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Congratulations to Sarah Anderson of Delamere School. She wins a set of switches, Maxess switch mounts, Clicker 4 software and a switch interface for Delamere School, Manchester for her story about using switches in the classroom:
"I have a group of eight pupils in a mixed year one and year two class. Their ability level is around P4 in most areas of the curriculum.
As part of the 'listening' aspect of our Science focus on using our senses we used a selection of noisy, switch activated toys. These included a drumming bunny, a quacking duck, a funky gorilla and a pig. After the pupils had taken turns to play with the toys I hid them under a cloth, leaving the switches exposed.
Each pupil took a turn to choose a switch to activate and after listening to the noise the toy made, either used spoken language to tell me which toy it was, or used photographs of the toys to point to. We then removed the cloth to find out if they were correct. All the pupils found this an exciting, fun activity and were very motivated by the toys. Using switches enabled me to create an activity that fully included each pupil and motivated them to take part. And it was so much more fun than listening to those tapes of noises around the home!
I've also used switches to enable all pupils to access toys that spin or turn, such as the 'twirl o paint', in our Science topic on 'Pushes and pulls'. In maths, with a group of Year two pupils whose ability ranged from P2ii – P7, I created an inclusive counting activity with a BIGmack . This was recorded with 'Ready…….one, two, three, four, five'. One pupil was working on using BIGmacks in a range of situations at a simple cause and effect level. She was in charge of the BIGmack and once she activated it, we all joined in counting and tapping the table to the count. What a fantastic effect! She'd look up and smile broadly, often giggling at the response. And the rest of the group were learning to rote count or match a counting name to the tap on the table."
Caroline Downie wins Choose and Tell: Nursery Rhymes for her story about her daughter Kara.
My daughter Kara is severely disabled with cerebral palsy due to a congenital malformation of the brain. She is now 6 years old but has been very poorly for most of her life and had many operations and long stays in hospital. However for the last few months she has been alert and well and thriving and although she only goes to school for two hours a day at the moment she is learning a lot at home with myself and a part time support worker.
Kara's smile shows that she has just hit the right switch and made 'bear' sing to her!
We introduced her to switches when she was very small and she uses them daily to operate her 'noisy' toys and her cassette player. The best thing I ever bought her was her BIGmack which she takes everywhere with her and because it has my voice on it has been used to keep her smiling and as 'at ease' as she can be in stressful situations such as operating theatre recovery rooms and intensive care, when it has not been possible for me to be with her every minute of the day.
Now that she is better than she has been for most of her life we are excited to be working on Kara's communication skills using a number of switches, to enable her to make choices and communicate them to her carers. She is making great progress very fast and is hitting the right switch many, many times a day. She gets very excited when things work for her and when she gets the right result from what can take an immense amount of effort on her part. To co-ordinate her movements to enable her to hit a fairly small switch at the right time is an exceptional achievement for her.
I am very very proud of her.
We are going to buy a ' BIG step-by-step' next for Kara and put phrases from her favourite stories in sequence on it so that she can take her turn at 'reading' parts of the story for herself.
She has two switches on the armrests of her wheelchair constantly, which work various toys or voice recording devices such as the BIGmack which is also mounted under the seat of her wheelchair.Thanks to the switch technology that is around today I hope she will achieve as much as she can to give herself some control over what happens to her in her day to day life, as up until now she has always had 'things done to her' when we, her carers thought it was the right time to do it, and not necessarily when Kara wanted or needed it.
Many thanks for reading this.
Caroline and Kara Downie