Actively engaged

Shared Campus

Headteacher of Hamilton School: I am the Headteacher at Hamilton School for the Deaf based in Burnbank in Hamilton. We’ve just moved to a new school, which is great. And we share it with our mainstream primary school.

Headteacher of Glenlee Primary: I am the Headteacher at Glenlee Primary and we share the campus with Hamilton School for the Deaf. The shared campus has come about because we both needed a new school, we both have a specialism in deaf education and our school specialises in oral, aural education [and] Hamilton School for the Deaf specialises in signing.

Headteacher of Hamilton School: At the moment we have fourteen children within the school and the nursery, who come from a whole range of backgrounds. Some have got deaf parents, some have got hearing parents. And we also have a few children who are deaf with additional needs, other than deafness. So, we’ve got quite a range of children within the school and the nursery.

Because the children have needs with language we have speech and language therapists who come into the school three mornings a week. We also have an educational audiologist who’s based in the school, who is for North and South Lanarkshire. And that means that if there's anything wrong with hearing aids or radio aids, we have someone on site who can fix them or check them out right away, so we don’t have a delay.

Educational Audiologist: With the children’s school I’m responsible for the hearing aids. The teachers do daily checks and if there are any problems that they can’t solve, they come to me and I help to sort them out. I maintain the radio aid equipment, and that’s very important, especially if they're going into mainstream classes, that that’s working to the best of its ability. We also have sound field systems in the school and they have to be checked regularly basis as well.

Headteacher of Hamilton School: We also work well with Educational Psychologists who come to visit the children and also to do further assessments. And we have, for the first time since we came here, we now have a home school-link partnership worker, which means that our children are getting opportunities – and their families – to do things that they never did before.

Communication

Headteacherof Hamilton School: The majority of our children use British Sign Language as their main language, but in school we also use sign-supported English so that they can learn to read and write in the correct word order. So that’s very much our focus. We also use voice where appropriate and encourage them to use their voice.

We have some of the children working in the classrooms, going in for inclusion and learning. And one of the main benefits for the girls, two of the girls who are doing writing, is that they're exposed to so many ideas and discussion that, perhaps, they wouldn’t have had in a small class. And that’s just because they’ve not been exposed to it before. And I think it’s great, it’s given them ideas – they're very confident now, they put their hands up and things like that. But they're also making friends within that class and you can see that outside, they're going to play with people within the class.

Parent translated from sign-language: They mix with the English class to help with their writing and to help improve brainstorming and things – to help them improve their English language. And to help them to have the confidence to communicate with hearing children.

Support Staff: Sam [is] leaving with the rest of the team is because he's been selected today to play in a football tournament, which is taking place today, in Hamilton. There’s various numbers of schools involved in this and it helps Sam to mix with the other children from the other schools.

Active Learning

Headteacher of Hamilton School: The Active Learning programme is really, the way that we’ve looked at it is, an extension of nursery. We’ve decided this year that the children will not sit down at a desk right away and do writing and reading and things like that. They will move from the nursery (looking at the nursery and what they have done in nursery) and extend it into a Primary 1 programme, which we call Active Learning.

The principle behind it is that the children get lots of experiences touching, feeling – doing things without actually putting pen to paper or getting a reading book. So, they're getting all the characters for their reading books, they're getting all their language for their reading books but they don’t actually have a reading book just now.

They learn how to do letter formation, number formation, matching and it is more structured than nursery but it’s still learning and fun. And that’s important that it's fun and they enjoy it.

Parent 2: Structured play within Glenlee Primary is, very much, a mirror image of a nursery setting, whereby, they learn from activities on desktops and do a range of activities that they all have to cover. Now, it is being introduced into Primary 2 as well and my son has been involved in that and the positive feedback from that … he’s really enjoying it, very much so.

Teacher at Hamilton School for the Deaf: Both schools are following the Active Learning Path and I think the children are benefiting from that in lots of ways, socially and educationally. Because they're able to talk about maths, language and they're able to discuss that and their learning through play.

Teacher 2 at Hamilton School for the Deaf: Active Learning is, basically, an extension of nursery, but you expect more from the children. It’s learning through play, but always with an aim at the end of it – so, it’s quite structured. The children do have an element of free choice in the activities that they do and when they do the activities.

Teacher at Hamilton School for the Deaf: This method of education – the kinaesthetic method of education – particularly suits children who are using sign language because they are using kinaesthetics to learn in their normal, everyday life.

Teacher 2 at Hamilton School for the Deaf: It really gives them a way of getting the fundamentals of learning before they are actually putting pencil to paper. Like the number bonds and the phonics and everything, before they, actually, have to write it. It's quite good … through a play situation, it’s a lot more relaxed.

Parent translated from sign-language: I think this school is fantastic. It’s improved their education and their skills compared to when I was at school, myself.

Support Staff

Teacher at Hamilton School for the Deaf: The deaf classroom assistant is a very good role model for the children in the Hamilton School for the Deaf.

Classroom Assistant for Hamilton School for the Deaf translated from sign-language: My job is to support the children. For example, maybe one child came with no language and it was my responsibility to help them and encourage them and teach them to sign and to help them get on with that. Also, because I’m deaf, myself, I’m a role model here for the children. And I give them BSL (British Sign Language) stories and explain things in BSL.

Headteacher of Hamilton School: We are, very much, moving towards a mainstream curriculum more, and more, and more. And because we’ve moved to a mainstream campus with Glenlee, we have looked at our materials that we’re using and we have changed our reading scheme this year with the Primary 1s to Oxford Reading Tree so that we can work closely with the mainstream school.

The idea would be that the children have got the support of a mainstream class and we encourage them, as they learn, to improve their reading and writing skills. We want them to work within a mainstream setting.

There's a wee bit of a conception, sometimes, that a school for the deaf … that we’re not doing the same work as a mainstream [school] – that we’re looking at it from a different angle. I think, we’re moving more and more towards … our children can achieve within a mainstream setting and we are trying to get our children to realise that they’re the same, academically, as mainstream children and they can achieve and they can do things. And I think when you're using the same materials, they see it more as ‘we’re together’ rather than ‘we’re doing this and they're doing that’ and we want to move away from that.

I’m very much aware that we have to encourage our children, like the four capacities of A Curriculum for Excellence [are] ideal for our children – there is no reason why they cannot achieve. We have to make sure that they do and, I think, the opportunities within the learning and teaching environment, within the two schools, gives us that great opportunity to move forward and encourage them and hope that we have really good, high achievers – socially and emotionally – and I think that’s very important.