What’s in Living and Learning?
This resource was previously known as the National Curriculum, the name was revised to be called 'Living and Learning' due to it supporting more than just the National Curriculum and can reflect elements of day to day life.
This resource expands on the signs and symbols already widely in use with the Makaton Programme and supports the recommendation made by the National Curriculum Council (NCC 1992a) that augmentative and alternative communication systems could be used to enable those pupils who need them to access the National Curriculum.
The aim of this resource is to provide the essential language required by teachers, parents, pupils and other professionals to access the early levels of the National Curriculum subject areas through signs, symbols and speech. This resource comprises a vocabulary of signs and symbols for approximately 600 words covering the early levels of subject areas:- English, Maths, Science, Geography, History and Technology.
Other subject areas are covered in other Makaton Resource Vocabulary collections, such as PSHE, Performing Arts etc. Contrary to what might be expected, the vocabulary in this book is not presented under the six subject areas it covers. This is because a large amount of the vocabulary is common across subject areas and would necessitate frequent repetition or tedious cross referencing. Instead, we have clustered it in groups under familiar topics to:
- emphasise the functional use of the vocabulary,
and
- illustrate the design themes of some of the symbols, wherever this has been possible, in order to help teachers, parents, pupils and other professionals learn and remember them more easily
See the word list below:
Living and Learning content (also known as National Curriculum)