Supporting Communication

This training is aimed at practitioners with little background of speech and language development and limited knowledge of speech and language difficulties.

It is approximately five hours of training aimed at raising awareness, helping practitioners to consider simple strategies for the classroom and thinking about who to contact and when. The taught component is followed-up with a guided learning workbook which individual practitioners are expected to complete.

Practitioners can opt to have their workbooks assessed against a set of criteria which could allow them to achieve a CACHE endorsement. At the supporting communication level practitioners can aim to achieve a level 2 CACHE endorsement.  Please contact your designated Early Talk coordinator for more details.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the course participants will be:

• aware that language is about understanding as well as expression
• aware of how children develop language at home and at pre-school
• aware of the range of language difficulties that children might experience and what to look out for
• able to list some of the ways that speech and language difficulties can affect a child in the practitioner’s workplace
• aware that language and learning are linked
• able to use a range of strategies that could help children to access the pre-school environment
• able to identify three positive communicative behaviours that they will use with children