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others edited by Dr Peter Miller on The
Psychological Assessment of Mental and
Physical Handicap I continued to act as
external examiner of teaching practice to the
2 year course for teachers of the mentally
handicapped at Chiswick Polytechnic and
continued as a member of the Training Councils'
Review Panel and also became an assessor
to the Durham training course for teachers of
the mentalIv handicapped.
Special Classes
What began as a small experimental class at
Heston Hearing Clinic run by Mrs Cox Senior
Speech Therapist and myself to provide
continuity of help for children who seemed to
have benefitted from our summer school has
increased greatly in size spawned an off
shoot at Isleworth Clinic and has been much
visited and discussed. The two classes have
diverged somewhat in approach in that the
class at Heston Hearing Clinic covers a wider
age range of children at least half of whom
come from Marjory Kinnon School This class
is held weekly on Friday morning and is now
taking 12 children. Because of the demand for
places it has become increasingly difficult to
cope satisfactorily with the larger number of
children as well as adults and visitors in the
accommodation provided The Isleworth class
on the other hand normally takes five children
of a rather more homogeneous younger age
span The class functions five mornings a
week some children attend every day others
two or three days a week which means that
in fact seven children get some special help
The classes are similar in that they are both
examples of team teaching with a teacher and
a speech therapist in joint control each
taking the lead alternately in directing
activities.
Whereas more of the children at the Isleworth
Clinic class are given places because it is
felt that they may have a variety of developmental
lags which usually include language
the heterogeneous group at the Heston Hearing
Clinic caters rather more specifically for
language difficulties including some children
who it is thought are doubly at a disadvantage
because another language is spoken at home
and they appear to be having difficulties in
both languages.
Because the Isleworth class functions every
day the teacher and the speech therapist are
able to ensure that a great variety of activities
for all areas of development is covered through
out the week The Hearing Clinic class has
perforce to be more restricted and in any case
with a larger number of slightly older children
is working on more advanced activities
particularly in sequencing and classification.
Because so many visitors and lecture
audiences - particularly teachers and speech
therapists - have shown an interest in the
various activities and the teaching purposes
for which they have been devised I am now
engaged in writing a handbook which might be
broadly described as the impecunious
teacher s do it yourself kit of remedial
activities'. A well known educational publisher
is interested in publishing this and it is hoped
that in this way it may be possible to share
the learning experiences from our experimental
work with other workers in the field.
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