Kai, one of our amazing students at Inscape House School has been excelling in his Sing and Sign abilities recently.
As part of his practice he has been keen to showcase his knowledge using different media. Staff have been helping him put together video guides to show others across the school.
The signs he is using are called Makaton, a unique language programme that combines speech, hand signs, and picture symbols to help people communicate.
Kai has been having weekly Emotional Literacy Support Assistant (ELSA) sessions to explore his feelings. As part of this he has been learning about Makaton signs. From there Kai has taken it upon himself to learn more Makaton, so while a lot of the signs will follow general guidelines from the Makaton Charity, some might be creatively improvised by him – showing a great understanding of the lyrics and their meaning.
When Makaton is used alongside music, this is called ‘Sing and Sign’. This is often used to help build vocabulary and stimulate cognitive and emotional development for our autistic students.
Students that access Inscape House School, our educational setting for autistic young people, benefit from a wide range of support with their communications skills. We have a dedicated team of Speech and Language Therapists that work directly with students to meet their specific needs.
ELSA interventions are short-term, targeted, and tailored to the individual needs of each child. They are designed to support emotional development rather than provide therapy or ‘fix’ problems.
We promote a total communication approach which values all forms of communication. An important part of each and every young person’s development is the growth of the ability to communicate with others, both verbally and non-verbally. Communication underpins many aspects of learning and in a school setting provides access to the curriculum.
