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About Spirals Language Development

A Spirals approach offers an inclusive approach to developing children’s language and thinking skills and their emotional literacy. By running small group sessions for children who are vulnerable in these areas, you can make a difference. Children are encouraged to take small steps and build up their confidence gradually, with the aim being to allow them to develop their skills and be able to use them in the classroom with their peers.

The 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. Straight forward directions are given. Each individual session is scripted in the books .

Instructions can be followed by the class teacher and the class support staff running the groups. There is also a breakdown for each of the sessions showing the main concepts covered – e.g.

  • Pre-school session 1- memorisation, Coordination of physical action with speaking; Understanding and use of under and up; Taking care of each other (social skills); using language; extending utterances.
  • Session 10 – Key Stage 2 – speaking to an audience, generating ideas, sound awareness and production, words faces and gestures (non verbal communication), prediction, imagination, categorisation and recall.

Included are:

  • Concise explanations of the terms and concepts involved
  • Clear guidelines for setting up and running the small group session
  • Structured session/lesson plans
  • Samples of assessment forms used
  • Photocopiable resources

Teachers, teaching assistants, speech and language therapist and speech and language assistants will find the books easily accessible. Marion also collaborated with Black Sheep press to produce the talkabout series (talkabout the playground, talkabout the school).

 

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