Last night we showed you the new priority seating designated for differently-abled persons and tonight as we continue to cover events on the disabilities week calendar we're taking you to Stella Maris.
We found students in a celebratory mood today as NARCIE and the Ministry of Education distributed their new inclusion toolkits. We stopped in for the handover and to find out just what's included in the eye-catching colourful kits. Cherisse Halsall reports.
It's Disabilities week, and to celebrate the Ministry of Education had a special gift for the classrooms at Stella Marris.
They're called Inclusion toolkits, colorful, engaging, and educational, they serve as a toolbox for learning that works for students at all levels. And this afternoon Stella Marris's Principal told us why she and her staff are so grateful to get them.
Francelia Canton, Principal, Stella Maris
"What I really love about it, I saw that it deals a lot with IEP and meeting the children's specific individual needs, so that is one great thing about it. I really like the math links and these you know to do sorting and for children to have fine motor skills, to develop their fine motor skills so it's amazing, it's wonderful that we have something like this that can help our children."
Cherisse Halsall
"What are some items you have seen in the kit?"
Francelia Canton, Principal, Stella Maris
"I, I like this math link, it's very good you can use this for multiplication, addition, subtraction, and to sort as well by colors, you know. It's awesome and this helps them with hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills as well because you have to connect them. The classification toys, can be by the animals, there are different animals here. So, this is awesome, really, really, awesome for our fine motor skills as well."
And these toolkits are an initiative from the National Resource Center for Individual Education, one that Special Education officers - many of whom are former teachers - put a lot of thought into.
Juanita Cadle, Special Ed Officer, NRCIE
"Well being the national resource centre we work closely with Stella Maris, we have always supported the school initiatives and the principal and the teacher and the students here at the school, so this is just another one of our initiatives. We put together these kits so that the teachers could have resources, It's like a resource tool kit you know and so they can use it in the classroom to work with the students and provide more relevant and meaningful activities for the students."
