Staff from primary school in Northampton add sign language to their ‘we miss you’ video

A primary school in Northampton has recorded a song to tell its pupils how much they are missed, but has put its own spin on the trend that is sweeping the nation.

Upton Meadows Primary School in The Square, Upton, decided to add sign language to the ‘Friends Forever’ song.

Staff at the school decided to add the extra dimension to the video as they have a number of students who use sign language to communicate with family members outside of school.

Teachers, teaching assistants and admin staff all got involved by learning the signs for their own sections of the song, before the video was pieced together and sent out to students.

Head teacher, Clare Searing, said: “We don’t have any children diagnosed as having a hearing impairment but we have several families who have siblings or parents who are deaf or have a hearing impairment.

“So we have a number of children in the school who can sign.

“We include sign language in our languages term, so that all children from reception to year six know basic phrases and words and can communicate through sign language.”

Just as schools were closed and the lockdown was introduced, children from Upton Meadows were starting to learn the ‘Friends Forever’ song and the accompanying sign language in the school’s regular singing assemblies.

Clare added: “Early on into the closure we asked the children to learn it and send in videos of themselves signing to the song.

“So this was our way to show that we had done it too.

“Staff are engaged with the signing assemblies so they learn those phrases with the students, but they all learnt how to sign their part of the song off their own back.”

The video, which has been uploaded to YouTube and includes a lot of the staff at the school, was also created to help students stay in contact with their teachers.

“Like all schools we are working really hard to maintain contact with communities and for us that is much bigger than setting work for children to do,” Clare added.

“We want to make sure the children still feel a part of Upton Meadows. We want to reassure them that we are still here and we’re still smiling.”

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