Do you work in a pre-school or education setting?

Whatever your role within a pre-school or education setting you can benefit hugely from the excellent accredited training provided by the Elklan tutors.

Most of those who have completed one of their courses would say that they have found it extremely beneficial because they:

·         Feel more confident in working with children with speech, language and communication need (SLCN).

·         Can be a specialist resource to the other members of staff in the school.

·         Understand the importance of their role in developing children's communication.

·         Can support the communication development of all children in the school environment across the curriculum and in the playground too!

·         Have a range of strategies at their disposal which can be used to support children's communication whatever and wherever they are being taught.

·         Feel more confident in interpreting SLT reports and programmes which means they can be implemented more easily and effectively.

·         Know how to modify their interactions which is of benefit to ALL children.

·         Can change the way they speak to children so they understand more of what is said.

·         Can encourage talking by using specific strategies such as modelling language which can be used anytime, anywhere!

·         Know how to support a child with interaction difficulties

·         Know the types of children they can work with and those which need to be seen by the speech and language therapist.

·         Are more confident in talking to parents about the child's speaking and listening skills.

·         Share a common language with the SLT service and so understand what they are being asked to do quickly and can complete activities more efficiently.

Small Talk are licensed to run all the Elklan courses www.private-speech-therapy.co.uk We can travel across the UK if necessary

For more information see www.elklan.co.uk

Does your nursery need help to train the staff as per Professor Nurbrown's recommendations? If so we can help

A leading voluntary coalition with expertise in speech, language and communication calls for settings, organisations, awarding bodies and local authorities to offer robust qualifications for practitioners and recommends the Speech, Language and Communication Level 3 award as a suitable solution.

The Communication Trust, a leading voluntary sector coalition, last week  welcomed Professor Cathy Nutbrown’s recommendations on the vital importance of young children’s speech and language development and the need to ensure that all early years practitioners are skilled and
knowledgeable in this area through access to robust and quality qualifications. 


Lisa Morgan, Professional Director for the Trust, said: “Every child deserves the best start in life and nurturing speech, language and communication skills supports all areas of a child’s development and
ultimately their life chances. Professor Nutbrown’s recommendations clearly highlight the role early years practitioners play in supporting and nurturing language development. 


“Evidence shows that better qualified staff lead to better outcomes for children. The Trust, since its inception five years ago, has recognised the need for formal and national qualifications to be introduced for early years staff as Nutbrown espouses. Research has demonstrated that staff often feel under-skilled and lacking in confidence in supporting children’s typical language development and recognising early when they are struggling.


We can help nurseries to train their staff to level 2 and level 3 accreditation as well as provide  other relevant training. How about 'Speech and Language support for under 5s'?

This is a highly successful accredited ten week course for under 5s practitioners.  The course has been received enthusiastically by over 7,000 learners across the UK and Europe.

What do participants receive?

·         Teaching from qualified speech and language therapists and advisory teachers. They provide training to support the communication of all children but especially those with speech and language difficulties in under 5s settings.

·        The book Early Language Builders which forms the core reading material for the course. It is full of practical advice and ideas.

·         Accreditation through Open College Network (OCN) at either level two or three, the individual chooses the level under the guidance of the Elklan tutor.

·         Support needed to write a portfolio to achieve accreditation though the Open College Network.

·         Opportunities to meet other Under 5's practitioners and receive mutual support.

Who is the course for?

This course trains Early Years practitioners working within Education, Playgroups, Sure Start projects, Day Nurseries and other Early Years settings. The course is usually taught at weekends, but can be taught at staff training days.

What is taught?

The course runs for ten sessions, each with targets you will be able to acheive by the end of the course:

·         What is communication?

·         Identify the processes involved in communication

·         Appreciate the wide range of communication problems

·         Adult child interaction and non-verbal communication

·         Understand the effect of adult-child interaction on the development of communication

·         Appreciate the importance of nonverbal communication behaviours

·         Developing play, listening and attention skills

·         Understand the link between play and language development

·         Develop strategies to promote listening and attention

·         Understanding first words and using visual strategies

·         Know how children understand their first words

·         Develop activities to facilitate the learning of basic concepts.

·         Understand how using visual information helps children learn

·         Understanding beyond simple sentences

·         Use a language scheme model which supports verbal reasoning skills, including why and how questions, inferences, sequencing, predicting

·         Practice modifying the adults' speech accordingly

·         Modifying adults' speech to help a child understand language

·         Use Information Carrying Words (ICW's) to develop understanding

·         Encouraging expressive language development

·         Develop strategies to facilitate the development of vocabulary

·         Discuss techniques to develop syntax (grammar) and narrative skills

·         Promoting effective communication and social skills

·         Identify skills required for successful social communication and share ideas as to how to promote these

·         Supporting children with unclear speech

·         Appreciate the development of speech sounds

·         Know strategies to support children with unclear speech

·         Understand the link between speech, reading and writing

·         Appreciate the importance of phonological awareness in the pre-school setting

·         Management of stammering and application of all strategies learnt

·         Have some knowledge of how to support children who stammer.

·         Present evidence of applying knowledge during everyday activities.

 We do lots more too including the award winning Hanen 'Learning language and loving it' and tailor made courses.

www.private-speech-therapy.co.uk

Tiny Talkers Training programme

Do you sometimes find yourself saying 'yes' then working out the practicalities later? I'm really bad at that, so when I was asked if I could  devise a training programme for 2 year olds that could be delivered mainly without taking the staff out of the nursery or pre-school, similar to the Languageland Programme that caters for 3-7yr olds, I said.......... 'Of course!'. I enlisted the the help of Helen Stretton, and we set about working out a training package with a 6 week programme.


There will be an initial training session without the children to set the scene and introduce the ideas that we're going to demonstrate. There isn't anywhere that pulls together the framework of communication and how everything fits together, so we'll start with that.We'll look at attention, listening, auditory memory, information-carrying words as well as vocabulary and other important concepts.


Each of the 6 sessions following will see the therapist run the group and discuss why she is doing an activity. The staff will be able to follow with aim/activity sheets with explanations which tie in with what they learned in the first classroom session. There will also be sheets which give more ideas, further activity suggestions and useful books to back up what has been covered. 


We have designed it so that others can use it so there is a sheet for each session for the person delivering the session to suggest exactly how to deliver it for maximum effect.
Helen is piloting it in September in Burton with a project working with staff from 2 pre-schools and a group of 2 year olds and their parents, funded by the Community and Learning Partnership. Lisa Griffiths, the Smart Talkers Franchisee from St Neots will do a second pilot in her area. The idea then is to sell it to other speech & language therapists or special needs co-ordinators so they can deliver the training in their settings. We have a  publisher who is interested already.


If you know of any settings who are wondering how they could improve their knowledge of language in 2 year olds but who don't want to spend money on staff cover, then this is for them. www.private-speech-therapy.co.uk or www.smarttalkers.org.uk

'The perfect franchisee', do they exist?

It’s a big decision to franchise a business and an even bigger one when it comes to choosing franchisees. I’m sure there are some businesses out there who are just after the franchise fee and who will the take on anyone with the right colour money but one of the reasons I wanted to franchise my business is that I wanted to spread the word about stimulating spoken language in pre-school children. It was very important to me therefore only to take on individuals with EXACTLY the right attitude and enthusiasm. I’m not looking for qualifications, just someone who knows it’s a privilege to work with pre-school children and who is passionate about communication. I say ‘just’, but the reality is, that the right people are probably few and far between.

Since May when I started to franchise I’ve had so many enquiries from people who I have later interviewed (even with their full franchise fee in hand) who just wouldn’t be right sitting on the floor with a puppet and a group of children and their parents AND who can run their own business.

I don’t think my ideal franchise is walking around a franchise show, I think they are likely to be a parent who has had time off from their job and doesn’t want to go back to that career or someone who has returned but is finding it tedious and hard to juggle with a family. They’re probably not looking for a franchise and haven’t heard of pre-school communication groups.  I put an advert on Face book as I thought that someone who was fed up might be complaining to friends about their plight, perhaps with a  glass of wine in hand, maybe late at night.

What a good move! It worked perfectly and we now have Lisa Griffith and her team on board from Cambridgeshire. Lisa will offer Smart Talkers services to nurseries throughout Cambridgeshire and some parts of Bedfordshire. There are lots of different opportunities but all to help develop speech, language and communication in pre-school children.

Package	Info
Language Land Training	Instead of taking staff out of nursery to train them, we come into nursery/school to use demonstration techniques to show how to develop attention, listening, phonological awareness, simple reasoning, narrative skills etc. We use the Language land package which has proven positive results (for 3-7 year olds) 6 week programme
Tiny Talker Training	As above with an additional lecture: for staff of 2 year olds
Language Groups	General language stimulation sessions with songs, games and language based activities. Tiny Talker for 2- 3 year olds Small Talker for 3-4 year olds
Learning to sign Smart Sign functional signing	Functional signing using games, songs and stories. We can cater from babies to school age (see separate booklet)
Letters and Sounds	Practical applications of ‘Letters and Sounds’ in a circle-time style session
Story-time with Jack	Popular favourites with choices of story sacks e.g. Gruffello, Dear Zoo, tiger who came to tea
Stories for Talking	A practical programme for developing language skills in pre-school children
Listen with Lucy	A 6 week programme focusing on listening skills

Lisa has good relationships with nurseries as she was previously a placement co-coordinator for a local college for students studying child-care. She will work with Nicky, Barbara  and Laura  to run Baby Talk with midwife groups and teenage parent groups and is negotiating with Sure Start to implement Small Talker and Tiny Talker classes in Childrens’ Centres.

She will also arrange training courses for local staff which the Small Talk Speech Therapy Team will run ... so she really can deliver the whole Smart Talkers' package!

They have a series of open evenings planned next month to invite local professionals to tell them what Smart Talkers Cambridgeshire can do. I’m going to the first one to lend my support.

Each franchisee will choose their own parts of the package to do as many or as few classes as possible so that it fits perfectly with their individual family life.  Lisa and her team are probably exceptional in wanting to deliver as much of the available options as possible.

I’m as excited as they are. We had so much fun doing the training it didn’t feel remotely like work! We’re meeting up again next Saturday to go through the session plans and some more signing...... watch this space!!

Find Lisa and Co. on Face Book http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=100001593330357&ref=ts

If you read this and thought you might be interested in this fantastic opportunity in your area www.smarttalkers.org.uk

Signing in Nurseries

We're delighted to be doing some signing more work with the excellent Horn End nurseries. We start this week with Stafford and next week at Rugeley and Hixon.

We can do signing sessions for all age groups and training on functional signing for staff and parents.

We call our signing 'Smart Sign' which is based on Makaton with some supplementary BSL. We've had some amazing results recently at other places too such as Midway Academy in Uttoxeter and in the kindergarten at Vernon Lodge Preparatory School in Stretton, near Penkridge, where the children picked up the signs so easily.

We're looking forwards to introducing Smart Sign for babies and toddlers at Hixon Children's centre too this week. I'll keep you posted with progress, and of course, photos of the little ones!  

For more about our signing sessions www.smarttalkers.org.uk or for other nursery-based programmes
www.private-speech-therapy.co.uk