Last week, a member of our RBDS department was out undertaking outreach with Year 5 pupils at our primary feeder schools teaching British Sign Language.

Sue has been part of the resource base for a number of years and not only works tirelessly with our students at Great Baddow High School, but she has also taught baby sign to parents and babies in order to raise the profile of sign language and support early communication.

Her passion doesn't end here,she also wanted to support deaf students coming to GBHS by reaching out to our feeder schools and providing them with deaf awareness and basic sign language. Her presence in the primary schools has been greatly appreciated and she is regularly invited back.

In visiting the primary schools we hope to encourage pupils to have deaf awareness and a love of sign language, enabling communication barriers between deaf and hearing students to be broken down. Sue’s visits to the primary schools has been growing and she has visited more feeder schools this year than last.

To support this initial introduction into BSL we also run a BSL sign language club during early lunch to enable the many students who attended her session in primary school to develop their sign language skills and bridge gaps in communication.