Social Communication Groups

Social Communication and Interaction groups enable children to develop their communication, interaction and play skills, therefore enabling them to build relationships, participate more fully and access a wider range of learning opportunities. Our aim is to provide every child with opportunities to develop their potential speech, language and communication skills and to ensure that those children who need additional resources to do so are able to access them.

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The purpose of the groups is to teach and practice basic social communication, interaction and language skills. To support this, we include several core games that make up a session. Each session follows the routine of a welcome song, two or three activities with a specific aim such as developing naming or listening/attention skills (for example putting objects into a bag and taking turns to get them out, name them and talk about them), and a goodbye song. Within each session we teach turn taking and give children clear guidance about how turns work, and whose turn it is, until they begin to be able to anticipate for themselves.

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The number and length of each activity and session is determined by the needs of the children in the group. We use the 'WellComm Early Years toolkit' to help us to identify children that would benefit from additional speech and language support and monitor their progress in this area.