5 tips to help nursery children prepare for school

Help! A child in my nursery is not listening or talking and he is going to school next September.  How will I help him get ready for school?

It is common for practitioners working in nurseries and preschools to be worried about one or two children in the Autumn Term.  The year will fly by and it is hard to imagine these children catching up so that they will cope with the demands of school.  When young children are delayed the most common areas of concern are about speech, language and communication.  Problems in these areas have knock-on effects upon behaviour, play and friendships.  Here are five tips on how to help:

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Talk to the parents.  First off share your concerns with the child’s parents.  Have some concrete examples of what you have observed the child struggle to do.  Parents typically also have concerns so you can start a dialogue about what they have observed in other situations and make suggestions for some simple ways of helping.  Other parents know less about typical child development, so this is your first opportunity to raise their awareness and involve them in your plans to discover more about their child.  As you go through the academic year having the parents on board will be vital to ensuring that they make simple changes to help their child progress.

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Allocate a key worker.  Most nurseries and preschools have a key worker system where one practitioner is allocated to a child.  This arrangement is often loose as all staff on duty interact spontaneously with any children nearby.  But when there is concern about a child’s speech, language and communication it is vital that the key worker system is rigorously applied.  This has two major benefits.  First it gives the child the opportunity to form a strong attachment to one person.  This is a secure base for a vulnerable little person.  If the child has difficulty forming social bonds then this will become apparent if the relationship with the key worker does not emerge.  Second the key worker will be well placed to make detailed observations about how the child manages interactions with others and can learn what helps the child to communicate successfully with others.  This type of support has to be delivered ‘in the moment’ to be effective and of the right ‘dosage’.  Too little support and the child can become emotionally unregulated (e.g. passively despondent or stimulation seeking).  Too much support and the child can become dependent on the adult, lack self agency and stop interacting with children.  

So what is the ‘just right’ amount of support? Here are some examples:

It is when the key worker spots when the child has not understood a spoken instruction and so will repeat the words simply, showing or demonstrating to the child.  The result is successful comprehension in the moment.  

It is when the key worker spots when the child is asking for a toy but can only point or grab, and so she models the word they child needs to say.  The child then experiences how using the right words can lead to a peaceful toy exchange with another child.

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Plot the child’s progress.  Create a baseline profile of the child (e.g. using the Early Years Foundation Stage tools) and repeat it six weeks later to monitor progress.  Keeping good records means you have concrete evidence to show parents.  This can demonstrate and justify your management decisions; for example to show how your support is helping the child to develop or to show why you have decided to ask for additional support from the Speech and Language Therapy Service.  If you do get professional support your records will help answer the therapist’s questions about the child and your intervention.

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Get Informed.  Speech, language and communication difficulties maybe an unfamiliar area to you but there is plenty of help on the internet from organisations such as I Can and The Communication Trust.  Your local authority and speech and language department will have training that you can access.  Link up with local nurseries and preschools to discover how other early years settings support speech, language and communication.  Sharing resources and experiences of the support that is available locally can save time and money.

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Plan and Deliver Intervention.  Be realistic about what intervention you can provide.  Consider the physical layout of your setting, the knowledge and skills of the staff, funding for additional resources and your ability to commit to the form of intervention that you decide to deliver.  For example, if you are in a pack-away Church Hall with a small group of children then you will need to support language through play with all of the children.  Whereas a preschool setting with a separate quiet room could set up a language group that plays the language game at a set time each day without distractions. Your local speech and language therapist can make suggestions about published interventions that you could deliver.  The best programmes will include a form of monitoring so that you can detect the child that fails to make progress, even with your support.  In this way you will know when it is appropriate to refer the child to speech and language therapy.  However, it is highly likely that you will the child (and others in your setting) flourish with your language and communication games.

Handout:  Universal Skills for Practitioners Talking with Young Children in Pre-School Start Sessions

Have Fun!

Speak….	Do….	Be….
add-on repeat model pause chunk	show gesture wait listen follow	warm alert involved creative available

Speak….
Add-on expand what the child says with an extra word or two: “yes, ball, blue ball” Repeat repeat the phrase exactly to give extra opportunity for understanding: “a blue ball, a blue ball” Model Say the phrase or word you want the child to say, but don’t force them to repeat you Pause Break you phrases up with pauses; this slows down your speech and gives children time Chunk Break your words up into short chunks; simplify your language Do…. Show Show the child what you mean: “here is the Gorilla” Gesture Point, use exaggerated hand movements and facial expression Wait Give the child time to process what you said and create a reply or action in response Listen Listen to what the child actually says and acknowledge this first (rather than what you expected them to say) Follow Follow the child’s interest to map your words onto their actions and words Be…. Warm A kindly tone of voice and patience helps learning Alert Observe all the children and watch for indications they are ready to interact, like looking at your face Involved Reduce distractions so you can devote yourself to the children during the activity you lead Creative Use your playful to side to make the activity motivating for all Available Use your body to show you are ready to listen to the children -Catherine de La Bedoyere Speechmark author of Pre-School Start

Laura Walker & Carol Laugharne answer burning questions on children with sexually concerning behaviour

Authors Laura Walker & Carol Laugharne of Helping Children to Learn About Safer Sexual behaviour conducted a webinar on Understanding and responding to children who display sexually concerning behaviour. Here they respond to some frequently asked questions on this topic.

  

Why do children display sexually worrying/concerning behaviour?

As there is such a range of concerning and harmful behaviours and due to the diversity of children and their experiences there is no definitive and concise answer to this question. There are many contributing factors which lead to sexually concerning behaviour. We provide some context to this in the resource pack and state that:

Young children my display these sorts of behaviours for a number of reasons, such as children

·       Accidentally viewing inappropriate material and then ‘trying out’ or copying the behaviour

·       Being dared or encouraged by other similar aged children

·     Being upset or worried about a change in their lives such as moving home or school, the  arrival of a new sibling, the bereavement of a relative or pet, the arrival of a new adult in the  home and/or their parents separating

·    Dealing with the onset of puberty causing confusion. Having learning difficulties and/or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and/or being on the Autistic Spectrum  perhaps prompting impulsive, inappropriate behaviours.

·        Issues around poor attachment and trauma experiences

·        Being a victim of sexual abuse themselves

 It is unlikely that such reasons will be clearly evident or revealed by the children themselves and questioning children as to ‘why’ they are doing something will not be helpful since they will more than likely be unable to vocalise their reasons or understand their behaviours.

Where a child is displaying more adult like and harmful behaviours such as penetrative behaviours using force or coercion then a referral to a specialist service would be necessary and any concerns about neglect or abuse or domestic violence will need to be investigated.

Further reading

Hackett, S. (2004) What Works for Children and Young People with Sexually Harmful Behaviour?’, Barkingside, Barnardo’s.

Hackett, S. (2001) Facing The Future: A Guide for parents of young people who sexually abuse, Lyme Regis, Russell House Publishing.

Is it mainly boys who display sexually concerning behaviour?

A much higher percentage of boys display sexually concerning behaviour than girls, however this does not mean that girls do not display the behaviour. Research published by the Taith Barnardo’s service in Wales found that referrals had increased from around 8% to between 11 and 13% and there has been an increase in referrals of girls to specialist services nationally.

The increase can be attributed to previous under reporting and more awareness of the issue affecting girls. The rise could also be due to the accessibility to pornography too as we know that a high percentage of young people are accessing pornography either accidentally or seeking it out to learn about sex.

The research regarding girls who have displayed more serious/harmful sexually concerning behaviour shows that girls are more likely to have been victims of sexual abuse and experienced significant levels of adversity.

Our resource pack is aimed at younger children with LOW LEVEL sexually concerning behaviour and the activities and methods used are appropriate to use with girls and boys.

Useful reading-

Moultrie, D. and Beckett, R. (2011) Taith Service: 10 Year Review, Barnardo’s.

Office of The Children’s Commissioner (2014) Basically Porn is Everywhere: A Rapid Evidence Assessment on the Effect that Access and Exposure to Pornography has on Children and Young People, London, Office of The Children’s Commissioner.

Masson, H., Hackett, S., Phillips, J. and Balfe, M. (2012) Developmental markers of risk or vulnerability? Young females who sexually abuse – characteristics, backgrounds, behaviours and outcomes, Child and Family Social Work,

How best can we work with children who have learning needs to learn safer behaviours?

Children with learning needs are overrepresented in referrals to services for sexually concerning behaviour. Reasons for this are that young people with learning needs can often be overlooked in sex education, they may not understand the onset of puberty and they may struggle to understand the sexual feelings they are experiencing and have less capacity in terms of social and cognitive skills etc.

Children and young people in this situation need a lot of support in terms of addressing these issues and require visual and pictorial resources to support their learning. Social stories can be useful to increase understanding and they also help to remind the young person of safe behaviours. There are examples of these within our resource pack.

We cannot emphasise enough that, in our experience, children and young people with learning needs will require ongoing help from the adults in their lives to remember the learning from an intervention and that a ‘one off’ piece of work is not likely to be sufficient to prevent further problems. Safety plans will useful which can provide a child friendly frame of reference for the child and family/care setting/foster home. Again there are examples of these within the resource pack which can be designed to the child’s favourite things/TV programmes and hobbies.

Useful resources

Gray, C., White, A. and McAndrew, S. (2002) My Social Stories, London and New York, Routledge.

Do children who display worrying sexual behaviour go on to become sex offenders?

There is a commonly held fear that when a child displays some sexually concerning behaviour he or she will continue to display this behaviour and it can escalate to more harmful and abusive behaviour. There is also a fear that the child will go on to become and ‘sex offender’. Whilst a very small percentage of children/young people do repeat the behaviour (around 4/5%) research shows and current expert opinions held are that the majority of children and young people do not go on to repeat the worrying behaviour.

Factors that are important which help young people move on to safer behaviours are:

• Appropriate and timely interventions
• Not pathologising the child/young person
• Building on strengths and increasing ‘social anchors’ such as feelings of belong to a family, community, friendships.
• A consistent relationship in the life of the child
• Hope for the future
• Social activities/interests/hobbies

Our resource pack and accompanying story book provides useful activities and a programme of work to undertake with young children and can provide an early intervention incorporating the evidenced good practice above.

Useful reading

Hackett, S. (2004) What Works for Children and Young People with Sexually Harmful Behaviour?’, Barkingside, Barnardo’s.

Bateman, J. and Milner, J. (2015) Children and Young People Whose Behaviour is Sexually Concerning or Harmful: Assessing Risk and Developing Safety Plans, London, Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Anna Branagan responds to vocabulary related questions in the Early Years

A big thanks to all the participants who attended Anna Branagan's webinar Developing spoken vocabulary within Early Years settings. Here are Ana's replies to the questions asked by the participants.

How do you assess whether an SEN child can use a concept? They may understand but not use yet!

·    It is firstly important to establish if a child understands the concept. To do this we use real objects such as the collection of items in a shoe box, as shown below. To assess knowledge put a range of objects in front of the child and ask the child to identify ‘which one is bendy/long etc'

·    In an ideal world, practitioners would have lots of time to take language samples and listen to children in free play. Early Years practitioners rarely have that luxury, so instead it is about eliciting responses. Use real objects that ideally show several examples of the same concept. Play with the objects showing the concept and then use the start of a phrase, but rather than using the concept word, just pause. Like this:

‘Wow, look at this rope it is really....’ (bendy)

‘Oh no, I’ve spilt the water! Now my jumper is all ….’ (wet)

‘Here comes the horse. He’s running and he’s jumping …’ (over)

 

What is the most important area to focus on for a child with specific word finding difficulties in SLT?

·    Ideally each child should have a thorough assessment of their individual language skills, as many children who are labelled as having word finding difficulties also have word learning difficulties. Working on word learning skills will impact also on word finding. Does the child have adequate phonological awareness skills? Does the child have semantic skills? Are they able to apply these skills to word learning?

Resources for this are provided in the ‘small groups’ section of the original ‘Word Aware’ (primary aged) book. Working on sorting and categorising words is a skill that is needed, but in my experience, it seems to have limited direct impact on vocabulary development. Phonological awareness, sorting and categorising can all be developed as part of teaching children specific words.

 

When working with children who are bilingual, does working on words in their first language carry over to English?

·    Yes, ‘sinking’ is the same concept in English as it is in Gujarati. The word just sounds different. If you work on a concept in the first language the child is more able to fit the new word into their understanding of the world. Later they will naturally pick up the English word.

A good foundation in the child’s first language will support English language learning. The key is to work closely with parents and enable them to support their children’s language learning at home. If you can work in the home language at nursery or school, then that is advantageous but hard to achieve.

Do you include Makaton signs on your symbols?

·    

     Symbols are included in the Word Aware book, but not signs. We suggest staff use a sign or gesture, particularly when teaching concepts. If you know the Makaton sign, then great. If not, then use a gesture, but all adults need to be consistent. 

What are whisper words?

·    

     ‘Whisper words’ is a simple way to review words that you have already taught and to encourage children to use in a specific situation e.g. in the home corner or water play. Introduce ‘whisper words’ to the whole class by saying ‘today I am going to walk around and whisper a word you might like to use in your play.’ As you see an opportunity to use a particular word, you whisper it to a child.

How many words would you teach at one time?

The million-dollar question! In Early Years we suggest that in each week you teach one topic word, one word selected from a book you read to the children and one concept. There are lots of words to learn, and so there is a pressure for pace but this must be counter-balanced by a need for depth.
Remember you don’t need to teach every word, but by combining all the elements of ‘Word Aware’ together you will expose children to enriched vocabulary, motivate them to learn words and teach them word learning skills. 

Do you have any advice on how to 'win over' Early Years (teaching) staff and get them to see how important vocab is?

·    ‘Do the children they work with needs support to access the curriculum? Are they interested in developing their children’s foundation skills?’ Let’s hope they answer in the affirmative to both of those.

The main barrier is likely to be time, so you need to show that the activities are easy, effective and engaging. Start with some of the songs. Or just search ‘Word Aware channel’ on YouTube. Then model some of the games such as ‘what’s in the bag?’ or ‘treasure hunt’ and just watch the children react.

The slides at the beginning of the webinar have some of the background evidence about the importance of vocabulary. There is also more in the book.

All of the ideas you talked about are applicable to many populations, including deaf children. I am wondering though if you have any specific ideas for this population outside of what was already mentioned. Thanks.

·     

      We haven’t specifically worked with deaf children and so are reluctant to reply in detail. ‘Word Aware’ is a multisensory approach with lots of repetition which will suit deaf children. It may need a specialist Speech and Language Therapist/teacher to identify more specific adaptations.

Can you give some tips about teaching second language children who have never been exposed to English and have no reinforcement in the home.

·    The whole class environment is important so spend time providing word learning opportunities for all. This can be supplemented by small group work as outlined in ‘Supporting children with higher needs’ section in the book. This works well for children with very little English as well as those with language learning difficulties. This suggests working on one noun, one verb and a concept in each group session. There is guidance about choosing the right words and games to play to reinforce the words.

For the whole class we also suggest having ‘Alan the Alien’ and his box. Adults put objects in his box of things that ‘Alan’ might not know. Then all the children tell ‘Alan’ what the items are. Children are encouraged to put items in his box as well. This means that children with English as an additional language can find out labels for items in an easy way.

Working with parents is essential for developing a strong foundation in the home language also.

How do we know that vocab at 5 is causal of socio-economic outcomes later in life?

·    It is not a causal link, there is an association. Vocabulary is closely associated with reading comprehension and conceptual understanding, both of which underpin academic success which in turn impacts on socio-economic outcomes. Research (Law et al, 2009) indicates that children with normal non-verbal skills but poor vocabulary at age 5 were 50% more likely to have literacy or mental health difficulties at age 34 and twice as likely to unemployed.   

How would you use this approach with children with developmental language disorder?

·    ‘Word Aware’ supports vocabulary learning for all children, including those with developmental language disorder. We have found that by selecting the right words and using a multi-sensory approach with the whole class children with DLD are much more able to access whole class teaching. Children with DLD often just need more repetition and the whole class work can be supplemented by small group work in order to provide extra opportunities to hear the new words.

      

      References: Law, J., Rush, R., Schoon, I., & Parsons, S. (2009) Modelling developmental language difficulties from school entry into adulthood: literacy, mental health, and employment outcomes. Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research, 52(6), 1401. 

Helping students with visual theraurus

 Picture this scene in a writing lesson at school: the experienced teacher has a small queue of fidgety eight year old children, waiting for her attention, as they had completed their story about a recent holiday trip. Each page had been beautiful drafted, featuring many of the key targets for each individual child’s progress. As the teacher went through the essays, one by one, she discovered a common problem – her class had no understanding of how to improve their work using a thesaurus. They had successfully removed the words ‘happy’ and ‘sad’ from their pages, just as she had instructed, and replaced them with substitutes such as depressed, suicidal and ecstatic, none of which made sense in the context. But, why should they? The children had no idea what these words mean!

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That night, being the conscientious soul that she was, she tossed and turned, trying to overcome this problem in a simple way which didn’t require her to have children constantly asking her for help in identifying better words. As she dreamt, the queue to her table grew longer and longer, snaking down the corridor all the way to the Head teacher’s office! The next morning, tired and cold, she stumbled to school, grabbed a coffee and sat down, sullen and alone in her classroom. She felt powerless to know how to act.

Just at that moment, a colleague from her year group came round the corner and, having seen her bedraggled condition, listened to her problem. She hurriedly left the room, before returning with slightly red cheeks and a multi-coloured book in her hands. It was the solution to her class needs – ‘The Visual Emotional Thesaurus’!

“Each book is like a mini-teacher that can be left in the middle of the children’s table. The book explains to the class through images and examples, how to improve their writing and broaden their emotional language effectively. It has banished ‘happy’, ‘sad’ and a multitude of repetitious vocabulary from their writing. Moreover, even children who used to struggle to grasp thesauri found the images enabled them to access the book too! I can come and teach the children how to use the book today, if you will allow me to, and I guarantee that your children will have a clearer understanding of how to enrich their description of characters by the end of the half hour.”

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Our class teacher nodded, pleased that the children would have a way forward, and that tonight, she would get a well deserved night’s sleep.

-Ian Long

Speechmark author of The Blob Visual Emotional Thesaurus

5 key activities to teaching young children to stay safe

Teachers should ensure that young children develop an awareness of personal safety as it helps them to identify and express their feelings, make choices and solve problems. It's important to start this intervention at an early age, giving children the skills they can learn to prevent possible abuse. Authors Carolyn Gelenter, Nadine Prescott, & Belinda Riley of Teaching Protective Behaviours to Young Children give us 5 key activities which can be easily incorporated into the classroom activities to instill protective behaviours among students.

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1. Share the 2 key themes of protective behaviours outlined below with the children. Say them repeatedly so that children really integrate the themes into their everyday understanding, play and learning.

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2. Think of 5 agreements you will have in the classroom that reinforce the 2 key themes. Get these ideas from the children. They might include for example, we all want to be listened to or we go to an adult when something really hurts our bodies or our feelings.

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3. Teach children the correct names of body parts. Use those names cross-curricular where relevant. The more commonly used the words penis and vagina become the more children will normalise them as parts of the body to be taken care of, rather to be seen as 'rude' or 'private'. Private becomes associated with shame and secrets rather than a child's right to determine who gets to touch those parts of the body.

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4. Play lots of games that reinforce the ideas they are learning!  A great one to play that creates a scary but safe feeling is 'Monsters'. The children are arranged in a circle. One child is the 'monster'. They creep up to a child in the circle who has to call out the name of another child before the monster reaches them or they turn into the monster!

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5.Reward children for sticking to the class agreements through allowing time for additional games or extra play time.

The two key themes from Protective Behaviours sum up the kind of citizens we can support young children to grow up to be in a world where a right to feel safe needs to run alongside the need for taking responsibility, starting with ourselves.

“Everyone has the right to feel safe all the time

There is nothing so awful or small that we can’t talk about it with someone”.

As education professionals we know this programme is helpful. It reinforces every child’s right to be taught these basic skills with evidenced-based practical strategies, activities and resources. Research shows that children need those skills right now, before abuse occurs. As responsible adults who care about the children and young people in our society, we believe it should be mandatory to teach protective behaviours in every early years’ service, school and educational setting - have you got your copy?

- Carolyn Gelenter, Nadine Prescott, Belinda Riley
Speechmark authors of Teaching Protective Behaviours to Young Children

Benefits of the Wordless Picture Books & Guide

Developing narrative skills

Developing narrative skills are essential to communicating, socialising, literacy and academic progress. In fact it is well documented that narrative skills are a good predictor for literacy skills and academic progress (Bishop & Edmundson (1987); Boudreau et al. (1999); Naremore (1995); Feagans (1982)). Being able to coherently order and share key events, so that the listener can understand and follow, can be a challenging task for all children developing these skills, but especially for children with speech, communication and language needs.  Narrative skills emerge from the age of three and start with skills such as sequencing, linking events with conjunctions, and more complex skills are developed later such as: explaining cause and effect, describing characters emotions and intentions, and being able to interpret endings. Learning to tell stories is one way of building these skills and wordless picture books have their own particular advantages for developing them. Although, there are many wordless picture books available on the market, not all suit the needs of children with speech, communication and language needs.  My series of wordless picture books and guide have been developed especially for these children. Three main advantages of my resource are highlighted below.

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Benefit 1: Better Comprehension for the child

Often children with gaps in their receptive and expressive language skills will rely on pictures in books to help them understand stories, but this can be problematic because children’s books rely on the text to carry stories, and the pictures are often there to accompany the text. I’ve created the wordless books to address this problem- the pictures in these books carry the stories- and they follow a film scroll approach- leaving short gaps between each stage of the story. They are also centered on familiar events such as making a sandwich and going to a supermarket. This formula makes the books accessible to children who are developing their language skills and require that extra support for better comprehension.

For the same reasons outlined above, the resource could be useful for EAL learners (children for who English is another language) and for children who are deaf, as both groups may rely on pictures to understand stories.  

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Benefit 2: Adaptable to a child’s language level

Another strength of wordless picture books is the level of language used to tell the story can be adapted by the child and adult to whatever level the child is at. The books are accompanied by a guide for the practitioner which includes scripts for the stories. The stories can be told at three different sentence and narrative levels: simple, intermediate and complex. The sentences levels are based on key narrative skill development areas and start from simple clauses to sentences tying in events and the reactions of characters.  

Wordless books also provide more opportunity for a child and adult to make meaning of the story collaboratively which can lead to exposing the child to more complex language than would have occurred using general books. Researchers Gillam & Boyce (2012) have found that “when creating a story or just responding to pictures, the parent used many words and complex sentence structures while engaging with their child. That level of engagement wasn’t as present when reading books with text,” said Gillam.

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Benefit 3: Multifunctional for teaching and generalising key skills

The wordless books were created with the aim of teaching and generalising key additional skills which facilitate narrative comprehension and storytelling such as: WH questions, inference, time concepts, sequencing, emotions, and cause and effect. A chapter is devoted to each of these skills in the guide book, and for ease of use, each chapter contains a thorough list of questions or skills needed to work on that skill.  Beth Gibby, Highly Specialist Speech and Language Therapist, who has trialed the resource has commented on the usefulness of this ‘This resource makes it easy to work on lots of different skills at the same time, whilst reading one story…’

- Kulvinder Kaur
Speechmark author of Wordless Picture Books and Guide