Does anyone have examples of helpful, collaborative relationships between students with special needs and their peers in mainstream settings?

I can think of several initiatives designed to promote literacy development and social inclusion in school. "Paired reading" involves an older student assisting a younger learner with literacy difficulties. The former listens, prompts, encourages, corrects and explains while the latter reads aloud from a book he or she has chosen. This collaboration benefits both partners. "Readers" get 1-to-1 attention, make their mistakes in relative privacy and almost invariably improve their phonics and comprehension skills in the process. "Listeners" learn valuable social and teaching skills that they can later deploy in the workplace. Paired reading works best when the "listeners" are trained beforehand, supervised during the scheme by a teacher of learning support assistant and rewarded afterwards for their participation with a certificate or a good job reference. In my school, the most effective "listeners" were those who had experienced literacy problems themselves when they were younger. They volunteered to help because they wanted to pass on strategies that had enabled them to overcome their obstacles. A variant is the Department for Education and Skills "Reading Challenge" and "Writing Challenge", which can be delivered by older peers as well as teachers or classroom assistants. Here the older student interviews the young person with special needs using a questionnaire then delivers a series of pre-prepared mini-lessons. As for social inclusion, a "buddy" system can help bullied special needs students raise their self-esteem. Here older students befriend younger students at risk. ChildLine's newsletter at http://www.childline.org.uk/pdfs/chips_chat_autumn_2002.pdf has a good article entitled "Be a buddy" explaining it all.

For a number of years I was involved in taking sixth form students to a nearby school for students with severe learning difficulties. Here, pairs of students of similar ages worked together to prepare and share afternoon tea and participate in other social activities. Later in the school year the two schools went on a week long outdoor pursuits trip held at an Education Authority run centre in the country. The liaison continued very successfully for many years and ceased only when Community Service, Sports Leadership and the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme had to be dropped due to cost implications! The loss of developing such important skills to both sets of students was incalculable. Presumably, schemes like this nowadays would fit under the citizenship banner.

A few years ago I was involved in a combined language, movement and music project between a mainstream Middle School and a local special school for children with severe learning difficulties. Another Teaching Assistant and I escorted about 12 children from the Middle School to the special school once a week where they joined pupils for an active story session. Each child paired up with a peer from the other school. All the children played instruments, either independently, or with assistance as required. The whole was linked together by a 'storyteller' who was in costume and involved all the children together in movement around the room. All the children enjoyed the afternoon sessions and we also felt that all the children benefitted from the sessions; it was just a pity that more children could not have been involved!