Back to school excitement for Teaching Awards’ finalists
Term has started with a special buzz in around 90 schools where there are finalists for the UK Teaching Awards 2010.
All are being invited to the Fellows Weekend, which includes the UK ceremony held at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in London and is broadcast on BBC 2. This year the weekend falls at the end of half term on 30—31 October.
For the finalists of the Henry Winkler Award for Special Needs 2010 there is a real whiff of excitement since all three schools know they are set to receive bursaries of at least £10,000 each.
The top prize of £15,000 and the honour of receiving a gold Plato – education’s symbol of excellence - will be announced at the UK ceremony.
Staff from the three schools met Henry Winkler, aka ‘the Fonz’, at a ceremony in Cardiff this summer where he explained how he had donated the funds to his ‘favourite charity’, having won a competition with Absolute Radio.
‘I am incredibly honoured to be here to meet amazing, inspirational teachers,’ said the; Hollywood actor and producer who has become a children’s author in spite of his dyslexia. ‘You understand the child who learns differently, who may look out of the window but who doesn’t mean to fail. It’s a horrible feeling when you fail - you never get up in the morning intending to do that.
‘What I tell children is this: It doesn’t matter how you learn – that has nothing to do with brilliance. When you get through school you can soar like an eagle and meet your destiny. But if they meet teachers who believe in them, that can make all the difference.’
The three finalists for the Henry Winkler Award for Special Needs are: Ambergate Sports College in Grantham, Lincolnshire, Pennywell Early Years Centre in Sunderland and the Holbrook Centre for Autism near Belper in Derbyshire.
Ambergate is an outstanding special school with a ‘groundbreaking’ intervention plan. Key workers are assigned to work with two specific groups - those who are struggling to progress and higher-fliers who can really develop if given extra help.
Each key worker supports an individual’s formal learning and finds stimulating ways to engage their personal interests. Many of the 112 pupils are in care and benefit hugely from this one-to-one attention.
The school will use its bursary money to develop sporting activities – yachting, rafting, quad biking, tennis, golf and indoor skiing - and to buy in music therapy, drama workshops and a singing coach. It plans to build a log cabin in the school grounds to act as a base.
The second finalist is the acclaimed Pennywell Early Years Centre in Sunderland. Nothing is more important to children’s learning than developing good speech and language and so the centre aims to use its Henry Winkler bursary money to help parents and carers develop their children’s vital communication skills.
Many children arrive with communication difficulties, and – as elsewhere in the country – the number is growing. While therapies can be applied at the centre, staff need time to address the children’s home lives by working with parents and carers on the importance of speech and language development.
Research shows that fewer and fewer of today’s parents understand how important it is to talk and sing to their children. So there will be an all-year, rolling programme of weekly sessions to help parents learn good listening skills and how to talk to their children while they play with them.
The third finalist is the inspirational Holbrook Centre for Autism, working with the most challenging young people with autism in Derbyshire. Staff are excited by the burgeoning potential of information technology, film and media to help develop speech and language and learn personal and social skills.
The school is exploring inventive new uses for personalised technology like iPods and iPhones. A pop-up list of conversation starters, for example, can prompt a student who struggles with talking to others, while a short video can remind a student how to make a sandwich. Many autistic students find it almost impossible to wait, but the right music on an iPod can make standing at the bus stop almost bearable.
With their Henry Winkler bursary, staff at Holbrook will embed film technology in every classroom and extend iPod use among students. They will create guides to editing films and organising photo libraries, set up training sessions, and produce materials to help staff teach technology.
Caroline Evans, chief executive of the Teaching Awards said: ‘This award has uncovered a wealth of ideas and work-in-progress in the field of special needs. By his own intervention, the brilliant Henry Winkler has made it possible for us to invest in some of the best. We shall de delighted to meet these finalists again in October.’
