Specialist Curriculum

Described by its principal author, Dr Heather Murdoch, as a Toolkit with attitude this document provides extensive support materials for those implementing the Victoria School MSI Curriculum, or considering its implementation for CYP with MSI.

The toolkit examines the practical issues, policies and procedures needed to successfully implement the Victoria School MSI Curriculum, and offers a range of worked examples and case studies.

The following documents are available folder here in the NatSIP Document Library:

 

New research has been published by Coventry University and the University of Warwick on literacy difficulties and undiagnosed hearing impairment, (http://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/news/screen-children-reading-difficulties-more-thoroughly-hearing-problems-says-new-report).

Glue ear or mild/moderate hearing loss can have a major impact. All professionals need to be alert to the signs of hearing loss, particularly in children whose deafness was not identified at birth or who have acquired deafness during childhood, and that any parental or professional concerns about hearing are always taken seriously and acted on.

Resources from the National Deaf Children’s Society for parents and professionals may be helpful and can be found at www.ndcs.org.uk/mildmoderate and

www.ndcs.org.uk/glueear.

Dr Heather Murdoch, and colleagues from the MSI unit at Victoria School, Birmingham, have many years of experience in developing curriculum approaches for children who are deafblind / multi-sensory impaired.  In 2009, Heather structured and formalised these ideas into a curriculum document, with a view to sharing them more widely.

The curriculum addresses the particular learning needs of pupils with MSI who are working at P levels 1-8 - in order to give them the awareness, experience, understanding and learning skills they need to access National Curriculum programmes of study successfully. The issue of pupil progression is dealt with clearly and in a practical way.

The Curriculum document, which is a free resource, is now available in the NatSIP document library: pdf here