Reflective Journal 2 - Planning a day out- The London dungeons

 The planning, delivery, assessment and review of learning.

This is an account of a day out with a Deafblind person to the London dungeons to enable him, through a variety of mediums, to learn about historical periods of time.

When planning an educational day out for David I take into account the transport and travel to and from the destination as we do not drive.  David is both Deaf and blind so 5 minutes for us is like 15 minutes to him.  Therefore I try to plan the route as straight forward and as quickly as I can. I also try to find something that David has an interest in or even something he has no interest in but is tactile and can be felt, as this may lead to a discovery of new interest.

From past experience too much signing and all talk does not work, there has to be an element of fun and touch and even smells if possible, this will hold David’s interest and will hopefully lead to further questions about the day later on.  If this occurs then you know you have been successful as what he has learnt will stay with him all day and will lead to many questions which are what I hope for as that tells me he has enjoyed the day and learnt something from it.

I interpret the surroundings and the noises that I hear, I break down the stories we are told into vocabulary that David can understand.  I use everything that I can to help me enrich the story such as relevant smells, touching props, weapons and any available objects of reference, this brings the stories to life and makes it easier to picture and understand for my learner. So much is learnt from seeing that we take so much for granted. Because of this I need to be aware that even the simplest of things can go missed for example, when relaying the story of the plague of London I can see that the conditions are un-sanitary where David would not.

I had visited before and therefore was prepared to some extent for the time restrictions on a guided tour as everything was on a 1 hour cycle so it was important to keep my pace on the tour without hurrying the learner.

All of the information that I passed on to David was broken down so it was very basic and could be understood without being an too much of an information overload.

I was originally unsure about the visit because it was quite a new genre of learning for him but the combinations of different resources used throughout the day to relay the stories seemed to be a great success and he learnt a great deal.

After the tour I asked him if he enjoyed the day and I could tell by the questions that he was asking me that he was interested and had been listening to what I had been telling him.

He later thanked us for taking him as he said he had really enjoyed learning about ‘old London’.