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42
Partially-Hearing Unit for Infant Children, Kingsley Infants' School
Three children entered the Infants' Class from the Nursery in September
and two children left, one being transferred to Portley House, Caterham, and
the other moving up to the Junior Unit. A 5½ year old boy entered the class
towards the end of September from a normal school. This brings the roll of
the Infants' Unit to ten (three girls and seven boys ranging in age from 5 to
7 years).
The boy who entered the class towards the end of September has a
partial hearing loss and benefits greatly from almost complete integration
into a hearing class. Four of the other more severely deaf children integrate
for daily periods of 30-45 minutes into hearing classes containing children
of their own age and ability range. This is mostly for the purposes of social
integration and has proved to be of considerable value in the establishment
of independence and communication with hearing children.
The class varies in its ability. One group, consisting of five children
is at the stage of spontaneous vocalisation which is not always intelligible.
The children in this group are, however, watching for speech and attempting
to copy the sounds given to them. The other group, of four children, are
giving spontaneous speech in the form of two or three word phrases and
making attempts at simple conversational patterns of speech. They are beginning
to utilise reading to help sort out their problems. Individual speech
work is done with all the children on the speech trainer and small groups of
children are taken for work on the loop system and group aid. The children
are encouraged to utilise anything that interests them for speech and
language purposes. In this way much of their environment is explored.
The children are progressing quite favourably with their academic working,
attempting number and writing experiences pertaining to their individual
levels of development.
Co¬operation is received from about six of the children's parents who
help to provide "talking'' material by writing about the children's experiences
in home note¬books.
Partially Hearing Unit, Kingsley Junior School
Until September there were eight full¬time pupils in this Unit and one
girl attending two mornings a week. Three were then transferred to Riddlesdown
School when the new secondary unit was opened and one moved out of
the area. The admission of two new pupils, one of whom was transferred from
the Infant Unit, brought the number on roll to six. Two are in the 7-8 year
group, one is 9 and three are 10 - 11 years.
In addition to mixing with hearing children at playtime and dinner-time
all join other classes in the school for practical activities. The average
integration at the present time is 20% of their school day but the amount and