...providing support and information on down syndrome in the essex area

 

Education Information Days 2005

In autumn, around 250 people, parents and professionals, attended three Education Information Days Down Syndrome Extra 21 organized in collaboration with the Down’s Syndrome Association and two of our local LEAs, Essex and Barking and Dagenham. The LEAs advertised the conference to the schools in their areas and provided the conference venues free of charge, while our charity picked up the (quite substantial) bill for the speakers. The feedback we received from both parents and professionals has been very positive, as you can see from the enclosed article by one of the participants, and we are confident that it was money well spent!

Our speakers on all three days were from the Downs Syndrome Education Consortium, led by the DSA’s Education Officer, Bob Black. The Keynote address Effective Inclusion - Including Children with Down’s Syndrome was presented by by Dr Stephanie Lorenz. A choice of the following workshops was then offered:

Accessing the Curriculum: Practical strategies and resources in the classroom - Led by Sandy Alton, Specialist Advisory Teacher for children with Down’s syndrome for Oxford

A workshop for practitioners working with children in mainstream classrooms. Practical strategies and solutions for creating appropriate differentiated material across all subject areas. Literacy and reading skills, current approaches and a chance to see resources and examples of children’s work.

Number and Numeracy - Led by Cecilie McKinnon, Curriculum Development Officer, Down’s Syndrome Scotland.

Developing the numeracy skills of children with Down’s syndrome: what levels of achievement can we expect .

Promoting age appropriate behavior - Led by Dr Stephanie Lorenz

" Looking at the causes of inappropriate behaviours in children with Down's syndrome. How can school staff prevent these behaviours from occurring or minimise their effect once they are present in the child's repertoire?"

Including children with Down’s syndrome in mainstream secondary schools - Led by Jane Beadman, Independent Educational Psychologist

Secondary specific issues around curriculum and support. Effective whole school approaches to inclusion for secondary schools. Sharing experience and practice.

Three further workshops were on offer at the parents’ conference on Saturday 24th September. Very popular was Jane Beadman’s Reading Skills, where she looked at the strong and well researched link between learning to read and the development of speech and language in children with Down syndrome and at practical resources and strategies to develop their reading and writing skills

For parents with pre school children, Bob Black looked at issues that are important before starting school: How to choose a school, what questions to ask and an introduction to statements, annual reviews and IEPs. In the afternoon workshop Bob focused on Computers as an aid to learning, in particular how to introduce young children to the computer. He also looked at and tested software for children with Down syndrome for use at home and in infant and primary school to promote learning and literacy.

Whilst in the past we have always summarized the talks given by the speakers on our Information Days for inclusion in the newsletter, there was just too much information to do that. Instead, if you could not attend the conference but would like some information, we will post out to you the worksheets and materials the speakers provided free of charge.

Grace Wiley (18) was a guest speaker at the Information Day for parents on Saturday 24th September. Grace, who attended the sixth form at Hylands School in Writtle and has just started at Chelmsford College, told the audience about her life at school and about revising for and taking her GCSEs. Her confident talk was received with warm applause.