One Step at a Time: Presentation 4

GETTING STARTED

Introduction

Initial Screening

Skills Teaching

Skills Checklists

Classroom Intervention

Teaching Method

Starter Vocabulary

Vocabulary Work

Monitoring Progress

Moving On1

Getting Started

INTRODUCTION

Getting Started

is a preliminary step for children who are not ready for systematic work on their conversation skills

It is intended primarily for children aged 3 to 4 but can be used with younger or older children

It normally runs in parallel with Conversation Skills and is expected to take less than a year, until children are ready to move on to Conversation Skills

But some early-years settings may prefer to start all their children on Getting Started

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Getting Started

INTRODUCTION

Children are not ready to begin Conversation Skills unless they are

talking frequently and spontaneously to adults or other children

joining words together in most of their utterances

There may be many more of these children than you expect! Getting Started promotes these skills by developing

confidence, curiosity, concentration and pre-verbal communication

play

early vocabulary

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Getting Started

INTRODUCTION

Getting Started differs from other levels of the programme:

It does not have its own initial screen; it uses the first two skills from the Conversation Skills screen instead

It has two skills checklists, not three, which are worked on concurrently, not successively

Vocabulary work, optional at other levels, is crucial to Getting Started

Intervention is primarily informal interaction with individual children

Getting Started is not designed as a full year’s programme; children move to Conversation Skills when they are ready

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Getting Started

INITIAL SCREENING

Children are assessed for Getting Started using the first two items on the Conversation Skills initial screen, i.e. whether they are:

talking frequently and spontaneously to other people

joining words together in most of their utterances It is still useful to assess these skills even if all children are going to do Getting Started, to help staff ‘tune-in’ and identify the current development of each child.

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Getting Started

INITIAL SCREENING

Staff should:

wait until children have settled into their new environment

spend at least a week observing them informally, focusing on the two test items

keep a rough record of how often each child is joining words together

assess each child separately, working with other staff if possible

If there is any doubt or disagreement, the skill should be not credited.

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Getting Started

SKILLS CHECKLISTS

Getting Started has two checklists: Learning through Looking and Listening Learning through Play

Each checklist identifies four general skills, divided into separate behaviours or sub-skills.

Skills and behaviours are listed in rough developmental order as a guide to intervention

Staff normally work through the two checklists in parallel, one skill at a time, but usually more than one behaviour at a time

Every child and every behaviour needs to be assessed and monitored separately

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Getting Started

SKILLS CHECKLISTS

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Getting Started

CLASSROOM INTERVENTION

Intervention is primarily by informal interaction with individual children during normal class and playground activities.

Each child should have one adult who is responsible for their Getting Started intervention, preferably a key-worker or ‘mother figure’ who is responsible for their daily care needs.

The best opportunities for intervention are when children are playing, or during daily classroom routines like entering and leaving, dressing and undressing, preparation and tidying up, washing or eating.

A list of items currently being worked on should be displayed prominently and given to parents, so everyone can use it to guide their interaction with individual children.

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Getting Started

SKILLS TEACHING

Staff use the checklists to establish, for each child, behaviours

that are firmly established and behaviours that are emerging or inconsistent

When a behaviour is identified as emerging or inconsistent staff

can begin working on it with those children

Each child must be considered individually, skill by skill and behaviour by behaviour

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Getting Started

TEACHING METHOD

Parents normally teach their children spoken language (usually without realising they are doing it) by:

Highlighting: drawing attention to a word or behaviour by indicating or emphasising it

Modelling: providing an example for the child to copy

Prompting: encouraging him to respond, directing him towards an appropriate response

Rewarding: rewarding any appropriate response with praise and further encouragement

Staff should use the same techniques, but use them explicitly and systematically.

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Getting Started

STARTER VOCABULARY

Vocabulary work is used to help children develop the simple word combinations they need for Conversation Skills

Sentence forms are difficult to teach directly; they are more

easily developed by learning more words, including different types of word

The Starter Vocabulary contains 100 simple words that children often learn first

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Getting Started

STARTER VOCABULARY

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Getting Started

VOCABULARY WORK

Staff identify four to six words from the Starter Vocabulary for working on with the children in their group

This should initially be a mixture of nouns and verbs, e.g. four nouns and two verbs, with other types of word added later on

These words should be taught first in active contexts, and practised several times each day

At the end of each week staff can tick off, child by child, any words that are being used spontaneously

As well as continuing to work on the words that some children are still learning, they can add a couple of new words each week, up to a maximum of 10 to 12 words at any one time

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Getting Started

VOCABULARY WORK

Encouraging Talk in Young Children

Use the context as content

Comment, reflect, expand

Talk with, not at

Be personal

Allow time

Take care with questions

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Getting Started

MONITORING PROGRESS

Staff keep a running record of children’s progress by entering their names on the checklists and ticking off each item as each child acquires it

An item should only be credited when the child is using it confidently, competently and consistently. If there is any doubt, that item should not be credited

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Getting Started

MOVING ON

Staff normally continue working on an item until each child has learnt it, but it may sometimes be better to leave a difficult item and come back to it again later.

They should review all children at least once a term to consider whether they are ready to move to Conversation Skills, i.e. whether they are now

talking frequently and spontaneously to adults or other children, joining words together in most of their utterances

They should first note whether children are talking frequently and spontaneously, and then keep a rough record over about a week of how often they are actually using combinations of two or more words.

Children who satisfy this test can move to Conversation Skills at any time. They do not need to have completed both checklists or have learnt all the Starter Vocabulary, but it may be simpler to move children on in a group, rather than one by one.

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