How a text-only Chat helped a student with selective mutism communicate with adults
The text-based Chats on I’m an Engineer and I’m a Scientist can work particularly well for students for whom face-to-face communication is inaccessible. This was demonstrated when Daniel, a child with selective mutism, entered Vicky Heslop’s classroom.
In a recent article for Tes magazine, Vicky says that Daniel “would talk through his friends, who would ask questions on his behalf” but was unable to communicate with adults and teachers. Vicky, a teacher at Westbury Junior School in Wiltshire, explains that it was a “huge challenge for me to understand Daniel’s inner world, his interests and passions.” Continue reading
Posted on July 18, 2022 by
in News, Teachers |
Tagged Case Study, SEN
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Jo works at a large comprehensive school in South Wales in the Autism Spectrum Condition Unit. She explains, “We used I’m a Scientist as a social skills lesson. Yes, there’s interest in science, but really it was so they could talk to the scientists without any pre-judgement.”
In 2008, Beijing hosted the Olympics, George Sampson won Britain’s Got Talent, and I’m a Scientist, Get me out of here hosted its first event: each Zone hosting 5 scientists and 25 school classes. 
Each year the RI run a youth summit on a subject related to the CHRISTMAS LECTURES. In 2020 it was decided to run the Summit prior to the filming of the lectures so that the views of the delegates could be communicated to the lecturers. However the Covid-19 pandemic intervened and the RI building remained closed to the public.
“Thank you all so much for taking part, we had so many great questions and I hope you all enjoyed it! I had a great time, it was really heartening to see the enthusiasm you all had for science and I hope that we have inspired some of you to enter science as a career. I still can’t really believe I won, especially with some amazing scientists in our zone, so thank you to everyone.”
With schools across the UK due to close this week, the impact on the daily lives of students and young people of the COVID-19 outbreak is clear. We wanted to do a little analysis to look at what young people are concerned about, what are they asking?
