Achieving Speech and Language Targets

Book excerpt: "Achieving Speech & Language Targets" is a practical resource book for Special Needs Coordinators (SENCOs), teachers, teaching assistants and speech & language therapists who are working with children who have significant language delay and who are in their first year at school. Checklists provide professionals with a shared reference from which both broad special needs areas and specific speech and language targets can be identified. The authors emphasise the crucial role of play in language development and the book offers more than 200 games and activities to help children achieve their targets for each stage using a simple, structured layout. The book offers: advice on how to draw up effective Individual Education Plans (IEPs); checklists which enable the user to identify a child's problems in the areas of: understanding language; using spoken language; and, developing speech sounds; a wide range of games, songs and rhymes to help children achieve specific targets; teaching ideas & targets, key vocabulary lists, and activity areas for each stage; a resources section containing photocopiable activity sheets; games & rhymes; a booklist; techniques used by speech & language therapists to encourage understanding and use of language; and, a dictionary of terms that refer to speech & language. This is an essential tool for busy teaching staff. Many of the activities can take place in the context of the everyday curriculum and include a range of play opportunities designed to make learning interesting and dynamic. Almost all activities can be carried out using equipment that is readily available in early years' classrooms.