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You and Yours - Transcript 大象传媒 Radio 4 |
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TX: 02.04.07 - Books for Downs Children PRESENTER: WINIFRED ROBINSON |
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THE ATTACHED TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A RECORDING AND NOT COPIED FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT. BECAUSE OF THE RISK OF MISHEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY IN SOME CASES OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE 大象传媒 CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS COMPLETE ACCURACY. ROBINSON Before Daniel Huleston [phon.] was old enough for school his mother Marie made books for him to try to help him learn because Daniel, who's now aged 10, has Down's Syndrome. His mother expected that at school there'd be books tailored for children like Daniel, she was wrong. So what began as a personal project became a business and Marie Dunleavy's books can now be found in more than a thousand schools. John Douglas met Marie Dunleavy and Daniel at their home in Edinburgh. ACTUALITY - MARIE TALKING TO DANIEL DUNLEAVY I started making books when he was in nursery school, that was what the research recommended you do - make books about him or about everyday things that he could relate to. And of course when he liked them it was very encouraging and especially as he began to gather an impressive sight vocabulary. I made one book myself and my mother and we thought that would do him a month and he was churning through them at one a week, so we were really pleased. ACTUALITY - MARIE TALKING TO DANIEL DOUGLAS Daniel's first year at a mainstream school went well, he could keep up with the other children using the same books as them. But as time progressed it became harder, his mum looked at the range of reading schemes available and felt something was missing. DUNLEAVY You know for a little while on each scheme it would be okay but then they'd explode in their vocabulary and he would be lost and I got very worried that it would end up turning him off reading because he loved reading. DOUGLAS Wasn't there anything tailored specifically for children like Daniel? DUNLEAVY No, what I was looking for is something that was highly visual that progressed in small easy steps, that was a bit of fun, so there was a lot of games in it because Daniel needed a lot of consolidation and revision but he didn't want that in lots of repetition in the story because it generally killed the story line. And I'm very good at surfing the internet and I thought armed with my credit card and my skills that I could have resolved this very quickly for myself and paid the money and got the solution. And it took me a while to accept that I had to continue to make the books, it was actually quite a lot of work because I used to have to plan them on a Thursday night and then spend all Sunday afternoon making them with my laminator and my printer. A lot of people here say I'm a great mother but actually I was a very resentful mother because I used to watch everybody else go out for a walk on the beach and I wanted to go with them rather than be here making the books. But anyway it was really doing him a lot of good so I just persevered. ACTUALITY - MARIE TALKING TO DANIEL Do you like all these Pops books? I like the Pops books. Why? Because they're great fun and I like the games. The games best. DOUGLAS Having seen how much Daniel enjoyed her books Marie Dunleavy set out to get them into the hands of many more children. Three years ago with the help of one of her brothers she entered the publishing business. Today Pops books as they're called can be found in schools across the UK and also in America, New Zealand and Ireland. BUCKLEY I'm Professor Sue Buckley and I'm the director for research at the Down's Syndrome Educational Trust in Portsmouth. There was nothing quite like this and what we were recommending until then was that teachers used standard reading schemes like the Oxford Reading Tree but after the very first stage they had to simplify the story material and make their own materials for children. DOUGLAS Well this is Long Middry [phon.] Primary School in East Lothian and they've been using the books that Marie Dunleavy created for a few years now. Laura Burns is a teacher here. So have these books proved useful? BURNS Yeah definitely. Not just with Ben, a pupil in my class who has Down's Syndrome, but other children in my class as well who are finding reading challenging. ACTUALITY - CHILD READING For Ben, being a child with Down's Syndrome, the fact that there's a character with Down's Syndrome in the book I think he likes and there's also the matching activity as well where they have the word cards, it's like a lotto game, you have to match them to words on the page. ACTUALITY - CHILD PLAYING GAME DUNLEAVY They're all based on a family, the Pops family, which is also on the cover, which is a family with one little girl and three boys who live on Rainbow Farm. And one of the little boys, Karl, has Down's Syndrome, an intellectual disability, and that was something that I felt strongly about, I wanted to make a child like Daniel visible in school literature. We have a very clear picture on the left, bright primary colours, no shadows, that was some consultancy we got on how best to draw pictures to appeal to children with additional support needs. I do write the original story but sometimes by the time it's gone through 12 reviews there's barely a word left that I had originally written. DOUGLAS And who is it that reviews it? DUNLEAVY Well we have a group of teachers, learning support teachers, and of course our speech therapist, so they're looking for repetitions, scaffolding of vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure, sentence length. The speech therapist, what she's looking for, is that words are introduced in the hierarchy or acquisition, so some words the children wouldn't have a mature enough mouth on - actually the muscles in the mouth wouldn't be able to make those sounds. So she's making sure that the words are introduced very carefully. DOUGLAS And it's not just the professionals who offer an opinion, from day one Daniel's had a big say in what makes it into print. DUNLEAVY He was a very harsh and frank reviewer. If he liked them he'd read them and if not he threw them under the kitchen table, so we got a very direct straight answer very quickly. DOUGLAS What sort of difference has all this made to your son Daniel? DUNLEAVY It's hard for me to know how much he would have done without this because he's always had this kind of backup, but he certainly seems to be well ahead of his peers. Some people have asked me whether Daniel is specially able for a child with Down's Syndrome and I don't think he is, I'd love to say he was, but I don't think he is. I think it has been the amount of intervention and exposure and the repetition because in other things, you know, where I haven't done a reading scheme, like in his maths or whatever, he isn't at this level. DOUGLAS There's no hard evidence of the effectiveness or otherwise of the Pops reading scheme. An independent study is due to be published in the Down's Syndrome Association's journal in May. Only seven children were involved though, observed over just eight months but it does point to progress where other reading schemes have apparently failed. BUCKLEY The books have been very carefully planned, taking account of research into delayed speech and language development. DOUGLAS There's been a move towards getting children with Down's Syndrome into mainstream schools, do you think there's a danger when you start providing the literature that's specifically for them that you're actually moving away from full integration? BUCKLEY Well the short answer to that is yes, there is a danger. We definitely want the child included in the reading activities that are going on in the rest of the class but there are always other children in a mainstream classroom who are also going more slowly with learning to read and therefore I suspect the books would be useful to three or four children often in a mainstream classroom as part of all the resources available. WAITE And details of Marie Dunleavy's books will be on our website later today Back to the You and Yours homepage The 大象传媒 is not responsible for external websites |
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