Inspiration For Musically Gifted Sen Child

[Guest]

Hi all,

I have a child in my class who has recently arrived from another school. She has scored on the 1st percentile for all areas of learning and needs 1-1 help to learn (which she doesn't have very much of at the moment). She is operating at a 22mth-36month level and a 2 word level of understanding. She has very little grasp of any basic concepts colours, shapes, positional language the list goes on. We are really struggling to help her to learn. We have the EP and the C and I team, school advisory team and paediatrician involved. I think it may well be that she will go to a special school (she already goes to outreach) recent meetings have suggested this but in the meantime I want to obviously do my best for her.

 

She has an amazing talent for memorising (almost instantly) songs, rhythms, dance moves. We do daily story telling and she can memorise the stories as well so she's obviously a very strong auditory learner and this I think is our way in.

 

Has anyone worked with a child with this gift before? used music to support a sen child? or has anyone ideas how I can use rhythm/songs to teach her concepts or knows of any scheme which is based on music. I have a few ideas and so does the TA who works with her but I would be very welcoming of any other inspiration.

Thanks

deb

[Guest]

Does she have a diagnosis (ASD???!) not that it really matters what her diagnosis is because obviously you'll just do whatever is right for her but it just might give you a starting point to look for ideas.

 

I say ASD because my class are all autistic and most of them are very similar to your little girl in that they can memorise things with ease. I tend to use this to my advantage by, for example, repeating the same story daily (I usually make a powerpoint of any story I use because they tend to be more focussed with things on the white board than anything else) and gradually extending what I expect them to do, e.g. read the text, say what will happen next, order the story, act out the different parts etc.

 

If you let me know specifically what type of things you want to teach her at the moment I'll have a think if I've got any ideas or resources that might be useful to you

[finleysmaid]

what about making cards for each song with a picture and a symbol on it (so a star and the word star for twinkle twinkle for eg.)you could then use these for her to choose which one she would like to sing, by giving a choice of two. You could then develop this into cards with just the word on it (so sight reading!) perhaps this could then go further by showing her a book with a few words in it and see if she can find the star word...the reward being the singing. obviously i dont know this child, and i would expect this would be done over a long time but thought it might help

[Guest]

Wendy Prevezer's material and ideas could be useful. See http://eymg.co.uk/ and http://www.speechsignsong.co.uk/ as starting points. Wendy worked first as a speech and language therapist and then as a music specialist at a school for children with autism.

 

There's also Game Songs with Prof Dogg's Troupe, which you could start using immediately.