Barnsley PCT Early Communication Screening Tool

Margaret Pratt and Nicola Maddy, both SLTs reported for the RCSLT bulletin that Barnsley PCT has developed significant changes to the way it educates referrers in making timely and appropriate referrals and has devised an early communication tool for referrers' use.

They reported that an audit in 2002 of referrals to Barnsley SLT highlighted the need to inform referrers about whom to refer and when. They worked jointly with health visitors who made the most referrals, to devise a screening tool. Nursery nurses also became involved at a later stage of the development.

Several refinements were made to the material following a pilot of the tool, and a training day was also devised which involved teamwork including the speech and language therapy department's special needs team and the fluency service.

The Early Communication Tool is available as a complete package and consists of three components. Assessment forms coincide with the ages at which the health visiting team visit children for developmental assessments and contains questions with yes/no responses supported by written guidelines as to whether to refer to SLT or audiology. A guideline for referral booklet gives examples of normal development and also contains a chart representing the normal development of speech sounds. Advice sheets, which can be given to families, contain useful advice and strategies to promote speech, language and communication development.

The report also highlights that over 99% of children are referred appropriately at the point of identification of needs, and that none should be missed. As referrals for children with fluency difficulties have increased, it is suggested that before the tool's use, some children with fluency difficulties were not being referred.

The Early Communication Screening Tool is now an integral part of Barnsley's PCT service, with Health Visitors and nursery nurses reporting how useful it is, in making appropriate referrals.

(RCSLT bulletin February 2007)

• case studies illustrating good practice from settings across England and Wales
• a DVD, made in partnership with Teachers` TV
• an audit workbook to support staff teams with review and planning to improve their environments

Colour and clutter can dim minds of pupils

Academic warns that complicated displays of artwork may hamper children's progress. Firework-themed artwork, the Chinese dragon model and the crepe-paper Santa Clauses may have to go - cluttered classrooms that dazzle children with a riot of bright colours could impede their learning, new research suggests.

A calmer, more sober atmosphere is a better environment for communicating with young children, according to education consultant Elisabeth Jarman's report, commissioned by the Basic Skills Agency. Her study on the early years and foundation stage deals with the detrimental effects of 'cluttering' upon youngsters' speaking and listening skills.

The idea that children need to be able to hear themselves think challenges the received wisdom that playgroups, nurseries and classrooms should be vivid, vibrant places festooned with children's work, and will have implications for infant classes. The agency hopes the principles, which encompass the building layout, use of natural light and the colour of the walls, will be taken on board by schools. Ms Jarman said: "Over-stimulating environments are not always the best. That has implications for the use of displays. Sometimes it is a visual overload for children. It can make it very difficult for them to concentrate."

Jenny Cobley, the agency's senior assistant director for early years and primary, said the popularity of television shows involving de-cluttering showed what an effect on people's lives the principles espoused in the report could have. "We hope we've put it tactfully enough for practitioners to realise that there may be something in it," she said. "There's a lot more work to be done in developing an appropriate toolkit and support for them. Our aim was to see how speaking and listening might improve."

(By Sadie Gray, TES, 17.11.06)

Every Child Matters: Making It Happen - integrated working resource

Because of high demand, Every Child Matters: Making It Happen has been reprinted. This 16-page booklet uses case studies and interviews with frontline practitioners to show integrated working policies in action. Making It Happen focuses on:

• Information sharing guidance
• The Common Assessment Framework
• The role of the lead professional
• Best practice in multi-agency working
• The development of the information sharing index

To order free copies of Making It Happen, call 0845 60 222 60 or email dfes@prolog.uk.com, quoting reference 00231-2006BKT-EN.

(Sure Start News, 24.11.06)

Early communication and good manners

Communication is an important element in helping your child to grow up to be kind, caring, polite and respectful. Following are some of the tips provided by Dr William Sears, dad of eight children, parenting expert and co-author of The Good Behaviour Book in an article in Your Family magazine.

Teach them early
How early? Try infancy! From the beginning, communicate with your baby by a soft word and a gentle touch. When your nine-month-old grabs a handful of your hair and pulls hard, don't yell. Unfurl her fist and tell her to 'be gentle'. She learns to be gentle from your example long before she understands the word.

Modelling manners
Between the ages of two and four, what children hear, they say. Let your child hear you say 'please', 'thank you', 'excuse me' and 'you're welcome' often. Though they don't yet understand the social graciousness of polite words, toddlers conclude that 'please' is how you ask for things and 'thank you' is how you end an interaction. Plant these social niceties into their vocabulary early so they become a part of their developing speech. Your child learns these words are important because mummy and daddy use them a lot with nice expressions on their faces.

Address by name
We have always used the name of our child when opening a request, such as: 'Hayden, will you please help me with the dishes?'. Our children picked up on this and address us by: 'Mum, may I.' or 'Dad, would you.'. Even though politeness didn't always get them what they wanted, I always commented on my kid's politeness to let them know I appreciated it.

Eye contact
One of the most important social graces is teaching your child to look at people when she talks to them. The way you talk to your child teaches your child how to talk to others. When addressing your child, squat to her eye level and engage eye-to-eye contact to get her attention. Open your request with 'Lilly, will you please.'. If her eyes wander, simply say 'Lilly, I need your eyes. I need your ears'. Return eye contact when your child addresses you.

Teach respect
Some parents teach their children to address adults as Mr, Mrs, Ms or Miss. Some address their parents' friends by their first names while others use 'aunt' or 'uncle'. Whatever is done in your family, teach your child what is expected of her in different situations. When you don't know a person's name, use 'excuse me'. And if the person has a title, such as doctor or reverend, use it. Respectful listening is another skill that's important. Remind your child not to interrupt and to wait for an appropriate time to add their comments. When your child approaches you to talk, turn away from what you're doing, make eye contact and listen with interest.

(Extracted from an article by Dr William Sears in Your Family magazine, Autumn 2005)

It's time to talk

Children can learn to talk in ways that are meaningful and appropriate, say Helen Shelbourne and Dominic Wyse in an article published in Nursery World in August 2005.

The skills and understanding necessary for anyone to be able to develop into an experienced language user begin from birth, and develop rapidly. Amazingly, by the age of five years, spoken language acquisition is largely complete. Children are able to draw on a vocabulary of several thousand words and control many of the major grammatical constructions of their language.

During this time, young children have to learn how to use words to communicate:

• Information
• Their thoughts
• Their feelings

An additional layer of language learning for children is developing an appreciation of how social context affects the language we use. For example, saying 'Give me that teddy!' demonstrates that a child may be able to communicate their wish but lacks an understanding of what is appropriate language. A child's developing language skills are, therefore, inextricably linked to their personal, social and emotional development.

In the early years setting, children must specifically:

• Develop their knowledge and understanding about how language works.
• Develop a range and variety of vocabulary to use.
• Develop awareness of their audience - to whom they are speaking. (There is some evidence to suggest that by the age of four, children have learned to adjust their speech according to different audiences).
• Think about the appropriate language to use according to the circumstances of the situation.
• Learn to speak with confidence.

To address successfully both the linguistic and social aspects of children's language learning, early years practitioners need to adopt a range of strategies, as follows.

Plan meaningful situations
In meaningful situations, children can practice their language skills and become aware of what is appropriate or suitable for a specific context. They can learn to take turns, negotiate, share resources, listen to and appreciate another person's point of view, and function in a small group situation. Such situations are abundant within an early years setting - for example, role-play areas, participating round a talk table, engaging in group interactions in the water and sand trays, sharing a computer programme with another child.

Model appropriate language
Curriculum Guidance for the Foundation Stage is clear on this point: 'Children will learn to understand and be aware of other points of view if practitioners demonstrate strategies such as listening, turn-taking and initiating and sustaining a conversation gently and respectfully..They will increase their knowledge and use of such conventions, such as for asking, initiating, refusing and greeting, if practitioners expect children to try and if they support children with reassuring reactions'.

Allow children to express their emotions
Children need to know that the setting is a place where all emotions can be expressed. It is the ability to talk through some of these emotions that is the challenge for both the individual child and the practitioner. Develop a strong, consistently implemented behaviour management strategy A consistent strategy gives children clear guidlines and expectations. Through conflicts, and conflict resolution, they can learn about respect and valuing others, and learn the language that is needed to express these sentiments.

Don't forget the importance of non-verbal communication
Studies comparing the influence of verbal and non-verbal cues in face-to-face interactions show that 55 per cent of meaning is expressed through visual clues, 38 per cent through tone of voice and only 7 per cent from actual words (Mehrabian 2000).

Build relationships of trust with every child
If a child feels safe and secure in their setting, they will thrive. As the Foundation Stage guidance states: 'Children learn to trust practitioners when they have consistent key adults to relate to and when they receive consistent responses and feel valued because adults engage in their play, support their interests and converse with them'. It is only through conversing with children purposefully and meaningfully that we can help their language expertise grow and develop.

(Written by Helen Shelbourne and Dominic Wyse, Nursery World, 11.08.05)

Language enrichment

Gillian Coffey, headteacher of Lynch Hill Primary School in Slough, describes the area surrounding her school as one of 'language deprivation', where the local Sure Start estimates that 25% of the children are in need of speech therapy. Despite the fact that many of the pupils enter the school well below national average in terms of speaking and language skills, when they leave, they are above national average and Ofsted praises the school for communication, language and literacy. A targeted programme of language enrichment - including speech therapy, role play and drama, large doses of phonics and a dedicated focus on basic skills - is to thank for the school's and its pupils' successes.

Find out more on the Basic Skills website at www.basic-skills.co.uk/site/page.php?cms=4&p=378

(Basic Skills Agency Newsletter, Dec 2006)

Mind your language - why practitioners need to rethink how they talk to children

One of the most important responsibilities facing Foundation Stage practitioners is to support the development of young children's communication skills. Much easier said than done! Thankfully, further help is at hand with the impending launch of new training materials for practitioners, commissioned by Sure Start, under development by Professor Nigel Hall at manchester Metropolitan University (MMU), and called Communicating Matters [The package of materials will be available to local authorities in September 2005].

Professor Nigel Hall's team have drawn upon general research, literature relating to specific communication difficultues and the excellent practice in many early years settings to develop some key learning priniciples that apply to the ways in which children learn about language and communication.

One area to emerge, which has caused considerable concern to many people over the past 40 years, is the ways in which practitioner and setting can inhibit children's language.

Research has shown consistently that the ways in which practitioners (not just in early years) interact with and talk to children often close down language opportunities, take over children's conversation, leave what children have to say unheard, and force children to attend to narrow, overprescribed notions of what is good communication and language.

The team at MMU found that one overriding belief stood out as being the key to improving children's communication skills: if practitioners could become more aware of how their own language behaviours impact upon children's communication and could modify their behaviour, then this change would have a greater beneficial influence on children's language than almost anything else.

It can be hard to look from a distance at how we use language, especially in a busy setting or classroom. Because so much language is generated spontaneously and disappears almost instantaneously, being aware of what we do and say is hard - as a result it is often difficult to change. This is why it is so important to reflect on how to listen and respond to children in settings.

Some practitioners have found that reflecting on their own communication has helped them to improve their practice (see case study). Many have come to realise that some of their own beliefs about their own practice were not evident in their setting. Tape recording or videoing interaction with children can help practitioners reflect on their language, as can practitioners using each other as critical friends who regularly observe and discuss each other's use of language.

The primary objective for practitioners must be to get the child to communicate. This might seem like stating the obvious, but adults working with children have a lot of power and can too easily dominate children's communication.

Practitioners must almost always be directed to allowing and encouraging children to talk. All too often more effort is spent in encouraging children to be quiet than to communicate.

A change in style
Communicating Matters identifies key behaviours for practitioners to develop and demonstrate to support children's language development:

• Listen before talking - more time spent listening without interrupting leads to more relevant adult language, allows children to gather their thoughts and usually leads to more high-quality interactions.
• Talk to the child as one would with an adult - this means that both participants in the conversation have equal rights to initiate, select topics or even close the conversation.
• Give children space and time to respond - the imperative on practitioners to get children learning often forces them to take over children's talk. Practitioners have to become comfortable with the childrens' silences, which allow them time to think about what has been said and what they should reply. Pauses and hesitations are part of everyone's talk. Once children learn that they have freedom to comment, they will take advantage of the oportunites that such space offers.
• Think about the role of questions and use them appropriately - used too often, questions can turn converations into interrogations and cast the child as a passive partner. The best questions are always those for which the answer is not already known.
• Avoid correcting children's speech - modeling and expanding language is preferable to drawing attention to childrens' 'deficiences' since this can undermine their self-confidence.
• Show real interest in what the child has to say - the greatest respect we can show to children is to respond seriously to what they have to say. This requires practitioners to reflect on their own assumptions about children from homes or cultures different from their own, and to avoid negative stereotypes.
• Don't talk for the sake of talking - while it would be foolish to suggest that practitioners never initiate conversation with a child, following the child's lead demonstrates a positive regard for them as individuals.
• Maximise opportunities for children to use language purposefully - this seems obvious, but engaging in interesting activities will lead to richer language than might occur in artificially-created situations.

The message that came back to the team from many excellent settings, and from specialists was that children should do more talking and practitioners should do less.

Practitioners need to become better listeners and to provide a much better model of what it means to be a good listener. The best practitioners recognsie that they need to rein in their power as communicators and give children the freedom to initate and lead.

Good practitioners have the confidence to allow themselves to be led by the children, creating space and time for children to think, reflect and speak, and allowing activities to emerge from the children themselves.

Ten key questions

Effective practice requires all practitioners to understand how their own language and behaviour influence the development of a child's communication and language. Use these key questions to help you reflect on your own communicative behaviours. Do you:

1. Listen to children before you talk to them?
2. Allow children time to start up the conversation?
3. Find yourself regularly interrupting children?
4. Talk with a child rather than at them?
5. Leap in to correct children's errors or ask children to repeat themselves?
6. Ask too many questions of children, particularly those to which the answers are already known?
7. Model and expand children's language, building on what they have to say?
8. Feel uncomfortable about silences?
9. Show real interest in what children have to say?
10. Show the same respect for conversations with children as for those with adults?

This article was written by Sue Ellis, Regional Director, Foundation Stage Inclusion, for Nursery World, 24 February 2005.

How early years practitioners can encourage parents to talk to their children

There is a growing body of opinion among professionals that more children suffer from communication difficulties now than previously - although there is no systematic research to prove it.

Nonetheless, a joint survey by the National Literacy Trust and the National Association of Head Teachers revealed 74 per cent of the 121 heads polled felt young children's speaking and listening skills had deteriorated in the past five years. And a Basic Skills Agency survey highlighted teacher's perceptions that children's communication skills have declined, especially the ability to speak audibly and be understood. In a poll by I CAN, eighty-nine per cent of nursery workers said they were worried about the growth of speech, language and communication difficulties among pre-school children. Ninety-two per cent of them attributed this decline to the lack of time adults and children spend talking together.

It is difficult to pinpoint exactly why children's communication skills appear to have deteriorated. The busy lives we lead, the smaller family unit, the noise in the home from TV and radio, the lack of family mealtimes at which to talk and share are probably all contributory factors. Perhaps parents and carers are just not aware of the vital role they play in helping children become able talkers?

In 2003 the National Literacy Trust launched the Talk To Your Baby campaign to encourage parents and carers to talk more to children from birth. All parents wish to do their best for their children, but sometimes lack the confidence or knowledge to implement powerful parenting practices, such as attentive listening, singing songs, playing rhyming games and sharing books. They may not know how important (and easy) this is.

So how can early years practitioners help parents recognise the value and pleasure to be gained from talking to their young children? Modelling good communication is the obvious answer, and practitioners should take every opportunity to talk with children in front of their parents, during drop-off or pick-up times, for example. This is the perfect opportunity for practitioners to demonstrate effective communication techniques such as using eye-contact, listening carefully and allowing time for the child to respond.

Mike Carden, Manager of Netherley Valley Sure Start says, "Just getting parents to stay to see Sure Start people talking, playing and singing with their child, and being amazed that their child responds, is often enough to get them involved or trying things for themselves."

Holding a parents' evening or running a parenting course is another way to inform parents and carers of the importance of early communication. Mike says, "Even if the parents have lots of problems themselves, they will take note if someone in authority takes the time to tell them that playing with their children, and talking positively to them, will help their learning."

So how can you attract parents to these sessions? One way is to start by offering parents something they want to know, and building from there. A UK study involving parents of children underfive found that the most prominent information need was child health information (91%), followed by information about child care (86%) and child development (80%) (Nicholas and Marden, 1998). A US study of parents' preferences regarding parenting education found that when asked to rate 15 parenting topics, 95% of respondents indicated most interest in "building your child's self esteem" (Jacobson and Engelbrecht, 2000). Any session on building children's confidence will lead naturally to early communication, as the ability to communicate is the basis of social and emotional well-being.

Mike Carden runs taster sessions in the parents' rooms Netherley Valley Sure Start has set up in all the local primary schools. He gets a good tutor along who startles the parents with facts on matters they are concerned about, like crying and then asks if anyone would like to come next week for a longer session based on the parents' interests. A ten-week parenting course might be followed by a short course on housing issues, or form-filling for jobs, for example. Similarly, Sure Start speech and language therapists often use baby massage to attract parents and then introduce a few songs once everyone is relaxed.

Pat Henchie, head teacher at Lowther School in Richmond, London, was so distressed about the low level of language skills among her pupils that she used funding from her Local Education Authority to get a local theatre group to run drama and music classes for parents and children at the school one night a week. Research has shown that parents with low levels of confidence, or with the greatest learning needs, are more likely to take part in practical activities that do not involve any reading or writing, such as drama, crafts, music or gardening projects. And any activity that involves parents and children doing things together is a great way to help develop talking skills, and an excellent opportunity for practitioners to model good communication.

Fathers are more likely to get involved in parenting courses or activities if there is a clear strategy to involve them and the presence of dedicated staff members, including male staff, to encourage their involvement. Holding events outside, such as sport or outdoor games, can help to get dads along too.

Sending out a newsletter with suggested "talking points" based on a current theme, or sending home information leaflets with tips to help children's talking and listening skills, will also help parents think about the issue. Talk To Your Baby has produced a series of quick tips for parents and practitioners, which have been translated into eight languages. Topics include dummies, songs and rhymes, play, sharing books, television, talking together, bilingualism and the social newborn. The tips can be downloaded from our website and photocopied free of charge.

Article written by Talk To Your Baby for Early Years Update, April 2005.

Talk is not the only way to communicate with nursery newcomers finding themsleves in an adult-led world, says Dr Rosie Flewitt.

It has long been recognised that while children are competent communicators in their own homes by the age of three, they talk far less when they join an early years setting. However, the reasons for their comparative silence are not fully understood. While the quality of early years provision has undoubtedly been raised in recent years, practitioners say they feel under increased pressure to provide evidence of delivering the curriculum, to help children achieve higher scores in early years assessment and to focus on children's ability to talk. For my research, I tracked the experiences of three-year-old children during their first year in a rural playgroup. By video recording each child at home and in preschool at four to six week intervals, my study revealed how and why three-year-olds use combinations of communicative 'modes', such as talk, body movement, facial expression, gaze direction and the manipulation of objects to explore and express meanings at home and preschool.

At home
At home, the children's interactions with their parents, siblings and friends were dominated by talk, with gaze, facial expression and body movements used mostly for emphasis when being assertive or to replace particularly complicated explanations or vocabulary. The children were confident of their knowledge of routines and uses of vocabulary within their own homes, and their families treated them as 'knowers' of facts, events and specialised vocabulary. The shared understandings between the children and their families provided fertile ground for the children to express their views through talk, and frequently led to lengthy verbal exchanges. All the mothers displayed a deep understanding of their children's experiences, interests and areas of specialist knowledge. This enabled them to provide finely-tuned assistance that prompted their children to develop their ideas through further talk.

In one conversation, Jake was looking at an illustrated children's book on farm machinery in the kitchen while his mother was baking. Although she was busy, the mother responded to her son's comments with interest, which prompted Jake to talk in more detail and look more carefully at the book illustrations. The mother had high expectations of Jake's specialised knowledge and vocabulary, and by sharing their knowledge through body movement and words, she brought the book closer to a reality she knew he would understand. The unhurried and familiar home context, where children were treated and behaved as masters rather than apprentices of the procedures and routines of their worlds, provided safe platforms upon which they practised their skills and took risks. The children were free of any major threat to their self-esteem and they were almost always assured of adult attention and support.

In an early years setting
By contrast, when they first joined the preschool, the children were comparatively quiet and watchful as they began to make sense of their new surroundings and to unravel the different kinds of opportunities for communicating offered by the setting. Although over time the children began to talk more, they still talked far less than at home, and they used gaze, facial expression and body movement for specific purposes that were shaped by the practices of the preschool. Close observation of actvities within the setting revealed that children varied their methods of communicating according to the activity. For example, adult-led activities, such as completing pre-set craft tasks, were characterised by the adult giving instructions or explanations and the children responding with combinations of gaze, facial expression, movement and monosyllabic or short verbal responses, as in the following example. Jake is playing a board game with an adult, Janet.

Jake: (throws dice) 'Pink.'
Janet: (gaze to dice) 'It's yellow.'
Jake: (moves snail along track towards end)
Janet: (points to snail and square on board) 'Move that one just one space.'
Jake: (moves snail back to square indicated)
Janet: 'and then you need to throw the other dice' (passes dice) 'and see what colour that one lands on.'
Jake: (throws dice).

In general, the higher the degree of adult control of an activity, the less then children used talk to communicate. By contrast, the children tended to engage more deeply in activities, but not necessarily to talk more, when adults stopped 'teaching' and joined the flow of the child's play, by responding sensitively and imitatively to the child's words, gaze and body movements. In the following example, the adult, Sarah, had joined Jake at a puzzle activity. From the outset, she assumed an interested yet passive stance. Initially, Jake had been using trial and error to fit the pieces, sometimes using force, which Sarah skilfully led Jake to conclude might not work as a strategy. She rewarded his successes with nods, smiles and congratulatory remarks, and waited until he began comparing sizes before gradaully introducing the notions of shape and colour that he needed to consider to complete the game.

Jake: (pushes hard to fit a piece)
Sarah: 'Won't it fit in there?' (arms folded, smiles, glance to Jake, then game)
Jake: 'Look!' (shakes head briefly)
Sarah: 'No, it doesn't, does it?' (shaking head, gaze at game)
Jake: 'It fit here.' (slotting piece in)
Sarah: 'It does!' (nods and smiles)
Jake: (moves piece to a bigger hole) 'Not in dis can't fit ere cos it not bigger' (shaking head and holding piece up to Sarah)
Sarah: 'That's right.' (gaze to Jake).

At imaginative play activities, such as the home corner, the younger children often negotiated entry to older children's play by watching and imitating their actions and how they used the resources. Their non-verbal techniques proved far more successful than talk. As children became involved in play, opportunities sometimes arose for talk with peers, but access to play was negotiated almost entirely without words. Tracking the children as they selected activities during free choice time revealed that many three-year-olds, particularly those whom staff considered 'quiet', often avoided activities where they had to talk to peers or adults. Instead, they opted for activities where established patterns of communication allowed them to participate while remaining relatively silent. For example, both boys and girls frequently spent long periods at construction or craft activities where they produced detailed models that gave deep insights into their understandings of their world. However, all too often these were dismantled or put to one side.

These non-verbal expressions of the children's understandings were not given the same recognition as their talk, yet they were key gateways to engaing the children's involvement. The newcomers' most frequent use of talk in the preschool involved relatively 'safe' options, such as joining in group chants ('I want more milk') and repeating phrases specific to the setting ('tidy-up time!')

Conclusions
Any 'absence' of talk at preschool does not necessarily imply that child lacks skilled communication or is not making meanings. On the contrary, for the newcomers to the preschool, learning to be included in peer play and learning the routines of the setting were negotiated primarily through observation and imitation. Talk was used for specific purposes, such as to be precise.Over time, the three-year-olds began to find new ways of expressing themselves, sometimes through talk and sometimes through gaze, facial expression and body movement. These were almost always linked in some way to the communicative practices of more established members of the group. To help children learn through play and all their senese, as proposed in the Foundation Stage curriculum guidance, adults must recognise and value the diversity of children's strategies for communicating. Early years practitioners must balance talk-biased, adult-led learning episodes with child-led activities, where children's individual and diverse ways of expressing meaning are respected, validated and reciprocated.

(Dr Rosie Flewitt for Nursery World, 12 May 2005)

Speak up

The human interaction that babies and toddlers need to develop communication is explored by Jennie Lindon.

Babies and toddlers are keen to make social contact and communicate with other people from their earliest days. One of the ten principles underpinning Birth to Three Matters reminds practitioners that 'Babies and young children are social beings, they are competent learners from birth'. The importance of communication skills is highlighted in one of the four aspects 'A Skilful Communicator'.

Babies and young children do not need to be pushed into communicating, nor do they need special language programmes, unless they are coping with a disability that directly affects the development of communication. To stimulate their communication skills, under-threes need communicative adults and an interesting learning environment, with flexible play resources that they can explore at their leisure.

Key messages
The information and advice given in the four components supporting 'A Skilful Communicator' give some important and consistent messages:

• The developmental information reminds us how babies and toddlers want to communicate with familiar adults and with other children. They do not sit around waiting until they have 'proper words' to communicate.
• Young children absorb a great deal from non-verbal communication. They are sensitive to body language and tone. Older toddlers and two-year-olds continue to notice the 'music' behind verbal communication once they have grasped the meaning of spoken words.
• Practitioners need to be alert to a child's speech beyond the total number and type of words used. Under-threes start to use their spoken language(s) in different ways and for various purposes, such as requesting, describing and questioning.
• Helpful adults are aware of their own behaviour. Do you set a good example of listening? Do you allow enough time for conversations? Do you value simply chatting with children?
• Supportive adults are generous with gestures to accompany their speech and use their spoken words to comment on what young children indicate by their own body language.
• Any 'planned experiences' should create possibilities for children to use and extend their communication skills through open-ended play resources that will also foster related aspects of a child's development.

Caring adults
Another key principle in Birth to Three Matters is 'Caring adults count more than resources and equipment'. This is relevant to many strands of good early years practice, as well as developing communication skills.

Under-threes flourish when a familiar and kind adult shows real interest in baby gestures and sound-making, through to the turn-taking conversations of a rising three-year-old. The entire toy industry cannot make anything that beats an attentive adult. Children's fledgling skills flourish when familiar adults are responsive to what individual children want to show and say, there and then. Alert practitioners will comment on what is in front of babies and young children, or what the child or adult is doing at that moment.

Babies and toddlers (and, indeed, over-threes) are poorly served when communicating is viewed as an adult-led activity. Unfortunately, some practitioners have been led to believe that under-threes benefit from planned, group 'communication activities'. Some misleading under-threes booklets outline heavily directed activities, right down to the list of questions that practitioners should ask babies and young toddlers. In fact, young children are often deterred from talking and listening when they are required to tolerate sitting still in large groups.

Warm relationships
Practitioners also need to reflect on the importance of relationships in motivating children to speak and listen. An affectionate and enduring relationship with their out-of-home carer is crucial for the overall emotional well-being of under-threes.

One principle in Birth to Three Matters states: 'Relationships with other people (both adults and children) are of crucial importance in a child's life'. The introductory booklet (page 9) notes that: 'To become skilful communicators, babies and children need to be together with a key person and others in warm and loving relationships'. And Scotland's Birth to Three materials have a strong focus on the need to build such personal relationships.

The Birth to Three Matters video contains many examples of practitioners physically close to a baby or child and sharing a particular experience, activity or daily routine. The sequence that illustrates 'A Skilful Communicator' shows a childminder enjoying a book with a two-year-old and a baby. The consistent message of the video, and the other Birth to Three Matters resources, is that this snuggling-in experience should be children's right in any kind of early years provision.

Full attention
Group settings that understand and respect young children's needs are organised so that there are easy times and spaces for babies to receive the full attention of an adult and for toddlers and two-year-olds to sit together with an interested, and interesting, adult, out of personal choice.

Both the English and the Scottish Birth to Three resources remind us that babies are interested in other babies and older children, communicating through looks, touch and sound-making. Toddlers and young children talk and listen to each other. Supportive adults work to ease their interaction, as well as helping when an exchange has outstripped their communication or social skills.

Written examples as well as the video materials from the English and Scottish Birth to Three show how opportunities to listen and talk emerge in a natural way through daily experiences, including children's active involvement in routines. See, for instance, the video sequence of feeding the guinea pigs on the English CD. Play resources, storybooks and shared experiences - whether initiated by children themselves or offered flexibly by adults - come alive when respect is shown for children as communicators.

Many of the longer written examples in the Scottish Birth to Three guidance show the importance of relaxed observation of children. Practitioners need to fine-tune their playful contributions, spoken comments or open-ended questions to fit what absorbs this baby or child today.

Alert practitioners notice over time the ways in which individual children welcome a contribution from a familiar adult. Supportive communication can also be made through your presence as you show that you are pleased to watch and listen, smiling as a toddler or child looks towards you. You do not have continually to say something; your presence communicates: 'I'm really interested in you'.

Further resources

• Learning and Teaching Scotland (2005), 'Birth to Three: Supporting our youngest children', www.ltscotland.org.uk/earlyyears/about/curriculum/birthtothree/guidance.asp
• Manolson, Ayala (1995), You Make the Difference in Helping Your Child Learn, Hanen (distributed by Winslow, tel: 0845 921 1777)
• Murray, Lynne and Andrews, Liz (2000), The Social Baby: Understanding children's communication from birth, The Children's Project (tel: 020 8546 8750)
• Sure Start/DfES (2002), 'Birth to Three Matters: A framework to support children in their earliest years' visit: www.surestart.gov.uk/improvingquality/frameworks/birthtothreematters/
• Talk To Your Baby resources and research papers, www.talktoyourbaby.org.uk

(By Jennie Lindon, Nursery World, 25.05.06)

Speech and language delay at Bognor Regis nursery school

Bognor Regis nursery school specialises in creating an environment that inspires children to communicate. In 2000, the school used funding from the Department for Education and Skills to support 15 children with identified speech and language delay or disordered speech. Staff re-examined their method of working with parents and the Speech and Language Therapy Service, and children were videoed at home and school. The footage was studied by all parties to analyse children's strenths, interests and areas for development and to agree support strategies.

The nursery school recommends the following good practice:

Gain information
Staff find out as much information about a child as possible before they start at the setting. Questions include:

• Is the child confident in a variety of situations?
• Have they ever attended speech and language therapy?
• Does the child have any hearing problems?
• Do they follow spoken instructions easily of need constant visual clues?
  

• The child being at a lower stage than expected for their age
• Difficulties in following instructions
• Performing badly in auditory discrimination activities such as rhymes and guessing sound games

• Identifying sounds of different instruments or objects
• Listening to taped stories with an accompanying book
• Copying a rhythm or following a beat
• Responding to musical games, for example musical bumps, or songs that require a response, like 'Head and shoulders' or 'Mulberry bush'
• Filling in missing words in familiar rhymes
• Guessing where sound is coming from when the source is not visible
  

Verbal comprehension
Indicators of poor comprehension include:

• Delayed develomental language skills
• Misunderstanding simple questions
• Relying too heavily on visual clues

Supporting poor comprehension
Staff talk clearly and slowly but not loudly. They repeat key words if necessary and use the level of information carrying words appropriate to the child's understanding. Modelling language - giving a verbal commentary of what a child is doing when working alongside them - can be adapted to meet children's learning styles and level of understanding.

This information is taken from an article called "Let's talk" by Annette Rawstrone which appeared in Nursery World, 13 February 2003.

Supporting babies and young children's early language development

Language development

Making sense
Long before babies communicate with language they are listening to and distinguishing between sounds (Sure Start 2002). Babies have a marked preference for their mother's voice and very early on show that they hear the difference between their home language and any other (Karmiloff-Smith 1994).

As babies and young children hear a string of sounds, they try to segment them into identifiable chunks. One example of this is toddlers' tendency to echo the last word/s said to them. This process of making sense of language is called receptive language development.

Children learning more than one spoken language will have a wider range of sounds to identify. Having to identify more sounds can prolong the period before expressive language emerges but is ultimately beneficial to children's development, as cognitively they are becoming aware of the abstract nature of language ealier (Siraj-Blatchford and Clarke 2000).

Expressing
Young babies may not use words but in their early months make vowel sounds interspersed by consonants. Around the time they are sitting up babies are babbling, including babies who are using sign language. Parents and practitioners respond playfully to this 'talk', giving it meaning, which encourages the baby to repeat sounds and link them to meaning.

Older babies produce more complex sounds and use intonation to convey different meanings, imitative of adult talk. By this time, babies who all started out using the same range of sounds start to sound different, depending on their mother tongue (Gopnik et al 1999). The running commentaries that practitioners make on everything that they and the baby do at this time helps the baby to think about cause and effect.

In the second and third years of life there is an explosion of language development. Starting with simplified, single words, children sound the consonants just at the beginning of words at first, then the middle, and gradually the end consonants. Consonant clusters are simplified, unstressed syllables are left out and syllables are duplicated. At this time children are becoming mobile and, once walking, the toddler's world really opens up and single words to desribe objects and actions are added rapidly to their vocabulary. Gopnik, Meltzoff and Kuhl (1999) call this 'fast mapping'.

Toddlers often point and ask 'What's that?' and begin to show an interest in categorising or sorting at this time. The vocabulary of older toddlers increases rapidly, and they begin to use plurals, pronouns and adjectives. There is also increasing fine motor control at this time, and language helps toddlers to make sense of their actions, using phrases such as 'uh-oh' when things go wrong.

Many toddlers' words are not easily understood by people who do not know them well and adults' lack of understanding, plus the fact that toddlers' understanding is ahead of their ability to express themselves, can result in much frustration. In addition, the sentences older toddlers use contain just the key words, which is called telegraphic speech. This means that practitioners need to share a lot of information to understand the context of a child's talk. For example 'daddy car' may mean 'daddy's got a new car' or 'daddy crashed the car' or many other possibilities. Toddlers also make grammatical errors, such as 'I saw sheeps' or 'I goed park'. Repeating what the child says in the correct form, rather than telling them they are wrong, will both model language and show respect for what is actually an example of the child's growing understanding of grammatical rules.

Playing
A key way in which babies and toddlers come to understand and use language is through their play with sounds and words. Babies repeat different combinations of sounds in their babbling, varying the pitch from low to high. Toddlers play with intonation and sounds and invent their own words for things. Older toddlers play with nonsense words and create chants and their own versions of nursery rhymes, repeating them over and over. Repetition and routine are significant in the speech development of two-year-olds (Gillen in Abbott and Moylett 1997). They enjoy repeating the same song, story or video and often want to have the same conversation in certain situations over a period of months.

Responding
Effective support of children's language development requires practitioners to spend a lot of time listening to children. They need to wait patiently and attentively for them to express their ideas, listening rather than interrupting, then responding to the meaning of their verbal and non-verbal communications. This approach is especially important with toddlers who may often stutter or stumble over their words, as their ability to communicate cannot keep pace with their thoughts and feelings.

Effective support also includes giving bi-or multi-lingual children particular consideration. Given young babies' sensitivity to the sounds of their home language, practitioners should consider how they can ensure that the children will hear those sounds in the setting.

Recruitming practitioners who speak ethnic community languages is ideal, although they also need to feel comfortable in using their languages with the children and parents. Where this option is not possible, key persons should learn essential words in their key children's home language, and parents can tape lullabies, songs and stories for the practitioner to play during the day.

Implications for practice

The practitioner role
Practitioners are the most important resource for babies and young children learning to use language. To support nought to three-year-olds effectively, practitioners need a good knowledge of language development and detailed understanding of each individual child in their care. Skilled practitioners

• develop trusting relationships with young children, thereby fostering confident talkers who can express their feelings and share their ideas
• use gestures, expressive facial movements, props and signing to support babies' and toddlers' understanding
• are natural conversationalists who provide a running commentary on a play scenario, naming objects and actions and wondering aloud on possible outcomes. They stress and use home languages for key words and use open-ended questions that encourage children to respond without the need for a right answer.

Working with parents
Communication between all the adults is crucial. Where parents and children are learning English as an additional language, support partnership working by:

• supporting parents to spend as much time in the group as possible, talking, singing and telling stories to the children in their home langauge
• employing staff who speak ethnic community languages
• accessing interpreters from the staff, parent or community groups, where necessary
• learning key words in the families' home langauge

Prime care times

• Be aware of key words in the children's home languages, such as 'more', 'finished' and 'pooh', as these are especially important at meal, bathroom and sleep times.
• Arrange physical care times to be with individual children or in small key groups as this will help the children to get their needs met or express their feelings and preferences more easily.
• Sing or talk to babies when they are having their nappy changed and have 'conversations', with pauses and interactions, when bottle-feeding.

Environment
For children to want to talk about what is around them the environment needs to:

• have interesting features, eye-level displays and photo albums or events and activities that babies and toddlers have done together to stimulate their recall and talk
• include objects that toddlers see at home and that trigger familiar words, including pictures of their families and friends
• be equipped with duplicates of favourite books, dual language books and books that invite a response from the child located in different parts of the room.

Play experiences/resources
To stimulate effectively the language and communication of nought to three-year-olds, play opportunities must be relevant to the children's experiences and understanding and sufficiently interesting to prompt conversation and comment. They should include:

• visiting interesting places, such as the greengrocer, in small groups
• having interesting people to visit - for example, a parent who has brought in a musical instrument or pet rabbit
• planned and spontneous times to make sounds with objects and instruments
• singing, made-up stories and games using children's names and experiences
• stories and songs in the children's home languages
• recording conversations between children and keypersons for the children to listen to.

References

• Abbott, L and Moylett, H (1997) Working with the under-3's: responding to children's needs. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
• Gopnik, A, Meltzoff, A and Kuhl, P (1999) How Babies Think. London: Weidenfield
• Karmiloff-Smith, A (1994) Baby it's you. London: Ebury Press
• Manning-Morton, J and Thorp, M (2001) Key times: A framework for developing high quality provision for children under three years. London: Camden EYDCP/University of North London
• Siraj-Blatchford, I and Clarke, P (2000) Supporting Identity, Diversity and Language in the Early Years. Milton Keynes: Open University Press
• Sure Start (2002) Birth to Three Matters: A framework to support children in their earliest years. Lodnon: DfES.

From "Using Language", Julia Manning-Morton for Nursery World, October 2004.

Non-verbal communication is vital for conveying meaning and knowledge of the communicator's particular cultural customs is essential to communicating effectively. In this article, we consider the importance of both these aspects of communication for effective practice with birth to three-year-olds.

Communicating with others is fundamental to being a social being. As developing language relies on social interactions, the most important resource for very young children learning to communicate is the consistent, continuous care of responsive, familiar adults.

Children who are enabled to build trusting relationships develop self-confidence in expressing themselves and sharing their ideas. In such relationships of mutual respect there is powerful motivation to interact, communicate and use language.

A lot of learning about communication takes place around familiar routines such as nappy changing, sleeping and mealtimes. Consequently, carers must be responsive and attentive both physically and verbally.

Rocking or gently massaging a baby, for example, are ways of communicating that underpin early language development. Holding out your arms and asking a baby if they would like to have their nappy changed instigates a conversation as well as showing a child respect.

Karmiloff-Smith (1994) says that the sensitivity of the parents/carers to their baby in the first few months of life has a direct correlation to the linguistic ability of the baby at 12 months. Babies in daycare need carers with that same sensitivity. In this way we can see how the relationship between the baby and caring adult is central to their communication and learning.

Ways of communicating
Babies are communicators from birth. They recognise human voices that they have heard in the womb, and after birth they pay more attention to human voices than other auditory stimuli (Karmiloff-Smith 1995).

Babies communicate their needs in different ways but crying is the primary means by which they communicate fear, pain, hunger, boredom or loneliness. The better a practitioner knows a baby, the more they are able to differentiate the type of crying that the baby uses to convey a particular need. It is useful for practitioners to remember that although a baby's crying makes us tense, this discomfort makes us act, which is what the baby needs. This in itself is a conversation and an early experience of cause and effect for the baby.

But babies also express their interest in communicating with us by gazing at adults' faces, searching with their eyes, smiling, babbling, reaching, laughing and shouting. These interactions usually take place with people they know. With strangers, or if they want to stop an interaction, babies show their displeasure by looking away, titling their heads away, grimacing, whining and pushing away with their arms and legs (Manning-Morton and Thorp 2001). Use of facial expression, body language, gesture and vocalisations are then all important ways in which babies and young children make themselves understood, long before language emerges.

Acredolo and Goodwyn (2000) suggest that almost all babies use signs and gestures such as pointing, waving and shaking their heads. Their research identified that where babies were supported in using signs to communicate their needs, they had more spoken language at two years old than non-signing peers. Toddlers in their study also experienced less frustration, as signing enabled them to communicate more effectively with their parents/carers, so enhancing relationships and consequently the children's self-esteem. Similarly, key persons who are tuned in to each of their babies' and toddlers' ways of communicating also lessen the times of intense frustration for the children and the consequent emotional collapse that they may experience.

Developing understanding
Before babies and toddlers develop language they develop an understanding of how language and communication works. They engage in turn-taking of conversation. For example, babies suck vigorously at the breast or bottle when feeding, then pause, gazing at their carer, who talks to and maybe jiggles the baby in the pauses, then the baby starts sucking again. Colwyn Trevarthan calls such exchanges 'proto-conversations' (Trevarthn 1979), which also take place in many games we play with babies. He describes babies as young as two months engaging in these communications and says they provide children with a good understanding of their cultural vocabulary of communication.

Babies also show that they know what the adult intends to do when environments and routines are predictable. For example, babies look towards the fridge as you prepare their lunch. This ability to follow the adult's attention means the practitioner can show the baby interesting things and also follow the baby's attention and talk about what they are looking at or pointing to.

In this way babies make links between objects and events and language. This is further assisted by the attention that babies pay to the human voice, especially the exaggerated intonation, higher pitch and restricted vocabulary typical of 'motherese' or Infant Directed Speech.

Babies are also developing an awareness of the links between actions and language. Motherese, for example, also uses exaggerated facial expressions and actions that gain the babies' attention, such as tickling. As noted earlier, this develops into babies using their own gestures to communicate. Toddlers understand and use many expressions, gestures and imitate many language-related actions, such as shrugging their shoulders of putting their fingers to their lips for 'shh'.

As in the adult world, words for babies and toddlers mean far less if their meaning is not also communicated by facial expression, tone, pitch and gesture.

Implications for practice

The practitioner's role
Practitioners who support babies' and todders' communications effectively:

• spend time in conversation with their key children, echoing their vocalisations and pausing for replies
• respond to the meaning in young children's communications
• are knowledgeable about each child's interests, the words or events that trigger memories and the repeated conversations that are related to these
• are tuned in to each child's language, gestures and expressions and use them consistently in response.

Working with parents
To understand effectively the communications of babies and toddlers, practitioners and parents need to communicate well themselves. Daily exchanges are necessary, through conversation or a diary, for all adults to be able to interpret a child's actions or words. This means telling each other:

• the meaning of particular words or gestures that a child uses
• about a child's idiosyncratic words or rituals and what they mean
• about the child's experiences at home and in the setting so each understands what the child is referring to and can talk more about it.

Prime care times
Physical care times are prime times for conversation. To support communications at these times, key persons should be primarily responsible for changing, feeding and settling their key children to sleep.

Environment
Practitioners who know how hard it is to communicate, say, in a noisy club or quiet library, will understand how environment impacts on young children's efforts to communicate. Babies and toddlers can become fractious when the noise level in a group rises. This is just one reason why groups should not be too large or noisy or have too wide an age range for good communication to take place. Childminders' homes do not usually have large echoing spaces, but group settings should consider having sound-absorbing surfaces and quiet areas to reduce background noise and ensure that babies and toddlers can hear and be heard.

Play experiences/resources
There are many social communication games that birth to three-year-olds enjoy. For babies these mostly involve play with the adult. Older babies enjoy lively games with songs and comical teasing games such as 'round and round the garden.' Babies will show pleasure and excitement in this play with someone that they know well but not with a stranger. However, even a trusted adult must know to stop the game as soon as excitement turns to anxiety, or the developing trust will be damaged.

Frameworks
All aspects of communication and language can be found in Birth to Three Matters (Sure Start 2002): "A Skilful Communicator', but the areas covered in this article are in the components 'Making meaning - understanding and being understood' and 'Being Together - beinga sociable and effective communicator.' In the Key Times Framework (Manning-Morton and Thorp 2001) these aspects arein the characteristic section 'Children under three have a strong drive to communicate with others.'

References

• Acredolo, L and Goodwyn, S (2000) Baby Signs. How to talk with your baby before your baby can talk. London: Vermilion, Ebury Press.
• Karmiloff-Smith, A (1994) Baby it's you. London: Ebury Press
• Karmiloff-Smith, A (1995) 'The extraordinary journey from foetus through infancy.' Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 36, pp 1,293-1,315
• Manning-Morton, J and Thorp, M (2001) Key times: A framework for developing high quality provision for children under three years. London: Camden EYDCP/University of North London
• Sure Start (2002) Birth to Three Matters: A framework to support children in their earliest years. DfES. HMSO
• Trevarthan, C (1979) 'Communication and co-operation in early infancy: A description of inter-subjectivity'. Bullowa, M (ed) Before speech: The beginning of interpersonal communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

This article, written by Julia Manning-Morton for Nursery World covers the components 'Making meaning - understanding and being understood' and 'Being together' - being a sociable and effective communicator' in Birth to Three Matters.