Friday 13 August 2010

Signing as part of good practise

The 3 Horn End Nurseries at Stafford, Hixon and Rugeley enlisted our services again to devise a specialist signing programme. Suzie Bancroft Nursery Manager says “Our view is that communication is fundamental to early learning and confidence”.  This training has helped staff to assess and improve their own skills when developing children’s speech and language. The programme also ensures the staff introduce signing as necessary in a developmentally appropriate, functional way.

At Horn End, they promote the use of sign language with all children as part of providing a language and literacy rich environment, filled with words, and books, to develop children’s new ideas and growing minds. 

In the Baby Smalls group I helped the staff identify which signs were important to add to comments or instructions that the staff were giving to the babies which helps their understanding and ability to express themselves before they can talk, as well as singing and signing. The pre-school group Toby Talls have had a specially devised programme to encourage their vocabulary and general language skills as they learned important signs while the Tommy Thumbs enjoyed singing and stories with sign. It was fantastic fun but the staff and children learned so much.

One of the outcomes of this project is the development of the communication policy in the nurseries to include daily signing with the children as this promotes their understanding, expressive language and speech development from a very early age.

I'm producing a rhyme and sign CD with favourites from the Horn End nurseries including traditional songs and some devised specifically for the purpose.

If you would like to know more about this then please call Suzie on 01785 609699 www.hornend.co.uk   or Libby on 0844 704 5888 www.smalltalk-ltd.co.uk



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