We Care About Your Privacy
By clicking “Accept all”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts. View our Privacy Policy.
Understanding the needs of your learners is essential. Learners who use English as an additional language may also have additional learning needs, and sometimes separating language needs from learning needs can be challenging. Assessment results and classroom work offer some insight; however, taking the time to carefully observe your learners’ behaviours can provide a deeper appreciation of their needs. This can help you consider necessary adjustments or interventions, or support further assessments of specific SEND needs.
Tip or Idea: When looking at the needs of a learner, try to involve everyone who has a connection with them. This includes parents, lunchtime supervisors, teaching assistants, sports coaches, and class teachers. They may see the learner in different contexts, which helps to build a fuller picture of their behaviours and needs and identify any common patterns.
Learning Village resource: Our simple pupil behaviour observation sheet enables all staff working with a learner to easily record which behaviours are displayed and how often.
In English, there are 44 speech sounds. Creating speech sounds is a more complex process than you might think! It requires the coordination of different muscles and structures. The lips, tongue, teeth and other parts of our mouth all play an important role. Where learners have difficulties creating certain sounds, their fluency, ability to be understood and confidence in speaking aloud can all be affected.
Being able to understand and use a range of adjectives can help learners to communicate successfully. Adjectives are essential for adding information or interest to their spoken or written language. They also enable learners to differentiate between items.
Learners with speech and language difficulties may find it difficult to remember words or think or the word they want to use when they are talking.
Tip or Idea: Think of a category such as ‘animals’ or ‘things in a kitchen’ and then see how many words you can name. Each time you think of a word place a Lego piece on top of another and see how tall a tower you can build!