Lythe School pupil, Eve Winter, has become the youngest person ever to sit a Cued Speech exam at 11 years old. Not only is she the youngest but she is even in the top 5% of successful candidates.

Take a look at this news report about Eve Winter’s success with Cued Speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EwCGgn6Wjs

Why don’t you start learning Cued Speech right now, by registering on our online foundation course in Cued Speech: https://cuedspeechlearning.co.uk/

Why not give a donation to Cued Speech UK by using our Support Us website page.

If you have a deaf child or want to learn more about Cued Speech, you can contact Cued Speech UK by using our contact page, you can also send an email to [email protected] or you can call us on 01803 712553.

Cued Speech UK would love to see what you have to say!

Lythe School pupil passes adult exam with flying colours

Written by Louise Perrin and published on 08 July 2019 by the Whitby Gazette

Eve Winter has become the first child to sit a Cued Speech exam

Lythe School pupil, Eve Winter, has become the first child ever to sit a Cued Speech exam, and she’s done amazingly well.

Eve, 11, took the Cued Speech level one exam on June 26 and received her results from Cate Calder at Cued Speech UK who said: “Eve not only passed every section of the exam with flying colours, she is easily within the top 5% of all candidates that have successfully taken this exam over the years due to the extremely high levels of skill and accuracy that she demonstrated throughout.”

Nikki Summers, deaf inclusion worker, said “I honestly can’t say how proud I am of her.”

Cued Speech is a way of making spoken language visible for those who are deaf or hard of hearing. Eve explained further: “lip reading without Cued Speech is only 33% accurate, with Cued Speech it’s 98%”.

Unlike British Sign Language (BSL), which is a language in its own right, Cued Speech is a way of making spoken English visible using a series of easily identifiable hand gestures. So while BSL has only one word for dinosaur, with Cued Speech the reader can understand the word stegosaurus.

Eve, 11, took it upon herself to learn to use the language to enable her to better communicate with pupil, Alfie Blackwell, 8.

Alfie suffers from Auditory Neuropathy Spectrum Disorder (ANSD), which causes a profound loss of hearing. It’s a complex condition which causes Alfie’s hearing to fluctuate, he can literally hear one minute and not the next. As Mrs Summers, explained; “You can’t rely on it”.

Mrs Summers and her colleague Carly Simpson, also a deaf inclusion worker, set up a Sign & Cue club in September 2018. Eve, who enjoys freestyle dancing, practiced at the club, but continued her learning at home. Mrs Simpson said: “it’s really encouraging that Eve has done so well”

Alfie’s mum, Sarah Blackwell, said “We use Cued Speech alongside British Sign Language BSL, to incorporate the full English Language for Alfie. We are the first to use this system in North Yorkshire and would encourage anyone to do the same. If anyone wants to know more they can get in touch with us or the Cued Speech association. “

When asked why she chose to learn Cued Speech Eve replied “because I want to help deaf children when I grow up, it’s a good idea to learn earlier rather than later.”

Sarah continued: “The children and teachers at Alfie’s school have done incredibly well at learning Cued Speech and Sign Language. There are quite a few children who have done fantastic and gained a lot of fluency in both.

“It fabulous news that Eve Winter has taken her Cued Speech Exam, we are so proud. Eve and some other children at Lythe have supported and encouraged Alfie, showing such a passion for learning Cued Speech and BSL they will always be such a special part of Alfie’s childhood.”

Alfie, an energetic young man, keen to join in with everything, said he is pleased that Eve can talk to him: “I like it when Eve reads stories to me, it makes me really happy” he smiled.

And what does mum, Lisa Winter, think of her daughter’s achievement? She’s clearly very proud as she sums up what everyone else is thinking: “She’s amazing”.

To find out how you can learn Cued Speech, visit our website here.

You can now register on our Cued Speech self-study foundation course.

If you have a deaf child or want to learn more about Cued Speech, you can contact Cued Speech UK by using our contact page, you can also send an email to [email protected] or you can call us on 01803 712553.

Cued Speech UK would love to see what you have to say!

Why not give a donation to Cued Speech UK by using our Support Us website page.

Learning to use Cued Speech is so much fun and can be so life-changing for families with deaf children. Helen Campbell, who works as a medical Sign Language interpreter, decided to learn to use Cued Speech when she found out how it supports deaf people’s access to spoken English.

Helen said “I think that Cued Speech is an amazing tool to enable deaf people to access all the information that hearing people can and I think that it’s just so much easier for families to learn. All deaf people should be raised with both British Sign Language (BSL) and English. But it’s so difficult for parents to learn BSL initially; there’s not enough access to it and BSL tutors are so rare. However, parents can learn Cued Speech over a weekend and start revealing language to their deaf children almost immediately. We live in England and everything is done in English, so deaf people should have full visual access to both BSL and English. Cued Speech can allow deaf people to become literate, and with these fully developed reading and writing skills they can communicate effectively in a world that relies so much on written communication.”

Helen passed her level 1 Cued Speech at our base; The Boatshed in Totnes and she’s looking forward to telling everyone about her success. As an accomplished BSL/English interpreter and expert in visual language for deaf people, Helen can now add Cued Speech to her extensive professional skills and she also has the opportunity of training towards the level 2 qualification.

Becoming qualified in Cued Speech use can lead to career choices; teaching families and deafness professionals how to cue as a ‘CueTutor’ or perhaps even becoming a ‘transliterator’.  To transliterate means to represent a spoken language like English, in a different mode. This means transliterators represent English visually, through cueing it, rather than orally through speaking it. This is different from ‘interpreting’ which is representing a first language in a second separate language. Helen may one day be able to interpret for some clients in BSL and transliterate for others with Cued Speech.

Families often use a bilingual approach at home, by choosing to use both BSL and Cued Speech with their deaf children. This is the most complete bilingualism, that aims to give deaf children native-level understanding and use of both languages; spoken English and signed BSL. As the popularity of Cued Speech grows in the UK, perhaps Helen can look forward to her skills being very much in demand.

To find out how you can learn Cued Speech, visit our website here.

If you have a deaf child or want to learn more about Cued Speech, you can contact Cued Speech UK by using our contact page, you can also send an email to [email protected] or you can call us on 01803 712553.

Cued Speech UK would love to see what you have to say!

Why not give a donation to Cued Speech UK by using our Support Us website page.

Recently Cued Speech UK went and spoke with students from the University of Edinburgh, where they are training to be teachers of the deaf. It was a great opportunity to discuss the latest figures from the NDCS, which highlight how deaf children are struggling in their school years, and how, following the publication of these figures, educators and underfunded councils appear to have been given the accountability for this under achievement of deaf children in schools.

An article “Deaf children fall behind at school, says charity” by the BBC’s family and education reporter Katherine Sellgren highlights these recent statistics from the NDCS and focuses on the idea that education is struggling to meet the needs of deaf children. The news item also implies how more government funding will by some means improve the situation.

“Deaf children in England are falling behind their classmates from primary school through to GCSE, analysis by the National Deaf Children’s Society shows.

“Only 30.6% achieve a GCSE strong pass – Grade 5 or above – in both English and maths, compared with 48.3% of children with no special educational needs.

“And 57% fail to reach expected levels in reading, writing and maths in Sats tests at the end of primary, compared with 26% of children with no SEN.

“The NCDS urges more government funding.”

In the article Chief executive of the NDCS, Susan Daniels, said: “These figures show the true depth of the crisis engulfing deaf education in this country.

“Meanwhile, the government is starving local councils of funding, meaning their support is cut back and their specialist teachers are being laid off.

“The government needs to address the gap in results urgently and begin to adequately fund the support deaf children need.

“It promised every child in this country a world class education, but until deaf and hearing children progress and achieve at the same level, it is failing to deliver and that is utterly unacceptable.”

However, we know that overall early years deaf children, when they arrive at school, are just not ready. They arrive at school unprepared and without sufficient language to take advantage of their education. It’s only at school that children’s language ability is benchmarked, and their insufficiencies are made apparent.

The student teachers at the University of Edinburgh were demonstrating how willing they were to experiment and adapt to new methods to improve the outcomes for their deaf pupils. But perhaps we are asking too much, to expect these teachers to get their deaf pupils to catch up with language that was never there in the first place.

Deaf children, like all children, need full exposure to complete language as babies well before their school years. Only, for deaf children this language needs to be visual.

Cued Speech UK provides parents with free support and training in Cued Speech, to allow them to provide visual language to their deaf children. Parents are key. They want the very best outcomes for their deaf children and language is the priority. Cued Speech allows deaf children to see what their parents are saying, so that they can arrive at school pre-equipped with all the language they need to become literate.

Cued Speech provides a solution for parents, to allow them to support the work of schools and improve the outcomes and outlook for all deaf children, particularly as cued speech, based on a phonemic system, offers a direct link to literacy.

If you have a deaf child or want to learn more about Cued Speech, you can contact Cued Speech UK by using our contact page, you can also send an email to [email protected] or you can call us on 01803 712553.

Cued Speech UK would love to see what you have to say!

Why not give a donation to Cued Speech UK by using our Support Us page on our website.

Just when you’ve finished picking pine needles out of the carpet and the last bit of tinsel has disappeared into the vacuum cleaner, here is a little Christmas gem to inspire and delight.

This heart-warming video has been produced by Nikki Summers and Carly Simpson who run the Cue Club at Lythe Church of England Primary School in Whitby and it shows the children performing the Christmas carol Silent Night, in two visual languages, Cued English and British Sign Language (BSL).

Nikki said “The children are absolutely amazing and such a credit to themselves. They have put so much effort into learning. I run a cue club every day over lunchtimes and encourage children to pop and see me as and when they want to and then it doesn’t become onerous. I’m there every day and if they want to learn they just turn up! I tend to have friendship groups that come along and ask questions, learn, practice and then go off together to practice with friends and they just keep popping in for more. It’s a very open and informal approach but it’s working!! I am very proud of them.”

Three years ago, Nikki started using Cued Speech to support a profoundly deaf boy in her class.  The boy came to the school using BSL to communicate and joined a class with hearing school-mates. Nikki explains, “I decided to teach (Cued Speech) to all the pupils in his class as they learned their phonics so that they would be able to communicate with him more easily. In doing so, I discovered that Cued Speech also supported children with speech, language and communication needs and dyslexia.” Nikki understood that Cued Speech turns the 44 phonemes of speech into visible units that can be blended to make words and sentences, giving the boy access to full English – full access because he could see the language produced visually.

Nikki continued to teach using Cued Speech with all her class of children and from her observations over the course of time, she came to believe that all the children’s progress in phonics was accelerated because they were using Cued speech the whole time, and not just to communicate with their deaf class-mate. Nikki was delighted to observe that the boy’s progress was exactly in line with that of his hearing peers.

If you have a deaf child or want to learn more about Cued Speech, you can contact Cued Speech UK by phone (01803 712853) or by email ([email protected]). Cued Speech UK would love to see what you have to say!