Deerpark Primary School was awarded Makaton Friendly School Status in June 2015.

Makaton is a language programme which uses signs and symbols to help people to communicate. It is designed to support spoken language and the signs and symbols are used with speech, in spoken word order.

In 2014/2015 the Primary 2 class had been learning Makaton within their class and wanted to share their learning/increase awareness throughout the school. They put together an assembly to share their knowlege of Makaton with other classes, teachers and parents. The assembly explained what Makaton is, why learning Makaton is important and allowed the children to share their vast knowledge of signs and symbols through demonstation and song.  At this assembly, the children launched their “Sign of the Week” campaign where they challenged every class to learn a new Makaton sign each week. They chose signs that they thought would be useful for all members of the school community to know and shared these at weekly assemblies for others to learn.

Over the past few years we have continued to increase our use of Makaton signing throughout the school. Several classes have been involved in the maintenance of this and many of our children and staff now have a good knowledge of key vocabulary Makaton signs. This year, the Makaton website launched their own “Sign of the Week” campaign.  These are the signs that all classes now learn on a weekly basis.

Link to the current Makaton Sign of the week can be found here.