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Marion Nash, Chartered Educational Psychologist. For Nurseries, Pre schools, Children’s Centres, and Primary schools, Spirals offers an effective approach to developing children’s language and thinking skills and their emotional literacy through experiencing a series of 15 to 25 minutes (dependent on age) sessions in a small group. The Spirals programme is supported by seven separate books and several training courses. Practitioners running small group sessions for children who are vulnerable in these areas have given us lots of positive feedback that it really makes a difference. Children are encouraged to take small steps and build up their confidence gradually, with the aim being to allow them to catch up and keep pace with their peers. All sessions are very practical, involving games and activities. They are graded to cover important areas of language development and expansion, early pragmatic skills, listening skills, social skills, critical thinking skills, self esteem and self confidence. All books contain photo-copiable resources as well as samples of assessment forms used. In August 2012 the Spirals for babies and toddlers language development was published with a foreword by Jean Gross CBE. Here the guidance goes from birth to 3 years with simple but effective ideas and guidance on progression. Developmental check lists are included to ensure that the child’s progress in language is being monitored in the most effective way to ensure they have a robust record for entry into school. All training is offered by Marion and some can be accessed through ICAN, the speech and language charity in London as well as being booked by local authorities. To date over 1,100 people have been trained by Marion and approximately 16,000 books have been sold. NEWS UPDATE Marion and David will be attending the above show on Friday 26th April and will be at the David Fulton (our publishers) stand for most of the day if anyone would like to meet us. Marion has been commissioned to write a series of articles on language development for babies and toddlers in the Teach Nursery magazine. The first article has appeared in the January edition. Further articles will follow in February and March editions. http://www.facebook.com/SupportingEarlyLanguageSpiralsForBabiesAndToddlers Developing Language and Communication Skills through Effective Small Group Work: SPIRALS: From 3-8 is now being translated into Welsh at the request of 2 local authorities in Wales – we will let you know when it is available. Marion and David recently delivered 3 training courses for Poole Local Authority based on the new Baby Spirals book. The 3 hour courses were delivered to groups of nurseries and to Child minders. Poole decided to hold their courses on a Friday am and pm (primarily nursery teachers and staff from Children’s centres) and a Saturday morning (for Child minders) to both save costs and to ensure that representatives from most of their settings were able to attend. There were an average of 25 participants on each course. All of the participants enjoyed the mixture of psychology of language development and the chance to try out some of the games in the book. The summary of their evaluations will appear on the evaluation page on this site in the near future. If you wish to book a similar course please contact us. This new book by Marion, Jackie and David is now for sale by Routledge and by Amazon and Waterstones. Training can be booked for half day courses. The first 3 courses have already been booked by Poole local authority and 2 other authorities have also booked similer courses between now and the summer 2013. We have devised a new evaluation questionnaire which we trialled with 2 recent courses covering over 100 participants. The results were then analysed and can be found on the Evaluation page Several authorities have contacted us to arrange a certificated Train the Trainers one day course. If you are interested in this please contact Marion via email. Marion was delighted to receive an award for the work she has done in bringing her colleagues in Plymouth together to support the National Agendas around speech, language and communication. The Bercow Stategic Hub Group enabled collaborative working across agencies including the Psychology Service, Speech and language Service, Pupil Learning and Support, Early Years Advisors and Speech and Language Therapists, Sensory teams,and practitioners and teachers across all age ranges from Early Years to Secondary. This enabled cross phase information sharing. Many projects started from this group sharing. The group continues to disseminate information and is now involved in evaluation of impact of several of the projects -iTeam of the Year Award, Multi-agency Team of the Year: SLCN Group (Plymouth). Marion and colleague, Rose, receive the Highly Commended award for the Bercow strategic Hub group initiative from Vanessa Feltz at the Hello Shine a light Award at the Pearson Building in London. This page includes the results of several research projects being undertaken into the effectiveness of Spirals both by Marion and external bodies. We are aware from the distribution profile of the Spirals Language books that interest is being expressed in the USA and this is increasing. We are really excited about the feedback we are getting about our training in the UK and keen to support the expertise of practitioners working with children wherever they are. We would love to hear from practitioners in the States who are thinking of using Spirals Language or are already doing so. Let us know what you are doing. Marion would like to thank all 320 participants who atttended her presentation at the Oxford Education Conference on February 16th at Oxford and the very positive comments she received afterwards. Spirals supports Every Child a Talker (ECaT) and Marion’s presentation in partnership with Rebecca Saunders and Anthea Williams (Early years language consultants for ECaT in Oxfordshire) was very well received. It was a pleasure to meet so many practitioners who are so committed to developing the children’s language, communication and well being. It was fantastic to hear how use of Spirals in so many setting in Oxford has helped this process. We visited Oxford practitioners in early November to review the use of Spirals in Oxford and to plan the introduction of Baby Spirals. Training Marion is offering to hold a Spirals training course in your setting. She still charges £550 for the one day course (excluding books) but including reasonable expenses. Conference speaker rate on application.
Welcome to Spirals (updated February 3rd 2013)Nursery Show (BIC Bournemouth)
Teach Nursery
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Datblygu Sgiliau Iaith a Chyfathrebu trwy Gwaith Grŵp Bach Effeithiol: troellau: O 3-8
First Baby Spirals courses delivered
Supporting Early Language Development – Spirals for Babies and Toddlers
New evaluation page
Train the Trainers
Hello – shine a light award November 23rd 2011
Research Page added
USA book sales
Oxford Education Conference 2011 (and possibly 2013)
