Adults teach specific, functional vocabulary (e.g. more, hello, please, toilet) using appropriate Early Years strategies e.g. pairing words with a visual, using Signalong.
Adults offer children choices (e.g. for food, songs, stories, activities) making sure that a choice is supported visually with objects, pictures or symbols.
Adults model and support skills to promote communication and language with peers (e.g. support to join group games, use of musical instruments/ actions to allow inclusion in circle time, structured physical games during outdoor play such as races and chase games which don’t depend on spoken language skills).
Provide alternative ways to record learning (e.g. photos or video recording) so children can share their ideas and progress can be captured.
Adults provide regular access to small group interventions to develop skills, for example:
Talk Boost is a targeted intervention that narrows the gap between 4-7 year olds with language delay and their peers.
Tales Toolkit provides a package of small group resources to develop children’s skills in story development and sequencing.
Progression in Language Structures pdf [377kb] helps identify appropriate sentence starters for different ages.
It can be used to support EAL learners or children with delayed language skills to construct sentences by giving them a familiar structure to work from.
A structured language intervention may need to be devised in consultation with external professionals (e.g. Speech and Language Therapists) with support to generalise skills taught.
The Bury Paediatric Speech and Language Therapy Team have developed a tool which aims to gather information on a child’s ‘speech’. ‘Speech’ refers to the sounds used to make up words. The tool looks at a child’s pronunciation of consonants within words. The tool will help you analyse the results and guide you to support the child at home and school. It aims to help you decide when a child needs referring for specialist Speech and Language Therapy.