Speaking, Listening and Understanding: Games for Young Children(The Good Communication Pathway)

Winner of the Primary Books category at the 2004 Education Resources Awards and Highly Commended in the Books for Learning Teaching category of the 2004 TES/NASEN Special Needs Book Awards. Written by two experienced speech language therapists, who have worked extensively alongside mainstream teachers, this book provides activities that are both teacher and child friendly. It contains a collection of graded games and activities designed to foster the speaking, listening and understanding skills of children aged from 5 to 7. The activities are divided into two main areas: Understanding Spoken Language: Following Instructions; Getting the Main Idea; Thinking Skills; Developing Vocabulary; Understanding Inference. Using Spoken Language: Narrating; Describing; Explaining; Predicting; Playing with Words. "Each activity has a clear aim, simple instructions, and requires minimal equipment. "Activities may be carried out by teachers, classroom assistants or volunteers. "Incorporates user-friendly opportunities for assessment, target setting and evaluation. "Includes photocopiable material to support the activities. "Many of the activities can be used by speech language therapists, and the book can be used as an effective part of a speech and language programme. "Promotes the skills outlined in Speaking and Listening in the English National Curriculum Key Stage One. Catherine Delamain has forty-seven years' experience of working with young children. Her last post before retiring was team leader for education in a large speech and language therapy service. She is currently collaborating in the delivery of a rolling programme of training for first and primary school teachers, designed to help them meet the needs of children with speech and language difficulties in mainstream schools. Jill Spring is a speech & language therapist specialising in speech and language disorder in children, and the impact of these difficulties on their learning. She qualified in 1972 and has worked in paediatric settings including community clinics, assessment centres, opportunity playgroups and mainstream schools. She is currently senior clinician in a speech and language unit, and is actively involved in providing training for teachers and learning support assistants, health visitors and those involved in nursery education.

Review :
"...easy to follow and provides teachers with hundreds of fun games to develop receptive and expressive language." — Awarded top prize Education Resources Awards, NAPLIC Newsletter "The books is carefully organised into three main areas...layout very user friendly...this book would be a most useful resource in mainstream classrooms...would make a useful addition to resources for developing speech and language skills." — Child Language Teaching and Therapy "For each skill area there are 16 activities that are well thought out, clearly presented and make sense to teachers...this is an excellent resource that will prove useful for any SLT working with five-to-seven-year-olds." — Jennifer Reid, SLT, Fife PCT, Bulletin "Book is clearly laid out...staff and parents were very enthusiastic about the activities...I would recommend this book highly...is reasonably priced." — Independent Talking Points "A relevant resource for therapists covering busy mainstream schools...good value for money and a useful tool to develop collaborative working between teachers and therapists." — Ann-Marie Thompson, SLT for mainstream schools, Homefirst Community Trust, Northern Ireland "Have compiled an extensive selection of games and activities and organised them in a highly accessible way...an attractive resource with long-term usefulness...it is excellent value and is to be highly recommended." — Sarah Worth, British Journal of Special Education "Each activity is presented clearly...a very well thought out and adaptable resource." — Karen Sandford, Co-ordinator, Wallands Speech and Language Unit, Lewes, East Sussex, Afasic News "Although aimed at KS1, this user-friendly resource pack could be used to familiarise children in lower KS2." — Junior Focus "There are some good ideas. It's the sort of resource you can dip into for ideas." — NAPLIC "Overall I thought that this book does achieve what it set out to do. It would be a useful resource for teachers in mainstream classes...very user-friendly." — LASLT Update