by Wendy Lee – Consultant Speech and Language Therapist and Associate, Oracy Cambridge
Children with speech, language and communication needs (SLCN) require support to develop the foundational skills for learning that make such a difference to their progress and wellbeing.
Support can be direct or indirect with a speech and language therapist, targeted through small group intervention, or provided universally within the classroom. Ideally, schools should offer a balance of all three, combining bespoke and targeted intervention with classroom approaches that promote inclusion and access for all learners.
In my work with Oracy Cambridge, I find that schools focusing on oracy are well placed to provide high-quality universal support. Their emphasis on spoken language in the classroom helps them to identify and understand the challenges pupils with SLCN face. This is crucial: we are still struggling with identification, with fewer than half of children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) currently being recognised.
As a speech and language therapist, I want the children I work with to benefit from the robust evidence supporting oracy education. So where do we start?
When people think about oracy, they might think about presentational talk or debate, though for me, the most powerful aspects of oracy for children with SLCN are Exploratory Talk and Dialogic teaching. This is often my starting point.
Exploratory talk
Exploratory talk supports children to have productive conversations. Importantly, it teaches them how to do this and to reflect on their own oracy skills, building valuable meta skills around talk. High-quality conversation is fundamental to children’s language development, and exploratory talk provides both structure and practice for children to do this well.
Dialogic teaching
Dialogic teaching places greater emphasis on how adults use language and how children respond. Pupils with SLCN can often go unnoticed or struggle to engage in classroom talk. A dialogic approach seeks to involve every learner in discussion, encouraging pupils to listen and respond to one another and to build on each other’s ideas.
This helps teachers to identify where children may be struggling and to make adaptations for inclusion. It also promotes elaboration and questioning, helping pupils extend their ideas and deepen learning. Building purposeful conversation around learning benefits all pupils, including those with SLCN.
When done well, the principles that underpin oracy education can be transformative for pupils with SLCN. As with all teaching, thoughtful adaptations can make a significant difference.
Building Awareness
Children tell us that when adults understand the nature of their difficulty, it makes a big difference, so increased awareness is a good place to start. Professional learning for teachers can build awareness and confidence in supporting pupils with SLCN, for example, sharing key information about Developmental Language Disorder.[1]
Classroom adaptations
A few simple classroom adaptations can help pupils with SLCN access learning and develop their oracy skills:
- Be aware of children’s language levels, ideally through collaboration with speech and language therapists or if waiting for support, or by using resources such as Universally Speaking [2] to understand typical development. The Oracy Skills Framework can also help teachers pinpoint where children might be struggling.[3]
- Adapt adult language based on what you know about the children’s levels so that they can get the best out of oracy teaching and learning. Often children disengage because they don’t understand; adapting language promotes understanding and participation for children with SLCN.
- Use visual aids such as photos, gestures, symbols and simple demonstrations. Visual reminders of ground rules can help during group work, as can visual cues for the ABC of elaboration – Agree, Build, Challenge.
- Offer structures or planning tools such as talking frames to support sequencing and organising thoughts and language. We often use visual structures to support summarisation skills or colourful semantics to support both understanding and use of sentences. Task managers can help children understand what is required and keep on track.
- Check understanding by asking children to explain the task in their own words, breaking it into manageable parts, and giving extra processing time. Children with SLCN will take more time to both process and formulate responses. Being explicit about giving more time – ‘I’m just going to give you some thinking time’ – can be extremely helpful. We often teach pupils how to monitor their own understanding and to request additional time or clarification when they need it, which gives them great independence in their learning.
- Model expectations so that pupils know what effective talk looks and sounds like. In tasks like ‘talking partners’ or ‘think, pair, share’, give guidance or structure to make sure both children share their ideas in the discussion or in feeding back e.g. ‘say one thing you agree with and one thing you disagree with,’ ‘decide on 3 important points’. We might also give timers, tell them when to swap talker and listener to provide some scaffolding if needed.
- Teach key vocabulary explicitly. Sometimes the difference between understanding a task or not is just a couple of key words. There is strong evidence to support robust vocabulary teaching and the difference it can make[4]. We often explicitly teach key tier 2 words linked to oracy, such as ‘summarise’ ‘clarify’ ‘ elaborate’ etc. This ensures frequently used words are not a barrier to learning. Integral to this is teaching children to recognise when they do and do not understand a word so they can seek clarification.
- Ask pupils to elaborate. Just saying ‘tell me more…’ can get pupils to think and explain more and works well for pupils with SLCN. Give options for pupils with SLCN to enable easier access – e.g. ‘do you want to build on Jack’s idea or challenge?’ You can also narrow your questions if pupils are struggling e.g. ‘what do you mean by X?’
- Don’t worry about children speaking in full sentences. Exploratory talk is about sharing and building ideas together. It’s productive with children working towards problem solving together. Expecting children to speak in full sentences during exploratory talk can inhibit learning rather than support it. For children with SLCN, it can put additional pressure on a skill they find difficult. Focusing on what’s said rather than how it is said is key to learning through exploratory talk and much more inclusive for those pupils who struggle.
- Teach children how to work and talk in groups. Develop ‘ground rules’ for talk together with the children.[5] Check that everyone understands and give children with SLCN clear roles or tasks to help them contribute. Group work can have additional benefits, giving pupils lots of opportunities for using their language with peers. We have developed targeted interventions, such as our Language Legends intervention to combine exploratory talk strategies with more typical language work we would do as speech and language therapists, with great outcomes for children with SLCN.[6]
As a speech and language therapist, working with Oracy Cambridge has strengthened my understanding of how oracy can enhance inclusion and communication for all learners. Working with schools and teachers continues to deepen my thinking about how we can make oracy accessible to every child – including those with SLCN.
Footnotes
[1] https://learningcentre.speechandlanguage.org.uk/dld-educational-support
[2] https://shop.speechandlanguage.org.uk/products/universally-speaking-5-11
[3] https://oracycambridge.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/The-Oracy-Skills-Framework-and-Glossary.pdf
[4] https://my.chartered.college/impact_article/deepening-knowledge-through-vocabulary-learning/
[5] https://thinkingtogether.educ.cam.ac.uk/resources/5_examples_of_talk_in_groups.pdf
[6] For more information visit https://www.lingospeech.co.uk/category/all-products
A version of this post originally appeared on Lingo Speech.