Peak Special School in Chinley is appealing for help to raise money for equipment to buy interactive home learning boxes, so their children with complex learning needs can access equipment at home over summer.
The Buxton Road school caters for youngsters from nursery age to 19 years old with a wide range of needs, particularly those with profound and multiple learning difficulties (PMLD), communication difficulties, and those with extremely challenging behaviour linked to their associated learning difficulties.
It has remained open throughout the lockdown to children who have Education Health and Care plans and have therefore been classed as vulnerable including looked after children some of whom live on site at Peak Lodge Residential Home. However, more than half of the children are medically vulnerable and have been shielding at home with their parents.
The school - which has lots of pupils from Glossop - has launched a campaign to raise £5,000 for the boxes to ensure their children have the tools to continue their learning during the forthcoming holiday period.
The school on Buxton Road in Chinley
Victoria Friess, an Early years teacher at the school, said: “Teachers in school have been supporting learning to those at home but for many children who use specialist equipment and technology at school to develop their skills, this has been difficult.
“We really need help to put together a library of interactive home Learning Boxes that we can lend out to families to use at home, giving the children opportunity to maintain skills and continue to do so throughout the school holidays.
“For many children they will have had six months away from school and away from equipment and teaching strategies that allow them to learn vital skills of communication, cause and effect and visual development.
“In the boxes will be exciting sensory toys, buttons and "switches" that teach children to activate stimulating toys, request "more" of something they enjoy and give them the ability to make choices during their play.”
Examples of the boxes the school are looking to put together
Victoria went on: “We want the Peak School Education 2020 fundraising for Interactive Home Learning Boxes to cover a range of topics including switch activities, sensory exploration and interactive stories as well as supporting the work of our therapy services such as Visual Impairment and Speech and Language therapy.
“Our teachers will write programmes for parents to follow using this equipment so that our pupils maintain and continue to develop the skills that they have gained in school.
“We do have resources in school but nowhere near enough to put a lending library together that can support all of the children who are at home.
“The specialist switch equipment is expensive and so we need to raise a grand total of £5,000 in order to fully put this into place.
“We have a Just Giving page, and we have been hosting weekly Lockdown quizzes to help raise money. We have so far raised £1200 of our target so we need more help!”
To donate, visit https://www.justgiving.com/campaign/peakschooleducation2020
The school also has a YouTube channel which has regular updates and videos of what their pupils get up to, which you can view here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgniQowhF87jVBnOdA5u4Og
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