School presentation

Has anyone done one? Can you help me put one together? Can we put it together here to share with everyone?

Grades 1-5
Grades 6-8

thank you.

What are you presenting on? Just Down syndrome in general or inclusion at school or all of the above?????

I would love to see this develop! Wouldn't it be great if we had a resourse to pull from to do presentations?! Joint efforts are awesome! I have not done any, but I know several moms here have. I'll be thinking, Susan. KRis

I have done the older kids age group

I take a bunch of pictures of kids with Ds. And I did ask the parents before for pictures, so I have used those pictures I have permission to use multiple times.

Anyway, I have several pictures out, for the school setting I go to it works best to have the pictures on the tables. There are about 5 large tables.

As the kids come in they start looking at pictures, and it is very interesting to even hear the comments as they come in (they KNOW I am coming and that I will talk about Down syndrome and that my baby has it, so there has only been one inapropriate comment said and I addressed it immediately)

Then I ask, "Tell me how do these kids look alike?" So I write it on the board, and then I talk briefly about the certain typical characteristics. After that, I tell them how Down syndrome happens and some of the other things they did not say.

I bring up muscle tone and ask them what muscles we have in our bodies. Pretty amazing to see them say things like "you use your muscles to walk, I bet that is why it takes them longer!" yeah!

After that, I ask them to look at the pictures and tell me how they look different This is my favorite part! Because they do begin to see the differences and I love to really stress those out.

At the end, I always allow time for questions, and they always ask!

And to close, I talk about the R word and why it is not okay.

Hope this helps!

Thank You Ellen, that sounds so wonderful! I am terrible at public speaking, even to young ones, so I was wondering if you could also give me some of the common questions that you get. I would like to present to elementary and also to middle school during the DS awareness week. To middle school, I want to go for the dignity-in-all-persons route, please keep your ideas coming. It would be excellent if we can pull one together right here, to share with everyone.

Middle school kids ask very simple kid related questions. Like " Can they walk" or sometimes "Why can't they talk?"

High schoolers have asked tough questions, surprised me actually, like "If you had known before she was born, would you have kept her?" I answer with my heart and let them know that I did know, not 100% but we knew it was a possibility.

I have gone to a college class and I loved it! They were processing things like adults and it was so much fun! For that I have a power point that I could share with you. But they were physical therapy students and I talked a lot about muscle tone and physical therapy in general

Ellen, did you happen to videotape any of your presentations?
Thank you, I LOVE your ideas and helps me to know what to expect.
Please keep all ideas coming, everyone.

There are a couple of publications that our DSA uses and other DSA's use, "Common Myths about DS" and "Common questions", or something to that extent...I can send them to you if you want.

Also, our DSA uses a book like "Taking DS to school" which is an AWESOME book for the elementary school crowd. If we do a talk at a school our DSA likes us to do some kind of "training" with the DSA so we are offering the correct and current information. Then we go talk about DS and let the kids ask questions.

We also did a powerpoint for adults on DS once, myself, our director and another mom. I can see if they have a copy of that still. And then my oldest did a powerpoint on Translocation DS a year or so ago in HS science

A.