Speech and language videos and resources
- Training and workshops
- Speech, language and communication
We have developed a series of videos which contain information on supporting a child’s communication needs within the home and educational settings.
Explore the topics on this page:
Introduction to speech, language and communication
Attention and listening skills
Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC)
Social communication and interaction
Understanding and using language
Supporting speech, language and communication in secondary schools
An introduction to speech, language and communication
Welcome to this video: An Introduction to Speech, Language and Communication
By watching this video, you will:
- Know what communication is and why it is so important
- Gain introductory knowledge to the components of communication
- Develop some strategies in positively supporting a child’s speech, language and communication skills
- Know where you can get more support in this area
This video is appropriate for staff supporting children in the early years or primary phase of education, or parents and carers of these children.
- Communication is fundamental to children’s development; children need to be able to understand and be understood.
- Communication is the foundation of relationships and is essential for learning, play and social interaction.
- Communication is at the heart of everything we do, and it is everybody’s business to support communication skills to develop.
What is meant by speech, language and communication?
Communication is how we exchange messages. Although we often focus on ‘speaking’ as the main form of communication, it actually uses all the senses, and a lot of our communication is done without talking, or non-verbally. Communication involves being able to understand someone else’s point of view, and using and understanding body language and facial expressions. Here are some examples of non-verbal communication. Can you understand them?
By language, we mean both understanding, or receptive language, and speaking, or expressive language. We need to understand and use words and sentences to follow instructions, communicate our needs, and share our ideas. As before, we usually speak, but we can also communicate using writing, sign language or other forms.
And speech is the way we use our sounds and our voice to communicate our message in a smooth and fluent way.
Some children and young people have Speech, Language and Communication Needs, often shortened to SLCN. This means they have difficulties in one or more of the areas just mentioned.
So, we know communication is essential for learning, play and social interaction, but did you know:
- 1.9 million children in the UK have SLCN, that’s approximately 13% of children. This number has significantly increased in the last few years.
- In some areas, 50% of children start school without the communication skills they need.
- A third of our children do not make the expected level of progress in their Reception Year and this gap can widen as they move through the school years
- Communication skills at age five can predict reading skills, and vocabulary levels at five are linked to academic outcomes at GCSE level.
- SLCN are often hidden and under-identified. What might look like friendship difficulties, or literacy difficulties, or behavioural difficulties, may actually be underlying SLCN.
- Without support, children with SLCN can struggle academically, socially, emotionally and in the long term. But there are lots of things we can do to support them, both at home and in our settings.
· Good communication skills depend on abilities that children develop long before they start to talk. Research shows that babies whose parents or carers are more responsive go on to develop larger vocabularies and reach their language milestones earlier. For example, by taking turns with babies when they are cooing and babbling, we actively help them to look, listen, and learn the basic structure of conversation.
· As babies grow, play is a great opportunity to continue crucial back-and-forth games, for example, taking turns to add blocks when building a tower or stacking cups. Children’s interaction with others supports their communication development. Play and language develop hand in hand.
· Children need to hear language to be able to use it. They need to understand the meaning of words and sentences and the ideas behind them. As they get older, they begin to understand the way sentences are constructed, and that different word forms can change the meaning of a sentence.
· Children begin using words, verbally or non-verbally, and combine them together to make phrases and sentences.
· Speech sounds develop alongside expressive language, even babbling is the beginning of speech sounds, however we know that babies and toddlers are still experimenting with these sounds, and it takes a long time for them to be fully mastered.
· Speech and Language Therapists often use these descriptors to think about children’s communication needs.
We are now going to share our top tips that parents, carers and wider family members, early years practitioners, school staff, and all professionals who work with children can try. These tips can support all children to develop their communication skills, but they are particularly important for children with SLCN.
Share attention:
- Get down to the child’s level where possible
- Pay attention to what they are focused on
- Join in with their choice of activity. Sometimes children play in a way that we don’t expect; you can copy the child’s play, and then show them something new too.
All of these things tell our children that you value and want to spend time with them. It is a powerful way to establish a connection, and it motivates them to communicate with you.
Then respond:
- Follow the child’s lead
- Respond to their communication, whether it is verbal or non-verbal
- Offer choices to give the child an opportunity to communicate
- Comment on what you can see, hear or feel, using language which is appropriate for the child
- Make links between what they are doing now and previous experiences, where possible
- Use gestures and visuals to help the child understand
- Use the language you speak best when communicating; this ensures we provide a good model of language
Expand, so:
- Repeat back what the child has said to acknowledge you have understood, or to model any errors they have made
- Build on what they have said by adding more words to turn it into a sentence
By pitching your language just above the level of the child, you can model more complex sentences, which the child will hear and learn from.
- Where possible, use all the senses to teach new words, for example, you can use objects and pictures so they can see and feel what you are talking about
- Repeat, repeat, repeat new words and old words so the child can understand and use them
And conversation:
- Play talking tennis: this means take turns in your interactions with the child
- Give the child time to listen, process and reply. 10 seconds is a good amount of time to wait, even if it feels long to you.
- Avoid forcing or bribing a child to talk or copy you.
- Be mindful of questions: Using comments and prompts, rather than questions, often results in the child joining in and talking more. Aim to use 4 comments for every 1 question.
- Chatting, singing and playing with children boosts their brain development, so keep doing these things all day long. By doing so, a child could hear one to two thousand words every hour!
The tips we have shared so far are sometimes referred to as SHREC, as can be seen on the screen: Share attention, Respond, Expand, Conversation. Thanks to the Education Endowment Foundation for creating this visual. Some other top tips we recommend include…
Enjoy screen activities together. Children learn words best from real life and talking with other people. When you enjoy screen activities together, you can talk with each other about what you can see and do.
Take the child’s dummy out when they are talking. This helps children to copy words and sounds correctly, and gives them lots of opportunities to communicate with you.
Share books together.
Take any opportunity to share a book with a child. Reading is a great way to learn new words.
When they are young, interactive books with flaps or different textures work well.
As they get older, rhyming books or those with repeating phrases help lay the foundations for literacy skills.
Our school aged children still enjoy sharing books. As they progress, you can try short chapter books and series based on their interests.
Engage with books by talking about the characters or pictures, predicting what might happen next and connecting the stories to real-life experiences.
Reading just one book a day, like a bedtime story, means a child will have seen nearly 2000 books by the time they turn five.
If you are concerned about a child’s speech, language or communication skills you can:
· Meet with parents and pre-school or school staff to discuss the concerns
· Speak to your Health Visitor or local Children’s Centre for advice if applicable
· Check out the Local Offer for the area you live in; you can search online for the name of your area and ‘local offer’
For more information on supporting SLCN, please visit our website.
Here you can access
- Advice, strategies and resources for pre-school and school aged children
- The early years and school aged toolkits which include assessment tools and resources to support children’s skills
- A range of training workshops and videos
- And information on how to refer
We also have a Facebook page which offers a weekly theme with ideas you can do at home and in schools and settings for supporting speech, language and communication.
Speech and Language UK is the children’s communication charity. Their website has lots of information to help you understand and support children and young people’s speech, language and communication.
There are lots of websites with advice for supporting children at the ‘universal’ stage. Their information will expand on the tips we have provided. These include:
- Tiny happy people, which is for 0-4 year olds
- Start for life, which is for 0-5 year olds
- National Literacy Trust, which is for 5-18 year olds, and
- Words for Life from the National Literacy Trust, which is for 0-12 year olds
There are also websites that can provide advice and support at the targeted and specialist levels. These include:
- The local Neurodiversity service which provides information for families and settings where neurodiversity is suspected or confirmed. Their website contains information, resources and signposting.
- The National Autistic Society is the leading UK charity for autistic people and their families. Their website has lots of information and advice about supporting children and young people with Autism.
- The Raising Awareness of Developmental Language Disorder website provides advice and materials on Developmental Language Disorder.
- Afasic supports and provides information for families with children and young people who have SLCN, and
- The British Stammering Association support children and adults who stammer and those around them. They provide information, resources and support.
Thank you!
Attention and listening skills
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Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC)
Talking is not the only way to communicate. There are lots of ways you and your child or young person can communicate.
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Understanding and using language
We have developed a series of videos which contain information on supporting a child’s communication needs within the home or educational settings.
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Speech sounds
Videos focused on helping children and young people with speech sounds.
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Supporting speech, language and communication in secondary schools
Educational settings and school information and advice
We have developed a series of videos which contain information on supporting a child’s communication needs within educational settings.
Social communication and interaction skills
This series of videos focusing on social communication. There are techniques and strategies to help children and young people.
>> Narrator: Welcome to this introductory video about how to support social communication.
In this short video, we will learn how to make activities desirable, meaningful, and predictable.
It is useful to think about how the children and young people we work with may experience the world, and how this links to their social communication.
For some children, social information may not be as motivating as non-social information. For example, they might be very motivated to learn words about their favourite objects or subjects, but less motivated to learn social language, such as people’s names, or words for actions (for example share, open, give, come). Understanding social information can be challenging for some children.
Social communication needs to relate directly to the things that are important for the child. It needs to relate to something that the child wants or is motivated by.
This will make social communication desirable and meaningful.
Here are some strategies for making sure activities are desirable and meaningful for the child:
Likes and interests. Making communication desirable means making activities fun and enjoyable. Making communication meaningful means using things that the child likes. This is particularly important for activities that involve interacting with other people – as this will help the child to associate social interaction with fun. For example, if they are interested in different kinds of transport, you could use this as part of an activity about giving and following instructions. You could also use the child’s interests as the basis for a social group where they can use their social communication and social interaction skills with others who share the same interest.
Modify sensory aspects of the activity and environment. It’s often helpful to think about the impact of any sensory sensitivities and make any necessary adaptations – think about things like noise, space, light and so on. Giving movement breaks in between sitting down or standing still may help the child maintain concentration and might help them with their sensory needs.
Adjust the difficulty of the task and use developmentally appropriate materials, so that it is an achievable jump from what the child can already do. Try to use materials that are adapted to the child’s age and their stage of development. Perhaps the child can already ask familiar adults for help but struggles to ask unfamiliar adults for help. Making the jump between the two skills may involve opportunities for rehearsal, observation, and practise.
Adjust the group size to allow successful interaction. For example, when the child is learning the activity, you could do it with just one other child, and then add another child when they know the activity well.
Social situations may be confusing or stressful for the child. Providing predictability can help them to navigate social situations with more confidence.
Predictability enables a child to know what to expect and increases the chance of success. For example, by learning the routines and norms of a classroom, children can arrive on time, follow the rules, and engage in learning and social interactions.
Predictability is also essential for building solid relationships. When you know what to expect from someone, you can better understand who they are and what they can offer. This allows you to build a stronger connection with them.
Here are some strategies on how to make activities more predictable.
Use Visual support. This is often helpful for children with social communication difficulties. For example, you can use pictures, written words, timelines, charts, and checklists to structure interactions, show steps and help with transitions.
Have a clear beginning and end, showing a completed example.
Model language that the child can use in social contexts, for example “my turn” or “can I play?”.
Modify your language to the child’s language level. For example, if they are using single words then you can use 1-2-word phrases.
If you have any further questions or would like to find out more information you can:
Watch the other videos on our website including introduction to social communication, comic strip conversations, and social stories, emotional regulation, and zones of regulation.
Access the Neurodiversity Support Pack.
Speak to the 0-19 team, setting or school.
For more information on supporting children and young people’s speech and language needs, please visit our website.
Our Facebook page contains lots of useful tips for supporting speech, language and communication.
Thank you!
>> Narrator: Welcome to this video on emotional regulation.
During this video, you will learn what emotional regulation is and some key strategies for supporting emotional regulation.
Emotional regulation is how people respond to and manage their emotional state. It is what we do to alert or soothe ourselves and how we seek support.
Managing our emotional state is important because it helps us to stay calm. Being able to regulate ourselves allows us to participate in daily activities and maintain a positive sense of wellbeing. It can also help us to interact and communicate with others.
Children with social communication difficulties may need more support to find out which strategies work best for them. For a child, there is always a reason behind their behaviour. When children present with behaviours that adults find challenging, the child is often communicating a need that they are having difficulty expressing, in a way that we would expect or prefer.
The needs could be communication, for example, when learning becomes too difficult for the child, or sensory for example if they feel the need to move but are prevented from doing so.
Therefore, we must tune into the child and work together to figure out what they are trying to communicate. When a child needs help regulating their emotions, they benefit from a collaborative approach across home, school, and services, such as, speech and language therapy.
Think about why the child might be carrying out a particular behaviour.
Whilst doing this, think about the environment; what happened before this behaviour, what time of day it is, who or what is around the child, and how often this happens? Thinking about whether there are any patterns to their behaviour can be useful to recognise triggers and use strategies to reduce an escalation of these behaviours. Looking for these patterns could also highlight any areas of development that need further support or adaptations.
To regulate ourselves, we all use strategies. These strategies are often found by copying other people and finding out which ones work best for us. For example, going for a walk when we feel sad, taking some deep breaths when we are feeling angry, exercising when we feel overwhelmed, or talking to a friend when we are upset.
It is key to have knowledge of different strategies to support the child with their emotional regulation. Sensory calming strategies, such as, deep pressure may be useful for some children. Thinking strategies, such as, assessing the size of the problem and discussing responses may also be effective. It is important for the child to know which thinking and which sensory strategies are effective for them.
Acknowledging the child’s emotional needs and providing support can ensure their feelings are being understood. This could be done though verbalising their feelings or using visuals such as, emotion boards, so the child can share how they are feeling. When dysregulated, we all find it more difficult to communicate our thoughts and feelings clearly. Having readily accessible visual support can help a child to identify and express their thoughts and feelings. Visual supports can also be used when the child is in a calm state to help them reflect on periods of emotional dysregulation.
This also makes social situations more predictable, as they may otherwise be confusing or stressful for your child. Your child might not like it when they don’t know what’s going to happen next. Providing as much predictability as possible when supporting your child’s social communication and social interactions can be very helpful. It can help them to navigate social situations with more confidence.
Please refer to the advice sheet on our website about emotional strategy cards for more information.
Labelling and discussing emotions with the child will increase their emotional vocabulary.
Integrating opportunities to reflect on emotional states throughout the day is important. It provides opportunities for the child to practise emotional regulation skills they have learned and helps the adult to keep track of how the child is feeling. For example, allowing the children to share their emotional state when completing the register.
Using language to ask for help from others is important, for example, you may work with a child to help them to ask the adult for a break. In doing this, you can see how the child responds to assistance or strategies offered by others.
If the child is using unconventional coping strategies, demonstrating another, more effective strategy can be useful for them to copy. For example, modelling asking for help.
More complex strategies could be used, such as, writing a list of what they may need to do when feeling overwhelmed. This can assist with the child’s self-regulation and increases their independence.
Discussing how to cope in future situations is beneficial as the child can feel more in control and prepared. For example, if the child becomes upset or agitated by the sound in the classroom, they can use a card to ask for a break.
Recognising the cause of a child’s emotional dysregulation can help us to put the most effective strategies in place. It is key to model these behaviours to the child and allow them lots of opportunities to practice.
If you would like to find out more about emotional regulation, the websites and links on the screen have lots of useful information.
If you have any further questions or would like to find out more information you can:
Speak to the 0-19 team, setting or school.
For more information on supporting children and young people’s speech and language needs, please visit our website.
Our Facebook page contains lots of useful tips for supporting speech, language and communication.
Thank you!
>> Narrator: Welcome to this video about The Zones of Regulation.
In this short video, we will look at what The Zones of Regulation are, how to use them and some top tips about how to do this.
The Zones of Regulation help to support a young person's ability to recognise their feelings and emotions and then act to regulate themselves in situations they find difficult to manage. It is a visual method of representing emotions and how you can use strategies to regulate them.
The Zones of Regulation organises emotions into four coloured zones: blue, green, yellow and red. The Blue Zone describes low states of alertness and down feelings such as when a person feels sad, tired, or bored. Our energy is low, and our body is moving slowly when we are in the Blue Zone. The Green Zone describes a calm yet alert state. We may be feeling happy or peaceful in the Green Zone. The Yellow Zone describes when our energy is higher, and our internal state starts to elevate. Our emotions get a little stronger. We may be experiencing frustration, anxiety, excitement, or confusion when in the Yellow Zone. The Red Zone describes a state of extremely high energy and intense very overwhelming feelings. We may be in an extremely heightened state of alertness, potentially triggering our fight, flight or freeze protective response. We may be angry, overjoyed, panicking or out of control when in the Red Zones.
You can access The Zones of Regulation website.
Please watch this video to give you an example of how to get started.
Although the green zone is a good zone for learning, there are other situations where being in the red, yellow, or blue zones are more helpful. All the zones are OK. For example, it may be appropriate for you to be in the blue zone when you are resting or getting ready to go to bed, and it’s fine to feel sad when sad things happen. It may be appropriate for you to be in the yellow zone ahead of a new situation for example your first day of school or being excited about going on a trip. It may be appropriate for you to be in the red zone when you have won a football match or if a lion was chasing you.
If you have any further questions or would like to find out more information you can:
Speak to the 0-19 team, setting or school.
For more information on supporting children and young people’s speech and language needs, please visit our website.
Our Facebook page contains lots of useful tips for supporting speech, language and communication.
Thank you!