Tuesday, October 18, 2005


BLOB TREE

POSTER REVIEW
November 2005 edition of SNIP
(Special Needs Information Press).

Wow - I love them - innovative and practical, creative and enabling. These
posters are going to be very useful to schools looking for ways to
facilitate and develop the pupil voice.
There are four Blob posters, each depicting a tree that has over it around
twenty Blobs characters - human shaped but of no specific age, size or
gender. There is no text so no need for pupils to be limited by the need to
decode or by others' interpretations, which opens up this resource to a wide
diversity of pupil ability and interests.
The Blobs are all involved in different activities, some climbing the tree,
some sitting, some in groups or alone, with different emotional expressions
and postioning etc. The idea is to use the Blob posters to generate
questions such as "Which Blob interests you? Which Blob is the most caring?
Which Blob do you feel like when you are at school?"
Primary and special schools will find them perhaps the most valuable, but
these posters also have a place in secondary settings as well. The authors
suggest ways in which they think the posters could be used which provides a
good starting place. In my view they would be invaluable in discussion
groups such as Circle Time, in counselling, mentoring or coaching frameworks
and provide and promote particpation in Anger Management or Nurture Groups.

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