Congratulations to all 19 students at Bournemouth School for Girls on achieving your BSL 101 Unit after just 10 hours of study. What a fantastic achievement! Many thanks to Lynn and George for teaching the sessions and to Wendy for their valued input to the success achieved in the assessments. It’s a real testament to the students’ enthusiasm and commitment to learning a new skill, and to the skills of our valued tutors and volunteers to have another group achieve the qualification and be able to communicate in BSL with the local Deaf community and beyond.
Congratulations also to all the students at Twynham School on completing your 8 week introduction to Sign Language course with Stefy and Nigel. We are pleased to continue our long association with these two schools providing opportunities for their students to develop valuable communication skills that make a difference in their own lives and those of the Deaf Community they meet at work and socially.
We are looking to raise £5,000 to help fund our work supporting the development of a small team of Deaf and hearing BSL users to enable them to deliver Deaf Awareness & Communication training to local Nursery and Primary Schools in Dorset.
Our ‘Sign for Change’ programme aims to introduce 600 children and young people in Dorset to British Sign Language (BSL) each year. On a wider level we anticipate that our work within local Nursery and Primary Schools will have a hugely positive impact on the local community as our deaf awareness training helps to break down the barriers to communication faced by pupils who are deaf or have a hearing loss and create a more inclusive environment within your educational setting. We already have a proven track record of successfully delivering deaf awareness courses and teaching BSL at secondary level at Bournemouth School for Girls and Twynham School and, more recently, at primary level at Talbot Heath School.
Equipping children and young people with the knowledge and skills to be able to communicate with deaf friends also increases self-esteem, provides a foundation for developing sign language skills in the future as they start to think about further education and career paths and, most importantly, helps to reduce feelings of isolation and loneliness.
To give you an idea of the costs involved to introduce the ‘Sign for Change’ programme – £160 will give 20 of your pupils access to 4 hours (delivered over 4 weeks) of deaf awareness and communication training, specifically tailored to their age group. This works out at just £8 per pupil or £2 per pupil, per week. We are able to deliver sessions flexibly to fit around your curriculum and other activities so if you would like us to deliver sessions in an alternative format please just let us know.
Upon completion of the ‘Sign for Change’ programme pupils will be able to converse with a signer they have met for the first time using a range of everyday terms and vocabulary to exchange personal details, modes of transport, family, food and drink, calendar, time, weather and clothes. They will be practiced in rules of basic grammar and structure of British Sign Language and be prepared for studies in further topics.
If you would like to find out more about how our ‘Sign for Change’ programme can form part of your school’s enrichment programme and/or to discuss the possibility of WDDA facilitating a fun, educational and inclusive after school club please contact Zoe at admin@wdda.co.uk
