Language and Communication

Language and Communication is a vital part of a child's development. In order to support our children, we have a range of resources and interventions that we use to ensure that we provide them with the best possible support.

Every other week, we are visited by Alison Doggett, our allocated NHS Speech and Language Therapist. If a member of staff, or parent/carer has concerns about a child's speech or understanding, a referral may be made to Alison's team and she will arrange an assessment of need. Parents/carers will be invited into school to meet with Alison during the initial assessment. Once the assessment is complete, and depending on the outcome, Alison will produce a report and set targets for school and home to follow. Programmes of support maybe provided to ensure the best possible outcomes.  

Sounds Listening Programme is used in our Early Years classrooms to support children with speech sounds difficulties. The idea is, they listen to sounds in our speech so they can eventually learn to use the sounds themselves. This is done through the use of pictures. If after the programme is complete a child still has trouble with speech sounds, a referral to the Speech and Language Therapist may be made. All of our Early Years staff as well as some of our Year 1 staff are trained in the Sounds Listening programme. 

All staff have been trained in the use of Blanks Level questioning. There are four levels of questioning which move from simple, concrete questions to more difficult, abstract questions. Blank’s questions encourage development of general language and vocabulary as well as skills in comprehension, reasoning, inferencing, predicting and problem solving.

Learning Language and Loving It - Hanen Centre is an evidenced-based programme designed to support teachers, teaching assistants and Early Years teams in using interaction strategies to support children in their learning. Our Early Years staff have received training to further enhance their interactions with children to enable them to build the best possible lifelong social, lifelong and literact skills.

The Nuffield Early Language Intervention (NELI) is a programme for children in Reception (4-5 years) which has been found to improve children’s language and early literacy skills. The programme involves a trained teaching assistant providing short small-group and individual teaching sessions to around 3-6 pupils for 20-weeks. Robust evaluations found NELI children made on average 3 months of additional progress in language.