as much as possible. Here is the sign language alphabet in case you would like to learn the basics such as your name. Unfortunately I did not learn much sign language when on placement which had an effect on my time there. On one of my first days at placement I was in one of the residential homes on site, where 4 students lived. As all staff, students and myself were having a meal around the table they were all speaking using sign language leaving me feeling very isolated, it made me understand what it would feel like being the students in a speaking environment.
- PEC’s is another form of communication. ‘PECS begins by teaching an individual to give a picture of a desired item to a “communicative partner?, who immediately honors the exchange as a request. The system goes on to teach pictures and how to put them together in sentences. In the more advanced phases, individuals are taught to answer questions and to comment’ (PECS. 2012. Online).Students who can communicate via PEC’s at Seashell Trust all have their own PEC’s books. Within these books there are pictures of items such as their favourite food, drinks and activities along with pictures of their home, bathroom, bedroom and school or college. PEC’s books at Seashell Trust are used as a form of communication, in some cases staff are able to ask a student what sauce they may like on their meal and using their PEC’s books the students would be able to point to their preferred sauce for their meal. During my time at placement I observed students and staff using PEC’s very effectively and I was able to communicate with some students via PEC’s too. PEC’s are used worldwide with children with learning disabilities or loss of speech; they work very effectively and can be adapted to fit the individual’s level of understanding. Here is an example of a PEC’s book, an example of this being used would be if a student was asked what drink they would like with their meal they could decide out of water, juice or vimto. Other examples of communication are timelines, here is an example of a student’s timeline that would explain to them what they are doing that evening. Another form of communication is a switch board, a student would be taught what each switch means for them then to learn to press a switch when they would like something.
- Widgits’ is another further form of communication used at Seashell Trust.‘Widgit produce a wide range of symbol-supported learning materials and symbol stories. (Widgit, 2013. Online)Seashell Trust use the system Symwriter which is a programme where staff can input any sentence and the Symwriter will output the sentence along with the correct use of widgits which the students can understand. As the same wigit symbols are used around the Seashell site students who have the understanding able to read sentences used with widgits.
- Here are two examples of signs that were up in the Seashell Trust, I have received consent from staff to take pictures of these. This picture was up in one of the residential homes, these are the targets for one of the students. Most signs around the Seashell Trust site use the Symwriter programme to enable the students to understand them as well.
- “Many of learner have multiple disabilities, we are often somewhat limited in what sensory pathways we can use to teach new skills or build cognition. Our students may be deaf, blind, have reduced tactile sensation, be unable to eat or even taste foods by mouth because of medical conditions. These means that the sense of smell may be the most powerful means of accessing our students skills”. (Blogspot, 2010) At Seashell Trust staff have been using the olfactory sense to help the students associate smells with activities. For example I observed a member of staff letting a child smell their shower gel as it then signalled to the child that they were going for a shower or bath.
- The Seashell Trust is a fantastic organisation which a range of communication methods. The staff are successful in communicating with all students in their own individual ways. Does anybody have any questions?