ORIGINS

These Resources are the result of successful joint-working practice at St. Nicholas School in Canterbury, Kent. The school caters for children with Severe Learning Difficulties and has over 100 children on roll. The development and teaching of communication skills is considered to be an integral part of the whole school curriculum and to this end the Speech and Language Therapy department works very closely with the Teachers and Teaching Assistants. For many years now, the communication objectives of each student have been integrated into the overall learning objectives.

We have found that the most effective way to ensure carry-over for the students’ communication skills is to ensure that all communication objectives are incorporated into the topic of the term. For example, a student’s main communication objective may be to develop understanding and use of adjectives. So we work on and encourage adjectives that relate to the topic of the term, allowing more opportunities for reinforcement. Parents are involved too. By sending home copies of the term’s communication plans along with the Individual Education Plan, children are encouraged to use new vocabulary or strategies at home.

With the implementation of The Special Educational Needs Code of Practice, inclusive practice has led to greater links with local mainstream schools and the need to share our methods of teaching functional communication with a wider audience. An increasing number of children with special needs are being included into mainstream classrooms on a full or part time basis. This has resulted in an increased number of requests from class teachers in these mainstream schools for support and ideas in teaching communication skills to these included children.

The Communication Policy at St. Nicholas School states that “Communication is central to learning across all areas of the curriculum….. The ability to communicate is the foundation on which all aspects of the pupil’s learning are built and the medium whereby other curriculum areas are experienced.” Furthermore, it states that pupils should ”be given opportunities each day to develop and consolidate a more formalised means of communication.” Emphasis is placed on pupils learning to communicate not just in one-to-one situations, but also in small groups and as a member of a whole class. It was from this ethos that FLIC evolved.