In the intervention rooms, the children have been doing lots of work on different speech and language interventions, to improve their receptive and expressive language skills. Here are a few of them:

LEG: Children have been doing a variety of language interventions to build their receptive language skills. Some are working on understanding different word properties - such as colour, size, and more/fewer - and then using them to build first into one step instructions, and then into two step instructions.

Sequencing: Some children have been learning how to put events in order. Initially this is two step sequences, but then it builds to 3 step sequences, and then predicting what would happen next in the sequence. This also ties in to our use of Now and Next boards, and the visual timetables to keep track of the day.

Brick by Brick: Children have been building their receptive and expressive languages through building lego objects. They listen to instructions and follow multiple steps to create an object. As they begin to excel at this, they begin to take the role of the engineer, instructing others to follow instructions, building one child’s expressive language and the other’s receptive language, as well as other skills such as turn-taking, collaboration, patience, and using kind words.

Alternative Communication: Our non-speaking children have been learning how to communicate in other ways. Some children have really taken to picture cards, taking us to their wordbank to help communicate. And others have been learning to sign, with some especially important words being ‘help’ and ‘more’.
 
Shared activity: Children have been learning how to play with each other. Initially they are doing parallel play, but it then evolves into taking turns with the same resources, and then to work together with the same activity - such as completing a jigsaw puzzle with each other, or building an object together, or helping someone bounce on a ball.