Language Development

Communication and language development involves giving children the opportunities to: experience a rich language environment, to develop their confidence and skills in expressing themselves and to speak and listen in a range of situations. Therefore there are many things that I as practitioner do/use to enable communication and language on a day to day basis. In the 2 and 3 year old rooms we have a role play area which gets changed regularly which helps the children to communicate with others for example if it’s a dressing up role play the children can communicate with each other about what roles they would like to play and what game they would like to play. In each room we all have stories allocated to the correct age group for the children
These people are; SENCO, SALT, social services and a portage. SENCO (Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator) would work with the nursery to ensure that their SEN policy is followed correctly. They would work with a child who has special needs to help them with their learning. Speech and language therapy, commonly known as ‘SALT’ would work with the child to help them with their speech development. It would also help the child to communicate with the teachers and vice versa. Social services would be in partnership to help ensure that the child is getting beneficial support at home and in the nursery. Lastly you have someone who has a partnership with the family and with the nursery and would work closely with the child and aim to work with the child’s developmental needs to help develop their strengths. This is called a portage. A portage service worker would assist with play activities and teach the child a better knowledge of turn taking and imagination, behaviour to progress on the correct behaviours and to point out the bad behaviours and why they are bad, communication, to help the child to communicate with the teachers and others and would help the child to build relationships with the teachers and other