Short Wordless Picture Books and Guide

Developing Sentence and Narrative Skills for People with Speech, Language and Communication Needs

Kulvinder Kaur

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781351104340
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This collection of short wordless picture books helps to support children with speech, language and communication needs as they develop their expressive sentence and narrative skills through storytelling. Each book is comprised of six colourful images that follow a simple everyday routine such as 'Brushing Teeth', 'Having a Haircut' and 'Walking the Dog'. Unlike traditional picture books, they follow a film scroll effect, showing the progression of time and allowing the child to follow the story to its resolution. Because of their simplicity, the books can support children as they move from simple to intermediate sentence levels, as well as encouraging them to consider additional elements of language such as cause and effect, sequencing and inference.

This resource includes:

• Ten beautifully illustrated picture books, each following a simple pattern of routine, disruption and resolution
• An accompanying guidebook including story scripts, cue questions and prompts for using the resource to support additional skills

Although developed specifically to help children with speech, language and communication needs, this set is suitable for any child who requires support and practice in developing their speech. It is an invaluable resource for speech and language therapists, teaching staff and caregivers.

User Guide contents

Chapter 1 Introduction

Chapter 2 How to use this resource

Chapter 3 Story scripts: Simple to intermediate

Chapter 4 Additional skills

WH questions

Recognising emotions and situation-based emotions

Cause and effect

Sequencing

Time concepts

Connectives

Pronouns

Inference

Topical conversation

Further reading

Chapter 1 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 ‘jump’ 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.

Chapter 2 How to use this resource

Who it’s for

This resource is appropriate for children who have the following skills:

• have a repertoire of common receptive and expressive nouns, verbs, adjectives and prepositions
• able to recognise the above in pictures
• able to imitate three-word sentences, e.g., if you say to the child, ‘Say “I want chips”’, 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: subject-verb-noun.	5 words	30 words
Intermediate	This level includes longer sentences which mainly consist of two joining clauses, and sometimes two one-clause sentences fora 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 child’s current word utterance level. If you’re 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 can’t, 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,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Pack contents
• Guidebook
• Making Cereal
• Going to School
• Brushing Teeth
• Having a Haircut
• Walking the Dog
• In the Bakery
• In the Park
• Playing Hide and Seek
• At School
• Swimming