This is a longish post, but I hope it'll inspire in some way teachers and parents who work with or have SEN children. Working with a SEN learner is a huge challenge for any teacher. You do need to be fully aware of their Zone of Actual Development to be able to create scaffolded tasks which will allow the child to work at their own Zone of Proximal Development. You also need to have extra-special teachers who come up with wonderful ideas.
I have to say I'm super impressed by the work being done by Gabriel's class teacher and his "facilitator". In the case of Gabriel, if he were left in a class with the other children and their class teacher and assistant it would certainly not work out. He's a child who does need addititional support at all times in order to ensure he doesn't withdraw into his private little world, isolated from everyone else. Both his class teacher, Bianca, and facilitator, Camila, are very young. Bianca has just graduated from teacher training college and Camila is in her final year at college. The school was very cautious about this, having asked my opinion before setting up this, but as always I have great faith in graduate teachers. I also know that in this school they demand weekly planning sessions with the coordinators to ensure the newer teachers are developing consistent work, so I felt and feel completely comfortable with this.
But a week before going to the UK in March I went into school to have a chat with the coordinator and the teachers to see how all was progressing. I was really impressed by Gabriel's reactions to the new teachers. He felt really at home with both. I was impressed by the fantastic solution Camila came up with to help Gabriel hold pens. She noticed Gabriel has an aversion to holding pens and pencils, but he likes bits of cloth. So she covered chunky felt tip pens with padded cloth. So now he holds onto pens! He can draw..isn't this amazing!!! And this teacher is only 22!!!! This is the type of educator I feel enthusiastic about.
We agreed that Gabriel would also have his little weekend tasks (just like the other kids), but these would always have a more practical slant and always connected in some way to a story book, as he loves being read to.
So, so far we've had:
1) A book on shapes: The task was to select a shape and find toys in his room which were of that shape. I was in Glasgow when the task was set, so after a brief family meeting over Skype to decide how the task would be carried out, Gabriel was able to complete it. This time round we focused on the round shape, as one of the things we are doing via Occupational Therapy and Physiotherapy is to get Gabriel to hold balls and play with them.
2) Macaco Danado: The story is about the young monkey finding his mum. Camila chose this book as I'd brought a cuddly toy monkey for Gabriel from the UK and he'd been taking this to school. So, after reading the story we were supposed to glue on the page the animals after imitating the animal sounds.
This task posed 2 challenges: getting Gabriel to make the sounds & getting him to glue the paper on the sheet.
So, this is when story reading has to be dramatised by mum...no use just reading this flat...so we made animal sounds and actions. I also found a jigsaw he has with some of the animal sounds in the story and we played with this. We also found a toy parrot, and this was brought along to the table. And of course, the toy monkey was used to mediate the task in hand.
So, after all these bits and pieces, I managed to get Gabriel to make a snake sound (ssssss), a parrot noise (aarhhhhh -which I thought was good enough) and a butterfly noise (the flapping of wings, which he didn´t imitate but thought was funny, so that counted for me). So we glued those 3 animals. The tricky bit was getting him to stick the pictures on the sheet...Gabriel is obsessed with paper, so as the monkey stuck things down, Gabriel did try to pull it off...but I used good quality glue!
3) Beleleu: This story is about a little monster which hides toys when they are left out of place. The task was to talk about tidy and untidy rooms and to get the child to tidy their room. Gabriel has only just recently learnt how to remove objects and toys from shelves and his toy boxes. This is a great thing, but it does mean that as the day progresses he scatters toys, pillows, clothes around the house (and anything we leave on tables...pendrives being a current favourite). I took photos of the untidy rooms. And at the end of the day, after dinner and before putting on his pijamas we went around the house picking things up. Gabriel can now respond to simple commands such as "Bend down, pick it up, stand up". Notice that we need to give all the stages of instructions otherwise he will stop and won't continue. We also need to be direct and can't use diminutives (which is so common in the Portuguese language). Everything was tidied (with some help from mum of course) and we snapped another picture.
I chose the following day to read the story as the Saturday had been rather too busy. As I read the story Gabriel almost burst into tears. I'd never seen this before. The story used a repetitive chunk of language in the narrative "O Beleleu vai pegar." (meaning: "Beleleu will take it", referring to the toys left out of place). Now, Gabriel, being an only child, is very possessive of his toys. Sharing is something he does well at school, but he goes wild every time his cousins come round and touch his toys. I know part of the problem is related to his need to have routine and order in things (unless he does the messing up, and then that is fine), but the idea of someone taking his toys is confusing for him. I think that this is what happened as I read the story.
As Gabriel is unable to share his feelings vocally, we are solely dependent on physical signs. We know he understands a great deal of the speech we use with him, but we never quite know how much he actually understands. So we're sometimes caught off guard. The repetition of "take" ("pegar") must have conjured a mental image for him which was really upseting. So to avoid a further upset, I had to comfort him saying his room was really nice and tidy and nothing would be taken.
I shared this episode with Camila, who's first reaction was to say "But I chose this story as I think he'd heard it before last year." Ah, yes, true, but last year Gabriel wasn´t as sensitive as he is today, nor did he pay as much attention to our speech. So, even though he was upset, I felt the task showed me a great deal about where Gabriel is developmentally and how he is relating things to his emotions.
4) O gato: about a naughty cat who ends up winning a competition. This book was a delight to read, as it has a strong rhyme and rhythm to it. It's a long story and I wondered whether Gabriel would sit through it in one go. But, as the story rhythm and rhyme is so delicious, Gabriel was captured by the musicality of the text (again, its so important for this to be read with a touch of story-telling technique otherwise you miss out on the beauty of the language). As of the fourth page he was jumping up and down as he heard the story, shouting with delight and clapping his hands. We captured this on video (I'm filming all the work we do with him and sharing this with teachers and all the specialists who attend Gabriel so they see how he reacts to these tasks). It was great fun.
The practical part of the task was to go to a pet shop & see different pets. This was great fun as well. Don´t think he'd ever been into a pet shop before, with the different animal sounds (actually, only dogs barking as the hamsters and rabbits were dead silent...). He liked looking at the animals (dogs and rabbit). We also had to say which pet he would like to have, but I thought it would be better not to impose my choice on him (which is a dog of course....), so we just added a picture of him looking at the different pets.
At the parents' meeting at the start of term we had been told the children would have "homework" (hate this word) twice a week and as the first month passed by and Gabriel brought nothing home I suspected they weren´t going to assign anything for him. At the meeting I had with them, they confirmed this to me, saying that parents didn´t usually like the extra burden and that they knew the tasks could involve a lot of work on my part. Yes, they were right, but I just felt this wouldn´t be fair to Gabriel. How would he feel not handing in his file on Monday to the teachers? You see, anything which is part of a routine is tremendously important for him. Every day, when I get home, Gabriel shows me his diary, in which teachers make notes about what he did (and I found out that part of the routine is to remove the diary from the rucksack when he arrives at school), so why wouldn't it be the same with the homework file? No, we had to find a way of sorting out the homework task.
And we have. It's sent home on Thursday, so I can take a look at it and if I have doubts, I can still talk to the teacher on Friday. It also allows us to plan our weekend around what needs to be done.
I have to say, this has added a lot of fun to our weekend.
Wouldn't miss this for the world!
