All My Children

Most adults find it easier to involve themselves directly in complex and adult games, like chess or baseball, than in play on simpler levels, such as stacking blocks or riding a hobbyhorse or toy car. Although the terms “play” and “game” are often used interchangeably, they are not identical in meaning. Rather, they refer to broadly distinguishable stages of development, with “play” relating to an earlier stage, “game” to a more mature one. Generally speaking, “play” refers to the young child’s activities characterized by freedom from all but personally imposed rules (which, unless the child is compulsive, can be changed at will); by freewheeling fantasy involvement; and by the absence of any goals outside the activity itself. Continue Reading »

Top tips for managing staff

Make sure that all staff are enthusiastic and are encouraged to work outside

Staff need to be briefed and be clear about the reason for carrying out activities (is the aim of the task counting/caring for the environment etc.?) Staff require very specific teaching aims and objectives and need to share these with the children

Staff should be role models for language/behaviours/interaction skills

Children should be expected to do their own work (how many Mother’s Day cards are made by the adults?) Continue Reading »

This sets out in brief format some ideas you might like to think about when planning a challenging play and learning environment. The way in which you organise this is key to children’s learning and development. Some questions you may ask are as follows.

How can I:

• support and extend learning though planning play activities?
• help children to be spontaneous?
• extend children’s language and communication through play?
• help children make sense of the world around them?
• make children aware of the risks and challenges that (especially the outside) world presents?
• make sure that children experience things in a safe situation?

Continue Reading »

Not only is there delay in the language development of children with a language disorder, but the pattern of their language is also deviant. Deviancy implies uneven and atypical development. The path to recovery, the eventual emergence of language, may not follow the predictable route. These children may never completely overcome their difficulties and will require a great deal of specialist and professional attention. Continue Reading »

There is no set of rules of how to talk to a child that can even approach what you unconsciously know.

Brown is responding above to the question ‘How can a child’s learning of language be facilitated?’ In thinking of the ways in which teachers can help children communicate we have, like Brown, taken as our starting point the skills and strategies of the natural and spontaneous parent. A great deal of what we have to say is either an enhancement or clarification of what adults normally do. Continue Reading »

Norm-Referenced Tests

Most ’standardised’ tests have at their core an assumption that abilities are evenly distributed across a population, such that an equal number of cases will fall above and below a statistical mean. Tests are constructed so that children’s scores will spread out across this range. In using a standardised measure we expect half the children to whom it is applied to be below average. Continue Reading »

We shall be passing a critical eye over some of the language assessment procedures which have been devised, together with a sample of the remedial packages which are available Commercially Up to this point we have discussed language acquisition within a framework of the normal developmental process. Similarly, the approach we have taken to children with language difficulties uses the parameters for describing communication skills which have emerged from the study of normal ;development. No apology is made for this. Continue Reading »

Some schools have a policy of placing twins in separate classes, others feel that whatever the relationship between twins, they should always be together. Most leave it up to the parents.

This may be the most important decision that parents make. Often otherwise trouble-free twins may have problems at school caused by unequal ability, unequal division by the twins of educational tasks, language difficulties and unequal teaching, to name but a few.

Sometimes there is no choice, particularly at first schools where there may only be a single form entry. Continue Reading »