This morning Max and I had two important meetings to help us finish creating the Multi-Sensory story (MSS) for the child that we are working with. The first meeting was at the primary school of the child who is transitioning and the second was at the high school that she is moving to. Both meetings were important but for different reasons. The one at the primary school was our first meeting of the day and this was when we got to meet the child for the first time. It was great to see how she interacts with al of the teachers and how she reacts when her teachers sing to her. The enjoyment that she got from them singing to her while she shook a maraca showed us that we needed to have a song in her story so that she can shake her maraca at the same time. When she is being sung to her full attention is on the song and the person singing it. Meaning if a song is at the start of her story she will be paying attention to the voice for what is coming next. To keep her attention we are also going to have a sing-song repeated line throughout the story.
The primary schools main concern with the transition was that the noise of all of the other pupils within the high school would be bothersome as in her primary school she is in the same room with five pupils and five teachers most of her day. Even though, we did not think it would be a big concern, as she is going to be in a very quiet part of the school all day, we took their concerns on board and addressed it when we got to the high school.
As we had already been at the high school for a meeting we were only really going there to briefly get the recordings that we needed for her story and to speak to one of the ASN teachers about what he thought best for the MSS, the transition and to let him know of the primary schools concerns. He agreed that she would not hear the sounds of the other children much but showed us the best place to capture these sounds so we could let her hear them anyway. We spoke to him about what sounds would be the most different and unusual for her. The most distinct noise was the school bell as it was not something that she was use to hearing. We made sure to record this noise of the bell as well as the noise of the children when they were moving between classes since that was the primary schools main concern. We also recorded the voices of the teachers that would be working with the child so that she could get use to them recognised who each person was. One of the ASN teachers is male. The child has never had a male teacher work with her. This means that this will be something very different for her. We made sure to record his voice too and incorporate it into the multi-sensory story. This will help her get use to his voice before she goes to the high school and become even more familiar to her through the transition.
These meetings have been very important to us being able to make the multi-sensory story as helpful as it can be in the child’s transition. They were also important for finding out what each schools wants from the story and what concerns they each have about the child’s transition.
Throughout both of these meetings I had to be professional as well as remember that I was representing PAMIS at these schools. These are skills that are always useful to contiously develop for now and when I will fully qualified as I will need to be professional at all times.
