collaboration

Skills for
How can therapists and teachers provide effective support for secondary aged pupils with specific language impairment? Barbara Clarkson and Angela Peel join forces with their Year 8 and Year 10 pupils to offer some ideas.
Role as facilitators
We believe it is the HOW of our lessons rather than the content that makes the difference. All pupils are supported in developing their own thinking and evaluation skills right from the start - we give them the responsibility for working out solutions and see our role very much as facilitators rather than teachers or therapists. We set the task and then ask key prompt questions, constantly feeding back the problem to the pupils so that they make their own discoveries. We often find that the lesson explodes in new and powerful directions, ignited by the pupils own need to learn and change. But what do our pupils think Challenger is all about? We decided to take the plunge and ask our Year 8 and Year 10 pupils to brainstorm what they thought we were learning in Challenger. Quotes following on from the brainstorm are reproduced with pupils own styles and spellings. Barbara Clarkson is a specialist speech and language therapist with Eastern Wakefield Primary Care Trust and Angela Peel the specialist teaching head of Wakefield secondary speech and language resource at St Wilfrids Catholic High School, 6th Form and Language College. This article was written with the resource pupils from Years 8 and 10.

Read this
Read this if you are interested in metacognition promoting inclusion improving social skills collaboration

O
Angela & Barbara

Our model is based on an 11 year collaborative relationship as a specialist teacher and a specialist speech and language therapist.

ur secondary speech and language resource, based at a High School which also has a 6th form and language college status, opened in September 1999, aiming to provide successful inclusive education for pupils aged 11 years and over who have severe specific language impairment. The model of provision which has developed is based on pupils with specific language impairment receiving their education within their peer group in mainstream lessons for all subject areas except modern foreign languages, supported by specific specialist lessons within the resource focusing on Learning Skills and Challenger - Social Skills. We are now finding real evidence of this being a successful practice. Our model is based on an 11 year collaborative relationship as a specialist teacher and a specialist speech and language therapist. Our way of doing social skills work with such pupils through Challenger groups was our first collaborative venture all those years ago, and now provides the foundation for all the other specialist support we provide for our current pupils. We believe that we are providing an opportunity for pupils to develop a clear picture of themselves warts and all and to be proud of who they are, to develop awareness of positive interaction within school with teachers and peers and the skills that make it work, and to extend their metacognitive ability to think about their actions in situations and problem solve effectively. We started our Challenger work following the outline provided within the Social Use of Language Programme developed by Wendy Rinaldi (see Rinaldi, 2001), but found that we needed an ongoing curriculum of social development which went beyond the excellent foundation it provided. For pupils in our resource, Challenger holds a permanent place on their timetable, once every week throughout their time with us. We cover basic skills of interaction along with introducing self / other awareness in Year 7 (a year of Social Use of Language Programme work), and then extend these themes through a more topic based approach in later years (for example, bullying, rules and discipline, friendship, repairing breakdown in relationships,

celebration of who I am, feelings and their expression, teamwork and so on).

References
Rinaldi, W. (2001) SULP-R. Windsor: NFER-Nelson.*

Reflections
Do I recognise that how I give my input can be more important than the content? Do I tap into a clients own need to learn and change? Do I give clients the opportunity to say what they think they are learning?

SPEECH & LANGUAGE THERAPY IN PRACTICE SPRING 2004

collaboration

life
G THINKIN

FRIE NDS HIP

T RESPEC

CONCE NTRATI ON
We play communicating games because it helps us better when were in conversations and other things. (Year 8)

Challenger has a lot of activities that well help you to make a lot of improvement to how you work in a classroom and at home. In most of the challengers lessons we work as a group to improve each other. In challenger we play a game at the start of the lesson to get us to start think. (Year 10)

The games are there to improve our skills and to give us more confidence...The games also helps us to concentrate and to be patient and different ways to think. Also to use the right body language. We also do brainstorms and the teachers do roleplay so we will know what to do and what not to do and to see if we can spot the mistakes what we might do. (Year 10)

CONFID ENCE

T TAC N O C EYE

INCLUS ION

The way Ive think Challengers help is me is Ive become more & more confident....I can having a conversation where as 4 years I didnt want to have conversation as much I show people what I know orally. Another way Challenger has helped my is Ive learnt to work as a group where as 4 years I use work on my own as much as possible. (Year 10)

WORK GROUP
The skill in this activity teaches me how to do eye contact better and it helps my memory remember things. (Year 10)

EXPRES SION

E ENC I T A P

We learn about teamwork, to believe in each other, express our thoughts and to share other peoples ideas...Learn to be patient so we can wait for people to finish what they have to say so you dont think that your ideas are the most important. We also have to respect each other. (Year 10) You share feelings so that you can have fiends to share with you. (Year 8)

You can learn things by listen to people and talking to people so you can understand what they are saying. (Year 8)

Social skills means working with people not alone all the time and we learn things when we work together we take turns in listening to people and talk to people. (Year 8)

GE GUA N A We make new friends Because YL BOD we want to be mate and be

nice to each other. (Year 8)

In all the challenger lessons we have this thing called a brainstorm. This helps us to write things down so we dont forget them. (Year 10)

ROLE-P LAY

TURN T AKING
I think that challenger has help me to think before I do something. In some of the lessons we get to work in a group so it gets us used to working as a team.....I think that challenger will help people that have some problems to think and to get them to work more if they will play the game challenger. (Year 10)

G TORMIN BRAINS
Social skills help us with reading, writing, thinking and doing and the way people live and work together in groups. (Year 8)

The challenger has leant us a lot of skills like trying to us use eye contact...The activities teach to us will help us to think about what we will have to face in life and to get us to use them in the lessons and when you are out with friend. The skills that we have learnt is eye contact and to use it when someone is talking to us. The activities we have learnt is to help people how have to get the help of people to get their ideas across in a group so it lets us now what they are thinking. When someone is feeling left out we try to get them to work as a group with us and to get them to get their ideas across if they want to help and work in a group. (Year 10)

REMEM BERING

...help each other as a team because we are honest, trusting and all friends. (Year 8)

We learn things from Challenger by using it anywhere if someone in troble or got problems. (Year 8)

NG LISTENI
We play games because it is to get us thinking about are lesson and get are brains started. (Year 8)

PRACTI CE

SPEECH & LANGUAGE THERAPY IN PRACTICE SPRING 2004