Blog

Some students resist what we ask them to do; as do some adults for that matter!  It’s a natural reaction for some people – especially those who have an Internal pattern of motivation [see June and July’s bites].  A neat way to reduce the resistance to any suggestion we make to people is to go [...]

In our production of “Where The Wild Things Are” we had a life sized sailing boat in which the little boy Max sailed “to the land where the Wild Things are”.  We also made a tiny replica boat that could easily be held in one hand.  This enabled us to pass the boat round the [...]

We are at the moment in the middle of our summer programme of Multi-Sensory Magic Residencies.  This year we are basing the work round the Michael Rosen story Going on a Bear Hunt.   

One of the environments we create involves snow and Jill Goodwin introduced us to a great idea for gentle snow fall.  You [...]

This month’s behaviour management strategy

External motivation

Last month I wrote about the Internal pattern of motivational language that can be very powerful in getting students to engage with what them to.  The other side of the coin is the External pattern.  The Internal/External language pattern is part of what is called Language and Behaviour profiling.  In [...]

This month’s drama idea

Building belief

For this month’s bite I am indebted to Dawn Bowden a drama practitioner with tons of experience working with learning difficulties and in main stream settings.  She sent me the story below after receiving June’s Bamboozle bite.  In it she describes some of the strategies she used to build belief in [...]

This month’s multi-sensory activity

Hand under Hand
Sometimes students at the more complex end of the learning difficulty spectrum don’t readily explore their environment of their own volition.  Let’s say we are learning about the sea and have a large conch shell that we think will be interesting to touch with its rough outside and pearl smooth [...]

Great news! We have secured funding for a one day a week Family Project Development Worker at Bamboozle. The funding has come from The Lloyds TSB Foundation for England and Wales and will allow us to engage an individual for 1 day a week for 3 years to proactively develop Bamboozle’s programme of family projects. [...]

Have you ever had the experience of working with a student and finding it difficult to make a connection.  I know that I have and it can be very frustrating.  Despite all of our best intentions and bringing all our sensitivity to bear there seems to be resistance to anything that we suggest.  It may [...]

Last week I saw a TV documentary on the Black Adder series. I had forgotten how brilliant it was. One of the things I really enjoyed about it was Baldrick’s cunning plans – particularly the one where he engraves his name on a bullet. He has heard that everyone has a bullet with “their name [...]

Polar Landscape with Newsprint
Newsprint * is great for making quick environments. For example if we are telling a story about penguins or polar exploration we can transform the room into an Antarctic landscape in minutes by loosely screwing up handfuls of newsprint and scattering them across the floor. We could also cover [...]