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SPEECH AND LANGUAGE THERAPY RESOURCE FILE © 2008 Clare Price, Emily Evans, Suzy Brown 2 Contents INTRODUCTION Introduction 4 Learning to Talk 5 Functional Communication 6 Play Development 7 Encouraging Play Skills 9 EARLY COMMUNICATORS Developing Early Communication Skills 11 Shared Attention – General Strategies 14 Attention and Listening – General Strategies 16 Attention and Listening – Ideas for Activities 18 Attention and Listening – Group Activities 20 Developing Cause and E ffect 22 Turn Taking – General Strategies 23 Visual Understanding 24 Visual Timetables 25 Developing Choice Making Skills 27 Imitating Sounds 28 Pointing 30 Creating Opportunities for Communication 31 Eye Contact – General Strategies 33 Imitation of Actions 34 Using Objects of Refer ence 36 EARLY WORDS Developing Pro-words 38 Encouraging Early Words 39 Body Parts 40 Activities to Encourage Early Words 41 Verbs 44 Following Instructions (1 Word Level) 45 COMBINING WORDS Encouraging 2 Word Combinations 47 Big and Little 48 Prepositions 49 SESSIONS PLANS Individual Play Plans to Promote Communication 51 Early Communication Stages 53 Sample Session Plans – Early Communicator Stage 54 Sample Session Plans – Early Words and Gestures 58 Sample Session Plans – Building Vocabulary and Understanding 62 ADDITIONAL SESSIONS PLANS Basic Skills Session Plans 1-5 Section I 65 Target Words Session Plans 6-10 Section II 70 Complex Needs Plan11 Section III 87 © 2008 Clare Price, Emily Evans, Suzy Brown 3 IINNTTRROODDUUCCTTIIOONN © 2008 Clare Price, Emily Evans, Suzy Brown 4 Introduction The Speech and Language Therapy Resource File is intended for use by those who work with children on a regular basis, be it nursery or meithrin staff, play workers, health visitors etc… The purpose of the file is to give advice and activities to encourage pre-verbal and early language skills. The rationale behind the devel opment of the fil e was to equip those who work with children with additional information regarding communication and provide them with appropriate activities. The file is divided into sections according to the level of the child’s communication skills, starting with pre-verbal up to two-word combinations. Each section has a combination of strategies to promote communication and specific activities to be used with individual children. The ethos of early intervention is that children learn through play and this is greatly helped by an adult providing a positive communication role model. The Speech and Language Therapy Resource File provides a range of strategies to promote the prerequisites of communication skills within the daily routine of the child care setting. Remember to stay relaxed and to HAV E FUN because thi s is the best way for all of us to learn. The Speech and Language Therapy Resource File has been written by the Carmarthenshire Sure Start Speech and Language Therapists Clare Price, Emily Evans and Suzy Brown. It is part of our early intervention package aimed at informing child care workers and giving the best possible opportunities for children to learn language and develop life skills. © 2008 Clare Price, Emily Evans, Suzy Brown 5 Learning to Talk Learning to talk begins right after birth but is not necessarily easy. The process involves: « Listening « Understanding « Thinking « Wanting and needing to speak « Muscle co-ordination Children learn to talk at different ages; some will say their first word at a year old while others will be over two. Generally, most children will have started to speak by 18 months old. Children need to be encouraged to talk as much as they are encouraged to walk. Children need to hear speech around them and have people talk to them in order to learn to speak. Initial words may be unclear and this is perfectly normal. It is important to be patient and to give the child lots of opportunities to speak. Advice: 1. Talk to the child when you are playing together. Encourage them to play and follow their lead but do not take over the play. 2. Sing nursery rhymes and action songs. This is a good way to practise speech sounds without putting pressure on them and wi ll raise awareness of language. 3. Encourage the child to listen to different sounds around them e.g. aeroplanes, animals, noises from daily routines. Make a game of i mitating the sounds. 4. Make sure you have the chil d’s full attention when you talk together. 5. Switch off the tel evision to reduce distractions. 6. Encourage the child to communicate in any way possible to them e.g. speech, pictures, signs, gestures etc. 7. Gestures help to reinforce links between words and meanings and help support word retrieval. 8. Give the child choices to help increase vocabulary and the need to indicate their choice. 9. Talk about activities as they happen e.g. bath time. 10. Include the child in interesting activities to give them something to talk about e.g. trip to the park. 11. Give the child time to finish what they are saying and listen carefully. Do not anticipate needs and take it in turns to speak. 12. Give the child opportunities to speak with peers and familiar adults. This helps to provide positive role models and language models. 13. Add words to the chil d’s attempts e.g. ‘ball’ à ‘throw ball’, ‘ball gone’. 14. If the child says something incorrectly, model it back in the correct way e.g. ‘toap’, ‘yes, soap’. Do not tell the child to say ‘soap’ or repeat words. This may create a negative attitude towards speaking. 15. Set aside a time each day to spend with the child to play together and look at books. © 2008 Clare Price, Emily Evans, Suzy Brown 6 Functional Communication Children need the means to co mmunicate, a reason to communi cate and the oppor tunity to communicate. It is important to reflect on all these areas of communication. MEANS REASONS Speech Vocali sations Basic needs - request/refuse Signs Written Words something, express feelings, get Symbols Objects of ref. attention, want somet hing to happen or Facial exp. Eye contact not, give and receive information, make Gesture Body Movement and maintain relationships, pleasure of Touch Physical chat, socialisation. Behaviour Posture How? Why? OPPORTUNITIES Time and space, real choices/ Options, responsive people and environment, shared language and interests. When? Where? Who with? Reference: Money, D. (1997) A comparison of three approaches to delivering a speech and language therapy service to people with learning disability, European Journal of Disorders of Communication, 32 (4), p449-466. © 2008 Clare Price, Emily Evans, Suzy Brown 7 Play Development The development of a child’s play patterns follow a definite course and is closely linked with the development of language. Speech and language are basically systems of symbols. Sounds are put together to produce words, and words symbolise meanings. The link between the word and the meaning has to be learned, as there is nothing about the word that indicates the meaning. For a child to learn language they need to develop a symbolic understanding of increasingly complex and arbitrary entities. A child learns the meaning of symbols through play. Exploratory and Relational Play 1. Looking at a toy 2. Reaching for, grasping and shaking toys Exploratory 3. Mouthing toys play 4. Handling toys, feeling and rubbing 5. Squeezing, stretchi ng, throwing and dropping toys When the child can maintain interest in 2 toys at a time, other activities emerge 6. Banging toys together Relational 7. Piling one toy on top of the other play 8. Putting one toy inside another Functional Representative Play Objects or toys are used meaningfully in relation to the child e.g. brushing own hair with a toy brush. The child will also include another person e.g. brushing mum’s hair. Objects will be related to a doll or a teddy e.g. brushing a doll’s hair. As a child develops, actions can be combined in play sequences. Symbolic Play Objects are not used for their intended purpose e.g. make a cake from sand and bake it. This is symbolic play. Pretend play, like language, involves the use of symbols, which is why it is called symbolic play. During pretend play objects can be used as symbols to represent absent objects e.g. a shoebox for a car. This ability to use objects symbolically and to take something else’s perspective is thought to be an important part of cognitive and language devel opment. The child understands that one picture or object can symbolise another, just as a spoken word represents an object. Children whose ability to use symbols is impaired (as with children with developmental delays) usually have delays in both language and play. The child will begin to create sequences at this point in play and will often follow the same sequences over and over in their play e.g. a child pretending to be the teacher . © 2008 Clare Price, Emily Evans, Suzy Brown 8 Social Play Social play skills develop firstly with adults and then with children. « Play with Adults - Early social play takes place through imitation of an adult’s actions and sounds. - Games such as pat -a-cake and peek-a-boo are early social games. - Later children will later look at picture books with adults and early turn taking also begins. - Children will begin to imitate the actions which adults do with toys e.g. running a car along and saying ‘brum brum’. « Play with Children - Initially children play alongside other children rather than with them. They often play different games. - Group activities e.g. story time at nursery, encourages children to imitate the actions of their peers. - Activities that encourage turn taking skills are good and ensure that children play with their peers at the same game.

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