At the moment, our public services (e.g. speech and language therapists, educational psychologists and health visitors) are restricted in what they can offer or have prolonged waiting times due to demand. This is hard for nurseries that are struggling with children who are not making expected progress in their speaking, listening and understanding of language. Here are 5 communication strategies that some nurseries have implemented to support early communication.
Strategy 1 – Read more!
There are many words that rarely appear in conversation but are found in books. American research showed how much such language could enrich a child’s vocabulary.
‘Researchers in the United States who had looked at the impact of parents reading with their children quoted the following figures in a news release about their findings: They estimated that by the time a child was 5 years old there would be wide differences between the vocabulary levels of children who heard stories regularly and those who did not:
- Never read to – 4,662 words
- 1–2 times per week – 63,570 words
- 3–5 times per week – 169,520 words
- Daily – 296,660 words
- Five books a day – 1,483,300 words (source: Science Daily – 2019)
The more children are exposed to rich and varied language, the more words they will recognise and the more easily they can hazard what a word means. However, some children are like little sponges, they absorb language and then, a little later than the rest of their group, they start speaking but are using quite complex sentences instead of single words. Many settings use Story Sacks. These not only support early communication by introducing children to stories and new vocabulary but also help children to develop their skills in oracy as they ask questions and retell/act out the stories using props.
Strategy 2 – Visual support
Speech and Language Therapist Juliet Leonard says: ‘My number one tip every single time would be about providing visual support. Words are there, and then they’re gone. It’s hard for children, particularly children who have speech, language and communication needs, to hold on to those words, to understand their meaning. This is going to impact their whole education.’
Visual prompts help a child to focus. As adults we use written reminders but children might want photographs, pictures, drawings or symbols. A child could benefit from a visual timetable with the ability to record so they can listen to the prompt at the same time or recordable devices such as talking photo albums that have both sound and visuals available.
They might do better with real 3-D objects. Puppets and small world objects can give children concrete examples when they talk about:
- Colours and numbers
- Size – big, little, small, tall, longer, shortest
- Shape – circle, square, triangle, rectangle, sphere
- Prepositions – in, off, by, next to, underneath, over, on
- Descriptions – pretty, old and young, wet and dry, clean and dirty
One great resource for bringing maths ideas to life are resources such as loose parts and Dinosaur Bones. In the Dinosaur Bones pack, there are eight pairs of different sized bones. Unlike plastic replicas, these bones are heavy so they feel authentic. Adults can ask: ‘Which bone is the longest?’ ‘Can you find one the same size?’ ‘Can you put the bones in order?’ ‘Which one comes next?’ It takes children some time to understand the concept that size and weight are different but they start to use adjectives such as: long, short, thin, and then move on to using comparatives and superlatives: heavier, heaviest, lighter and lightest.
Strategy 3 – Signing support
Justin Fletcher has popularised Makaton on CBeebies. Many children are learning signs before they start at nursery and some parents and grandparents are getting involved too. Nurseries have found that Makaton helps with memory, recall and organisation of language. It reinforces words/ideas and can lead into reading.
At Weoley Castle Nursery School and Preschool in Birmingham nursery, they start the new year with signs for ‘good morning’, ‘please’, ‘thank you’, ‘drink’, ‘sleep’ and ‘book’. Singing and signing is a good example of what is known as ‘dual coding’ where children are accessing two or more routes to meaning. Have a look at this video from from LEYF – //www.leyf.org.uk/resources/singing-with-makaton/ – a chain of nurseries in London. Videos such as these make it easy for practitioners to share what children are learning at nursery/school so they can enjoy it together at home. Signs add a multi-sensory element and help children to understand and remember what they have learnt. Signing can transcend spoken language so that children who are new to English can understand some of the words and link them to the same word in their home language.
A good start is talking about the weather in Makaton as the signs are so descriptive. The Singing Hands site has spoken and written words alongside videos Makaton signs. Charnwood Nursery has a useful sheet you can print out //charnwoodnursery.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/makaton-signs-the-weather.pdf.
Why not print out the symbols to match the signs and place them in the Interactive Talking Mat. This not only keeps a record of the signs and symbols that you are currently using but allows the children to press the button underneath to hear the spoken word.
Strategy 4 – Support early communication by scribing stories
Story telling is an art. It is an even finer art if educators can draw out and capture children’s stories without adapting, reinterpreting or putting an adult spin on them. The Helicopter approach works with children as young as two years old. Practitioners can use the same techniques with excellent results for children up to the age of seven.
Stage 1: The adult writes down or records exactly what the child says, not prompting but just collecting a verbatim response.
Stage 2: This involves the whole group in acting it out. A story might start, ‘There was a puppy. Who is going to come and show me how the puppy moves?’ ‘He went past the shops. Who is going to be a shopkeeper?’
It is a very simple, totally child-centred approach that leads to changes in vocabulary and language register. The early stories often just consist of single nouns, things that they can see and names of people. Within a few months they have absorbed some of the conventions of storytelling without any prompts from staff. They know that a story needs to have a character and that something needs to happen. Some will adopt the ‘Once upon a time’ and similar narrative conventions.
When an adult writes a verbatim account, and reads or plays it back, everyone can hear the child’s individual and unique voice because the story contains their vocabulary and way of phrasing things.
Strategy 5 – Communication through communal problem solving
Bee-Bot and Glow and Go Bot are robots that support early communication as well as other areas of learning. They use screen-less programming language where children make a robot move backwards and forwards or left and right. These little robots spark imagination and are great resources, not only for communal problem solving, but for teaching a range of vocabulary . They might also use Bee-Bot with a mat such as the Bee-Bot® and Blue-Bot® Treasure Island Mat to promote storytelling.
After some prompting, children will talk about the sea, sand, trees and perhaps even the sharks, cave, ladder and bridge. Bee-Bot gets to some trees so the children can mime climbing them. It comes to a river so, naturally, they will have to pretend to swim. When it gets to the edge of the map, they will need to solve the problem of where the little bot goes next. Some children get very invested in Bee-Bot’s fate. ‘He’ll fall off’; ‘He’s going to drown.’ Older nursery children can suggest solutions and the change in language is interesting here as they start to use phrases such as ‘he might’, ‘it could’ as they talk about possibilities.
Further resources to develop and support early communication:
Take part in Little Link from Speech and Language Link for 3-5year olds Little Link – Speech and Language Link
I CAN charity Training – ICAN CHARITY
Talk Boost programmes for children aged 3-10 from Speech and Language – Talk Boost – Speech and Language UK: Changing young lives
The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) – Education Endowment Foundation | EEF
Explore resources to support communication and language
Sal McKeown is a freelance journalist writing about the needs and development of neurodiverse children. She is author of How to Help Your Dyslexic and Dyspraxic Child published by Crimson. She writes regularly for Teaching Times and Education Today and contributes to the SEND network.