Speech and Language

Ideally, school aged children will be learning how to listen, understand more and share their ideas in bigger groups and with new people. They will have conversations to share information, make friends and explain how they’re feeling. For some children, this won’t be as easy and they may show difficulties in their learning and everyday communication.

When a child presents with two or more of the following areas we may consider referring to the Speech and Language Therapy Service to seek further advice or assessment;

• Understanding of questions, such as ‘who, what, where’
• Following instructions
• Learning and remembering vocabulary
• Use of appropriate sentence structure when talking
• Use of grammatical markers when talking e.g. plurals, past tense, pronouns
• Ability to recount a story or sequence of events
• Speech sound difficulties i.e. the child is unable to produce some sounds accurately and this impacts on their ability to make themselves understood.
• Social communication/interaction difficulties
• Fluency difficulties i.e. the child struggles to be fluent when they talk and may repeat sounds/words or appear to get stuck on them

https://www.hct.nhs.uk/our-services/childrens-speech-and-language-therapy

If you have concerns that your child struggles with any of the above, in the first instance, please come and discuss with the class teacher and senco.