When it comes to helping a group of first and second graders form letters, Emily Vann and Katy Morton are making it a fun, full-body workout.
Emily and Katy, clinicians at Five Counties Children’s Centre, are in a classroom at St. Joseph’s Catholic Elementary School in Douro at the invitation of teacher Melanie Julian.
The aim is to help Mrs. Julian reinforce proper printing for her students.
Standing at the front of the class, Emily uses a flip chart to demonstrate the different styles of letters: “tallies” like t, f, and b; “smallies” like a, c and e; and “sinkers” like g, j and p. She also shares a simple tip that’s relatable to the students.
“Ever go to the park? Ever go down the slide?” Emily asks the students. “Well, the letter ‘y’ is the same thing. Go down the small slide first, then back up the climber, and then the big slide’s next.”
As students practise printing in their notebooks, Emily, Katy, and Mrs. Julian go around the class to assist, offer hints, or correct a child’s pencil grasp.
The printing lesson is reinforced by students forming letters in the air with their fingers and standing up to identify different types of letters, either by touching their toes (for the “sinkers”), putting hands on their waist (for the “smallies”), or reaching out to the sky (for the “tallies”).
The half-hour session is interactive and engaging, and is repeated in dozens of schools across the Peterborough, Kawartha Lakes, Northumberland, and Haliburton region.
The School Based Rehabilitation Services (SBRS) program based at Five Counties sees clinicians provide occupational therapy, physiotherapy, or speech language therapy support to students on a one-on-one basis or in a classroom setting.
A tiered intervention model (levels one, two, or three) is used by Five Counties, in consultation with the school, to determine specific supports for students based on their needs.
In these cases, the school — not the family — is the one requesting Five Counties’ specialized support. School staff identify potential needs of students and refer them to the Centre’s SBRS program. Parents are informed about the proposed intervention and must consent to having a Five Counties clinician work with their child.
SBRS is an important element to the work Five Counties does to support local children and youth with physical, developmental, and communication needs. While it may be less known than the Centre’s other services, it is significant. Last year alone, Five Counties staff provided school-based treatment services to 3,910 students across the region.
Emily and Katy’s presence at St. Joseph’s in Douro is a sampler of what SBRS staff might do in schools.
In addition to supporting Grades 1 and 2 students to form letters, the duo visit a senior kindergarten and Grade 1 class to support the teacher in offering activities that develop and strengthen students’ fine motor skills.
Later, they will work with Grade 4 students on self-regulation, helping them identify emotions and choose strategies to control their bodies, maintain focus and handle stressors.
Interspersed between classroom visits are one-on-one support sessions for students.
Katy loves being in schools to support educators and student success.
“We’re augmenting what teachers are doing,” says Katy, who is an occupational therapist at Five Counties. “If you can go into a classroom, identify a problem, and work with the teacher and the school team on a couple of strategies to help, then we’re making a difference.”
She calls it “heartwarming” to leave a classroom teacher with one or two strategies to work on with kids, then return a week or two later to see what they’ve achieved.
Sinead McIlwain, a special education resource teacher at St. Joseph’s, says the relationship with Five Counties is a win-win situation — for students and educators.
Accessing the specialized support of Five Counties, clinicians can enhance what teachers do in the classroom, while the one-on-one help offered to individual students can fill a gap.
“Teachers are open to the strategies and support being offered,” Sinead notes. “Five Counties staff can help plant the seed in students, and teachers can water and nurture it to fruition.”
For Emily, an occupational therapy assistant at Five Counties, helping a child learn to write or master a certain letter means making the exercise fun and easy.
“Most of the kids I work with don’t like to write because it’s hard or challenging for them,” she says. “For the kids that are struggling with the letter ‘a,’ you can show them that you start it with a ‘c’, and just add a straight-up-and-straight-down line, and they go ‘Oh’.”
It’s those “aha” moments that make Emily smile.
“It’s one of the best parts of my job,” she notes.
