To celebrate Neurodiversity Week, our newly appointed Junior School Neurodiversity Champions organised a series of exciting activities to raise awareness and celebrate what makes us unique.
Our pupils chose the theme of ‘Let’s keep talking’ to highlight that celebrating neurodiversity should not be limited to one week a year, but should be an ongoing conversation.
On Monday, the week started with a Makaton session to help communicate in a more accessible way. The pupils were excellent at learning the new signs and were quickly able to communicate in whole sentences. Many Year 5 pupils were excited to carry on this work in the school’s British Sign Language Club in the summer term.
On Tuesday, pupils took part in an early morning dyspraxia disco to raise awareness of how to strengthen our gross and fine motor skills as well as improve proprioception and collaboration in groups.
Ria and Lukshmi from Year 4 delivered an assembly to the whole Junior School about neurodiversity on Wednesday, using a presentation they had made independently. Sophia in Year 5 created an informative and thoughtful presentation on visual stress that will now be used by teachers all over the GDST. In addition to this, our Year 5 pupils, led by Ella and Emily, organised morning games to raise awareness of neurodiversity, with extra time to practise dance moves from the day before.
In addition to these exciting events, pupils were also lucky enough to speak to former Great British Bake Off contestant Lizzie Acker about her neurodiversity and how it has become her greatest strength. Lizzie spoke about how she struggled to read books and pupils thought about what they could do to make exciting stories more accessible for neurodiverse people. Our Neurodiversity Champions came up with the brilliant idea of starting an audiobook library that pupils can listen to on iPads during library slots so that everyone has an equal opportunity to immerse themselves in stories. They are also developing a neurodiversity book review system, that celebrates neurodiverse characters or is particular accessible.
Thank you to all staff and pupils involved in organising such an exciting and informative week!
