Speaking, Listening and Understanding: Games and Activities for 5-7 year olds

Speaking, Listening and Understanding is a practical resource packed full of games to improve young children’s communication skills. The second edition of this bestselling resource contains a programme of games and activities to foster the speaking, listening and understanding skills of children aged from 5 to 7 years. The book seeks to address language and communication difficulties for primary-aged children by providing a range of fun and engaging activities. Suitable for whole classes or small groups of children, the activities focus on both understanding and using language in areas such as following instructions, thinking skills, inference, describing, narrating and playing with words.

Features include:

• 160 games and activities which are differentiated by stages and levels of ability;
• A clear aim, equipment list and instructions for each activity;
• Photocopiable templates for ease of use;
• Supplementary resource sheets including pictures and scripts to use with the activities.
• Activities may be carried out by teachers, classroom assistants or volunteers.
• Incorporates user-friendly opportunities for assessment, target setting and evaluation.

Now fully revised and updated in line with current UK policy and legislation, this book is suitable for young children in any school setting. It also includes material that may be used as an effective part of a speech and language therapy programme in consultation with a therapist. This is a unique manual that will be an essential addition to the materials used by professionals working with young children.

Table of Contents

Part 1: Understanding Spoken Language

• Following Instructions
• Developing Vocabulary
• Getting the Main Idea
• Thinking Skills
• Drawing Inference

Part 2: Using Spoken Language

• Describing
• Explaining
• Narrating
• Predicting
• Playing with Words

Part 3: Teaching Resources

"...easy to follow and provides teachers with hundreds of fun games to develop receptive and expressive language."
- NAPLIC Newsletter, awarded top prize Education Resources Awards

"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

"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

"The book 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