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Chapter 1Ā Ā Introduction
This series of wordless picture books aims to help children with speech, language and communication needs (SLCN) develop their expressive sentence and narrative skills through learning to tell stories. The resource is appropriate for children aged three onwards and is aimed at any child from this age who requires practice in developing their speech and who may be receiving speech and language therapy input. The stories are an aid for speech and language therapists, learning support and teaching assistants, teachers, caregivers and parents.
The resource comprises ten simple stories and the sentence levels can be advanced from simple to intermediate. They can be told by children who are starting to form simple sentences and children who require help with forming grammatically correct, longer and more descriptive sentences.
The stories have been intentionally developed around themes that are likely to be familiar to children, and they follow a film scroll effect; this formula has been used to facilitate understanding for children with limited receptive language. General story and picture books do not follow this formula and therefore are not always appropriate to use because of the unfamiliarity of events, ideas and language, and because the illustrations are often there to accompany the text and may ājumpā from one scene to another.
The formula of each story is a disruption or an interesting event in a familiar routine followed by a resolution. This guide offers strategies on how to teach and progress the child through each level and provides simple and intermediate scripts for each story. It has an additional skills section at the end to help develop key skills and comprehension (Chapter 4). It is advisable to read Chapter 2, on teaching strategies, before progressing to Chapters 3 and 4.
Although this resource is primarily for SLCN, it can be used for literacy development by teachers in Early Years, Key Stage 1, and English Speakers of Other Languages.
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Chapter 2 How to use this resource
This resource is appropriate for children who have the following skills:
ā¢ have a repertoire of common receptive and expressive nouns, verbs, adjectives and prepositions
ā¢ able to recognise the above in pictures
ā¢ able to imitate three-word sentences, e.g., if you say to the child, āSay āI want chipsāā, the child must be able to repeat.
Which stage to start from
The stories are divided in two sections based on the two sentence levels: simple and intermediate. Below is a table outlining what each sentence level consists of to help you decide which is the most appropriate for the child to start at:
| Description | Average words for each sentence / page | Average words for each story |
Simple | This level mainly includes one clause: subjectāverbānoun. | 5 words | 30 words |
Intermediate | This level includes longer sentences which mainly consist of two joining clauses, and sometimes two one-clause sentences for a page. The sentences describe the story in more detail, and conjunctions are used to join the events on the page together and are sometimes used to join the events across pages together. | 9 words | 55 words |
Start at the childās current word utterance level. If youāre unsure of this, assess their level by asking them to say a four-word sentence and see if they can repeat it easily. If they canāt, then start with simple sentences. If they can do simple sentences easily and can copy an eight-word sentence, start with the intermediate level.
How much to do at one time
This depends on a number of factors and will depend on each child and their individual progress.
In particular, the factors to consider are the childās attention to the task, their interest in the task, and the repetitions required for them to acquire the skills. Some may need to work on one book and one page at a time, while others may be able to work through a few pages and even a book at a time. Itās important to be aware of the childās level and to work from that. So, if the child requires time to learn to put one four-word sentence together, then work on establishing this. Over time they will become more skilled at the task and you will be able to work through more.
If you only work through a page or two to begin with, you could tell the rest of the story to the child to expose them to the language.
This also depends on the individual child and their rate of progress. The child may require more practice to retain the new skills in a lesson and over time.
When to move on to the next level
The aim is to teach the child the skill to the point of independence. Once they can independently tell the stories at their current level without support, then you can start making progress on the next level.
In this section there is a list of strategies to help the child learn. Some may be more helpful than others.
Verbal aids
ā¢ The first strategy to use is to tell the child the sentence, ask them to repeat it to you, and then work on them saying it independently.
ā¢ If they miss words from the sentence, say the sentence again but this time emphasise the...
