Northern Counties supports the ITV Signed Stories website

 

Northern Counties pupils, staff and parents have been involved in designing and promoting the ITV "Signed Stories" website which has featured on the BBC "See Hear" programme and Teachers TV.

The website is an interactive collection of well known stories which are accessible to all family members as they are presented in text, illustrations, British Sign Language (BSL) as well as being read aloud.

The aim is to help all members of the family to enjoy story time together while also providing a lovely resource for teachers.

The Signed Stories team spent a great deal of time talking to parents and children about the types of stories they wanted to see, not just for the deaf child in the family but for siblings as story time can be such a lovely family time. They also asked the children to consider the layout of the screen, to consider the size of the signer, and whether priority should be given to illustrations or text.

Teachers were consulted about recent research that shows that deaf children may not be making the progress they could in literacy and were keen to find ways to support families for whom sign is not their first language - which is the case for 90% of deaf children.

The project has resulted in what we believe to be a very high quality and interactive website that is accessible to the whole family.

 

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