Sheffield schools: Mossbrook SEN class raising money for Ukraine through sponsored silence

On Friday, the class will attempt to stay quiet through lessons as they aim to raise money for Ukrainians through a sponsored silence.

Despite it being a real challenge for the class of 14 autistic boys, they are all determined to help, and although some of them may not manage it as they don’t understand, the entire class really wants to help the people of Ukraine.

Describing how the idea came about, class teacher Katie Meeney said: “One of the boys in our class came in quite upset about the news. He is autistic but is quite verbal and so we talked about it as a class.

"Some of the boys didn’t know much about it which is understandable, but I said why don’t we try and do something about it and let’s think about some ways we could raise money.

"The sponsored silence was just one of the things we came up with – we are going to do some other things as well but that is the first thing we thought we could do because it is a sort of challenge for our boys to do this.”

They children are allowed to speak during break and dinner times because they have to be able to speak at some points throughout the day, but all 14 will attempt to remain silent during class.

"We have got four members of staff too, and we’re going to try and not talk all day and we are going to try and communicate with them through signing as much as we can,” said Katie.

"I only created the Just Giving page on Monday so they have been really excited every day at school with me looking at the page and reading all the messages.”

So far, the class alone has managed to raise an outstanding £1,700 for UNICEF.

Katie says this is the most the school has ever raised for anything and it is just one class doing it, so is something to be really proud of.

To donate to the cause, visit: www.justgiving.com/fundraising/Badgersponsoredsilence.