Thanks to Kate Rowley, we have completed three days of filming in British Sign Language.  We now have the videos ready to upload to modules 1, 2 and 3 and look forward to sharing the completed course of six modules in 2020.

We really hope this course will help SLTs and Deaf Language Specialists to work together to share knowledge and skills. By sharing discussion and ideas, SLTs and DLSs can come together to support children to achieve their language potential.

The Spanish team is planning their DOTDeaf national workshop as a virtual event on 21st May 2021. The UK DOTDeaf workshop will be on 22nd April and the Portuguese team are planning dates for their national workshops too! More information about dates and registration will be posted here as it is available.

This clip is in written Spanish and Spanish Sign Language (Lengua de Signos Española, LSE)

English translation – Hi. This module on atypical language development has made me think!

First of all, what’s very important is to see what the child’s language development looks like, focus on what the difficulty is to see the focus for therapy.

But the speech therapist should not intervene alone, she should do the therapy with the LSE (Spanish Sign Language) specialist, jointly to focus intervention on the child and the context.

I think it’s very important to have joint work when focusing on intervention.

The Spanish and UK teams have shared feedback from Deaf Language Specialists and Speech and Language Therapists. The UK team have completed drafts for modules 1, 2 and 3. The Spanish team have completed a draft of module 3.

The feedback has been very positive and is helping us make some technical changes. We are also making some of the content easier to understand.

We have been thinking about shared images to support our training on the DOT Deaf project. We’re working to produce modules in four signed and three written languages so don’t often share a word or a sign for ideas but a picture really does help. Feedback on our draft modules has emphasised how much a picture can help discussion.  Understanding a picture by discussing it helps promote discussion of concepts.

I read a paper today about the complexity of deaf children’s language situations and whether the idea of  ‘communication mode’ is helpful (Hall, M. L., & Dills, S. (2020). The limits of “Communication Mode” as a construct. Journal Of Deaf Studies And Deaf Education, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1093/deafed/enaa009).

It made me think of some of the pictures we have chosen to use to show how we need to work together to understand a child’s language strengths and needs. Finding the pieces and completing the jigsaw – it’s what we try to do with children everyday.

Thanks to everyone who has given feedback on modules 1, 2 and 3. Work on developing the final versions of these modules in written English and BSL will start in June. Our partners in Spain and Portugal (with support from a team in Brazil) are trying out their modules at the moment. It’s great to have a training course that has involved ideas from so many people – Deaf and hearing.

Thanks to some very generous Deaf families, we ae able to include video clips of children and young people using BSL in our module describing ‘Typical language development in sign’. These clips show conversations between children and their parents between the ages of 18 months and 10 years old.

These familes have enabled all family members to be involved in discussing the project and giving consent for the use of clips.

It’s much more difficult to find appropriate clips to use in the module describing atypical development. The ethical issues around consent and use of clips where children are struggling to learn language are challenging! We have Deaf colleagues who watch the signing of children, then reproduce this alongside a comparison of the adult version of the BSL. Not ideal but a good resource for beginning discussions about how colleagues can use language to discuss the language they see.

Welcome to our brand new blog at City, University of London.

We’ll be uploading information about the project, our partners and the training we are developing.

We will add content in British Sign Language too!