This is a post about my second year assessment.
Last year we had to make an information pack to inform our chosen audience about our chosen subject. We could make anything and choose any disability related topic.
I chose to make a doll house/school with a variety of informative resources in each room. This took a while, but it was worth it! I was lucky enough to get a first in this assignment so I thought I would share it with you:)
At this point I was volunteering in a SEN school and I thought it would be nice to aim my info pack at primary schools to inform them about learning differences, I tried to make it as child friendly as possible! Something I have found whilst researching for my course is that people lack an understanding of learning differences. I really wanted to portray the idea of learning differences being like a personality that makes a person who they are. Having a learning difference isn't a bad thing. Everyone, disabled or not, have their differences. This could be anything from their hobbies to the way they learn. In other assessments I have completed essays on the normative assumptions, segregation and low expectations that disabled students face. Whereas if people were to develop a non-normative positivist perspective (Reference for anyone interested: Bolt, D. (2015) Not forgetting happiness: the tripartite model of disability and its application in literary criticism.Disability & Society,30(7), pp.1103-1117) and celebrate individual differences in the classroom, the students would no longer be disabled in this environment but rather a student who just happens to have an impairment.
For three rooms I made inclusive lesson plans on Maths, English and Art. It is important so have flexibility in lesson plans and include a variety of ways students could participate in the activity, suited to them. This was something I found when I was doing my PGCE interviews and I had to create inclusive lesson plans (but more on that in another post!). In another room I had all the resources the children would need for the lessons and in the last room were story books that I made and wrote (which I will probably share with you at some point because I am actually so proud of them). All the story books were about being friends with someone who has a learning difference and I had one book for individuals with learning differences about how it is OK to be different and it isn't something they should be ashamed of, it is something to be celebrated. In each book I had explanations of the articles I had used to write my story and why/how I incorporated them in my writing, I might also share this because I think it is quite useful.
Before you think of making anything to this scale, make sure you have a lovely friend willing to give you a lift to uni because otherwise it could be awful!
Take care and be sunny!
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