Creative and Fun Peer Interaction for Improving Access Skills with

Head-mouse andEye-gaze Technology

 

Introducing the Session

• Introduction to the group and how it was set up• Aims of the group• Session Plans— short and medium term plans/

activities • Assessment sheets / student feedback forms• Impact on the Support Assistant's skills• Impact of these sessions on Students

 

Our Group

• JP— C12 Eye gaze, grid 2, 9 cells a page • JK— Dynavox EyeMax, call talk, 24 cells

and sentence bar a page• PP— C15 Eye gaze, grid 2, 12 cells,

sentence bar• BR— Tellus Eye gaze, grid 2,16-20 cells

and sentence bar• BB— Tellus 4, Head mouse user,

MindExpress, 35 cells and sentence bar

Aims of the group - General

• To have opportunity to spend time with other head/eye users

• To identify and add additional vocabulary they want e.g more jokes, conversational comments

• To have opportunity to explore how environmental controls work within school

Aims of the group - Operational

• To check calibrations and discuss if they have any access problems and try different settings (in discussion with SALT)

• To have time to become familiar and explore their vocabularies

• To navigate from top page to other pages at speed

• To improve accuracy of selections• To expand beyond one word answers• To understand functions, e.g. plurals and

tenses buttons, delete and clear button

Aims of the Group - Social

• To be given time to answer in a quiet environment

• To initiate conversations using their aids• To give their own opinion on how they would like

to extend the function of their aids E.g. environmental control, music downloads, games

• To give feedback to each other and use social comments pages – e.g. stop, that’s funny, pants

• Take turns to start things and stop them.

Planning and ActivitiesMedium Term Plans

Written half termly and included aims and topic areas to be covered – e.g.

• Performing a sketch• Environmental control work • Music – including have a disco• Games – guess who, battle ships and

own individual games • Poetry writing

Short Term Plans

Short term plans were written weekly/fortnightly

Sample lesson plan Short term plan animals.dot

Activities – Our Play

How did we do it?

Decided on the sketch they wanted to perform from a selection

Decided on what parts they wanted to play and negotiated with each other

Rehearsed together weekly

Sent out invites to adults they wanted to come and to their class. (they did not want the whole school to come)

The Wide Mouth Frog

Activities – Poem

• Chose to write individual poems to perform to their friends.

• Wrote poem by selecting words to infill a pre-prepared poem with gaps or wrote a poem using set frames

Cinquain format, write a poem about an animal.

• Cinquain format:• Line 1: One word (subject or noun)• Line 2: Two words (adjectives) that describe line 1• Line 3: Three words (action verbs ending with "-ing") that relate to

line 1• Line 4: Four or five words (feelings or a complete sentence) that

describe• the subject or are related to it in some way• Line 5: One word that sums up line 1 or is a synonym of line 1__ ___________ ________________, ________________

_____________, ______________, _____________________________________________________________

____________

JP Bird Poem • JP selected

individual words and then had the poem put onto one page in 4 cells to perform to the group.

Speed Poetry Frame

• Line 1: Write the person’s name or what you call them• Line 2: One word to describe what they are doing • Line 3: Where they are • Line 4/5/6: On each line one adjective to describe this

person • Line 7: The specific colour that you see in you picture or

link to this person • Line 8: A sound that you hear in this image or that you

link to this person • Line 9: A feeling that you associate with this person• Line 10: Describe your feelings for this person

BB Poem about his Ex Girlfriend

• BB Thought of words and then linked them together. He independently saved his sentence bar into a cell to playback to group.

Games – Battle Ships

• Battle ships – adapted with animals

• and colours which was:

• Played in pairs and counters were positioned on the boards with support

• Encouraged vocabulary location, moving between pages at speed, 2 word sentence building, turn taking and responding to a peer

Games – Guess who?

• Adapted version of “Guess who” played in pairs. Both chose a person and they each had to guess who the other had selected. Also board designed for animals

• Encouraged – question making, turn taking, responding to a peer accurately, awareness of vocabulary – body, descriptions, animals, and people

Assessment• Assessment sheets completed weekly• Sheets copied and placed in individual assessment files within their

classrooms and additional copies to SALT team at the end of term• Scale for Achievements

1: Not achieved: Encountered – being present during an activity, adult is introducing target2: Showing response: maximum assistance e.g. verbal, gestural and physical prompts with full support3. Partially achieved: moderate assistance: e.g. specific verbal and gestural prompts, achieves with some support4. Nearly achieved: minimum assistance: occasional general prompt, verbal or gestural

5. Fully achieved: Child able to achieve target consistently, without significant difficulty or need for adult support

Example of sheet: Assessment example BR.doc

Student Opinions• Completed a form at the beginning of the year

and again at the end of the year• Sample of questions – Have you liked coming?

What would you like to do in sessions in the future. Circled if felt things were good, bad or ok – poem, play, music, games, environmental controls

• 4/5 liked coming and the one who didn’t said good to all the things he had done in the sessions! They all wanted more environmental control time and also to do some cooking.

Impact on the support assistant

• Confidence within session increased• Confidence in problem solving • Programming skills kept upto date and extended

– e.g. Adding music, speed of adding vocabulary• Impact on use of aids back in her class – helped

reinforce learning from the group to the classroom

• Understand the capability of the students and see how to set achievable targets

• Liaison with SALT technician regularly

Impact on the Students

• Communication Cup winner for the County• Several students less passive in class • Leads in their own performances• Speed and accuracy improved• Awareness of what was on their devices • Choose what they wanted added to devices• Ability to be naughty –e.g. starting music,

playing games, making us cold by turning on the fan

Finally by my Students

Thank you for listeningBridget Love

Thomas Wolsey SchoolSuffolk