Educational Resources
HemiHelp is a charity providing support and information to people with hemiplegia and their families in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. They have a magazine that is distributed quarterly. Lesley wrote an article on the disabled child and learning that was published in the Spring 2012 edition. To read the full article click here.
In February 2008 the local community newspaper, The Guardian, included an article about Lesley. The article was titled "Magical Story-teller in Edgemead'. To read the article click here
Lesley Potgieter was born with cerebral palsy. Despite her disability she overcame a number of challenges and obstacles and qualified as a primary school teacher. Having come When the first of her two sons was born she decided to take a break from teaching and focus on raising her family.
Author: Lindsay Brown From: www.remspeced.co.za
We are very fortunate people to be living in such a visual world. Our visual senses are constantly stimulated and we are bombarded with visual input. As a result we have become largely dependent on this input to stimulate our attention. Our children are products of this visual world. They too are surrounded by televisions, play stations, computers, DVD’s etc. It is unusual today for a child to sit and listen to a story without any visual stimulation or input. However, this has a detrimental effect on their listening development, which is a vital skill necessary in the classroom.
The stories from Never-ending stories have been developed primarily as a tool to improve children’s listening skills. The stories can be used:
- In conjunction with an existing theme
- For pure enjoyment at the end of the day
- In group activities where the teacher allows for each group to complete a specific task
- To develop language (parts of speech, nouns, etc.)
- As a drama or art activity
- To open a discussion forum
- As a creative writing piece
- For learners who need to specifically focus on listening as a skill.
The stories can also be useful to help learners who are introverted and have low levels of confidence as and can identify with certain characters.
