Page 59 - Issue 112 May-June 2021

Language through play Using problems in play to develop communication Rosie Quayle discusses how play can be used to develop communication. “Play is child’s work”. This quote will not be new to us, as play forms the foundation of much of the ‘work’ done in our early years classrooms. But the research is now starting to prove to us that children develop most of their language through some sort of adult-supported play, so we must ask ourselves how we can best support language development in our interaction with young children, especially those with a language delay. At Auditory Verbal UK, we work with children with hearing loss. Many children enter our programme with a delay in their listening and spoken language skills as a direct result of their hearing loss. Our job is to train their caregivers to maximise their listening and spoken language through everyday play and activities, so the child has no idea they are ‘doing therapy’. This also allows language learning to continue throughout the day, rather than just in an individual therapy session. Through this method we are able to close the gap so that around 80% of the children we work with go to school with listening and spoken language on a par with their hearing peers. Learning in a playful way So how can we do this in a playful way? Especially when children often become so engrossed in play that we find ourselves narrating what they are doing, but the back and forth communication and interaction between caregiver and “Create a need for the child to communicate” child isn’t actually happening. We want to teach language in a functional way so that the child can make a request, direct people, negate, reject, comment, call, initiate, greet, discuss an event, comforting someone....and the list goes on! In this article we will explore how we can set up problems in our play with children to create a need for the child to communicate. We will look at a specific activity for a 12-month-old, a two- and-a-half-year-old and a four-year-old, although they can be easily adapted. 12-month-old Long before a baby says their first word, they are learning about the underlying ‘why’ of communication. Communication is not just a token exchange system, it is about getting your thoughts senmagazine.co.uk SEN112 59