Specialist Provision for Deaf Children (SPD)
Moss Bury is home to one of only two units in Hertfordshire with specialist provision for deaf children working with primary aged children from Reception to Year 6.
The SPD at Moss Bury offers daily specialist intervention and in-class support from a Teacher of the Deaf, a highly specialised teaching assistant and two additional teaching assistants.
We use an auditory oral communication approach meaning that we focus on teaching through speaking and listening whilst helping the children to make effective use of hearing technology in order to make the most of their residual hearing.
We currently have 6 children in the provision.
Staff
- Mr Callum Newbury - Teacher in the Deaf Unit
- Ms Siobhan White - Teacher of The Deaf
- Mrs Wright - Specialist Teaching Assistant
- Mrs May - Teaching Assistant
- Ms Brolia - Teaching Assistant
The children in the SPD all have Educational and Health Care Plans and have been assessed by the Deaf and Hearing Support Service. Their suitability for a place in the SPD is decided by a multi-disciplinary panel.
The children have been assessed as having the potential to develop speech and language without using a sign approach and it is therefore vital that they have high quality access to sound. They all wear hearing aids or have cochlear implants and use radio aids to further assist their listening ability. (Radio aids are systems which send sound from a microphone transmitter worn by the speaker to a receiver worn at ear level by the listener.)
Radio aids are checked before the children get to school and listening and equipment checks are carried out as soon as the children arrive to ensure that they have fully working listening devices at all times.
We maintain close links with the children's audiology clinics and with their Speech and Language Therapists. We are very lucky to have a visiting Speech and Language Therapist who comes to school once a week, providing 1:1 opportunities for structured speech and language sessions in our acoustically treated room ensuring that the children have the best listening environment when working on specific language tasks. The Speech and Language Therapist will set individual programmes of work for the children which will be followed up by the SPD staff throughout the week.
When working in their mainstream classes, the deaf children are supported by staff from the SPD in a variety of ways including 1:1 support, small group work or paired work as needed. There is also opportunity for reverse integration where the deaf children will work in small groups alongside their hearing peers in one of the SPD classrooms.
The SPD works closely with parents and the mainstream class teachers, to ensure that the children have full access to all aspects of school life, learning opportunities and the National Curriculum. Children who travel to school with an escort and not their parents, make use of a Home/School link book to keep parents in touch with what we have been doing at school, so that new vocabulary can be highlighted and so that individual success can be celebrated daily.
The deaf children regularly spend time as a group to develop their understanding of deaf issues and their own Personal Understanding of Deafness (PUD.)