Supporting The Development Of Speech Language And Communication In The Early Years

This essential guide provides a comprehensive overview of how children acquire language and what speech, language and communication impairments look like in early years, offering strategic advice on how to effectively manage and encourage the development of speech and language skills.

Learn how to support developmentally rich language learning environments during a child’s first eight years of life! This book demonstrates how to build foundations for a strong communication system, distinguish typical and disordered speech and language, and develop a deep understanding of the brain and language development connection. Featuring clear guidance on how to work with parents and speech-language pathologists, educators will find easy to implement strategies for supporting healthy communication and navigating any stumbling blocks in the early childhood classroom.

Speech and language impairment can have a huge impact on cognitive development. Identifying what is going wrong - and what effective intervention looks like - can be daunting. Short of retraining you as a speech and language therapist, this thorough guide will give you everything you need to change that. An essential resource, the book contains a wide variety of online resources, including phonological and sound awareness documents, assessment tools, and recording forms that can be downloaded straight to your device, providing excellent materials and activities to use in the classroom. Written by speech and language therapists and designed exclusively for Early Years practitioners, this book provides a complete overview of how children acquire language and what language impairments look like at this age. You will find both strategic and practical advice on how to manage and encourage the development of speech and language skills. Creating the optimum communication environment for every child in your setting is an important part of what the book offers. Equally, practitioners are supported to be able to recognise the features of specific language difficulties such as Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and feel confident to intervene when children are struggling.

Speech and Language in the Early Years is an accessible resource, packed full of practical ideas and techniques to support speech and language development in young children. Learning to communicate is a dynamic process. A child needs a reason to communicate, the motivation to communicate, and, significantly, a responsive communication partner. This book will help you to develop language-rich interactions to facilitate language development in your everyday work and will encourage reflective practice in your setting. Key features include: Activities and strategies designed for busy educators to dip in and out of as part of everyday practice, promoting speech and language development as well as supporting those with speech, language, and communication needs Templates and techniques for reflective practice, supporting the creation of language-rich environments and encouraging mindful communication Chapters spanning from birth to the transition to school, each exploring different areas of the learning environment Offering readers the opportunity to extend their skills and confidence in their practice, this book is an essential resource for early years practitioners looking to facilitate quality interactions with the children in their care.

Communication is one of life’s most fundamental joys, yet one often taken for granted until it is lost or fails to develop. Yet for millions of children each year, the skills that encompass communication stall or do not emerge at all. Even a mild disorder or temporary interruption in development can have long-term effects and result in serious and far-reaching deficits that touch every aspect of a child’s life. Each year, millions of children and their families join the ranks of those who are navigating a life they never expected, and frequently feel they are unable to take on. While it is critical to address the child’s deficits with supports and specific interventions, it is equally important to directly address the impact on the family, from the marital relationship to the well-being of siblings. With a warm and compassionate approach, Suzanne Ducharme provides parents with comprehensive information about speech and language development and the intervention process, but also delves deeply into the fears, concerns, and questions that every parent faces when something goes wrong. She provides families with information and resources, but also support and perspective. Using real stories throughout, Ducharme is able to illustrate the range of difficulties, challenges, and triumphs of families who love and support children with speech and language issues.

"This booklet provides practical ways to make the most of everyday interactions and conversations by focusing on children's interests and providing language appropriate to their respective language levels."--Introduction.

In this accessible guide to bilingualism in the family and the classroom, Colin Baker delivers a realistic picture of the joys and difficulties of raising bilingual children. This revised edition includes more information on bilingualism in the digital age, and incorporates the latest research in areas such as neonatal language experience, multilingualism and language mixing.

This essential handbook for all early years practitioners provides a wider awareness of self-regulation in babies and young children. It emphasises the importance of giving children positive attachments and empathy, and provides fun ideas of how to promote coping strategies for them. The book explains what self-regulation is and why it is important, as well as making child and brain development easy to understand. It shows what self-regulation looks like in practice and how early years practitioners can support children to develop it with 30+ activities. The first part of the book offers accessible explanations and theory, and the second half provides reflective points, activities and case studies to support some of the information provided in part one. The strategies, activities and tips can be easily applied in childcare settings and shared with parents.

How we raise young children is one of today's most highly personalized and sharply politicized issues, in part because each of us can claim some level of "expertise." The debate has intensified as discoveries about our development-in the womb and in the first months and years-have reached the popular media. How can we use our burgeoning knowledge to assure the well-being of all young children, for their own sake as well as for the sake of our nation? Drawing from new findings, this book presents important conclusions about nature-versus-nurture, the impact of being born into a working family, the effect of politics on programs for children, the costs and benefits of intervention, and other issues. The committee issues a series of challenges to decision makers regarding the quality of child care, issues of racial and ethnic diversity, the integration of children's cognitive and emotional development, and more. Authoritative yet accessible, From Neurons to Neighborhoods presents the evidence about "brain wiring" and how kids learn to speak, think, and regulate their behavior. It examines the effect of the climate-family, child care, community-within which the child grows.

This book is packed with practical ideas and techniques to enable early years educators to support the communication development of the children in their setting and to understand the relationship between communication and emotional wellbeing. By forming an understanding of the science behind emotional regulation and the role of the adult in supporting the development of this, the book explores how emotions can impact learning and communication skills, and why we must understand how adult responses and communication have a direct impact on emotional wellbeing. Each chapter provides: • practical ideas which will create a culture of communication and connection; • research and case studies with plenty of opportunities for the reader to reflect on their own practice and interaction style; • top tips and ideas for promoting speech and language skills in the early years environment; and • an awareness of how to support the language development and emotional wellbeing of children who are struggling to communicate. Emotions impact interactions, and interactions impact communication and connectedness. This book enables and empowers the reader to understand what communication and wellbeing really look like in the early years environment, and how we can use this knowledge to improve long-term outcomes for children’s learning and mental health. It is essential reading for all early years educators.