Supporting_Language_Development_in_the_Eyfs

INclusion is a human rights issue, based on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the child. It is promoted by law and government policies. The child act 2004 provides the framework for Every Child Matters which aims to improve services for children and young people 0-19 years of age. The word inclusion has taken the place of the word integration where children with special educational needs are placed into mainstream settings and expected to fit in, inclusion enables the child to participate as fully as possible and everyone in the setting is expected to change. The plans have been adapted slightly and I will talk about the reason for the adaption’s later on in this essay. To get to the planning stage, we first considered the physical environment both indoors and out, the emotional environment and conditions for learning and the wider environment which included the contribution made by other professionals. We held an initial meeting at the nursery between his key person, me and the settings other SENCO. We decided at this meeting that we may have to adapt the play environment or some games to enable full participation, but did not want to start worrying about creating the perfect environment; we had a positive attitude and responded to the child’s individual play needs. The planning for the room is done on a day to day basis, with some planned activities that are put in the week before. The plans that I have devised, are based on the child’s interest and the recommendations from the speech and language therapist. In the plans I have covered all areas of the EYFS, however I have concentrated more on his speech and language as this is the area of concern. The anecdotal evidence such as bizarre speech sounds and behaviour can sometimes give vital clues to the type of language difficulty a child may have and we gave all our evidence and observations to the parents to take with them to the drop in clinic. I adapted the plan with the help of “I can” a children’s speech and language charity. They have clear techniques for helping children to communicate (see appendix pg ). We can see from the original plan (see appendix pg) that there has not been a lot of alterations, however there has been a lot of adult support. We have tried not to have lots of activities for just this child or buy lots of equipment that would only benefit him, this would not be an inclusive practise and would not relate to our settings SEN policy. I looked at the teaching strategies of the staff and made sure they understood the child’s preferred learning style and had the knowledge to support his schemas such as transporting which we supported by collecting things from the outdoors and having prams and wheel barrows for him to use, we did not have to alter the plans too much, again it is adult support that he needs. Adaptions made to the plan have included visual prompts such as now and next cards, visual time table and picture cards. Although the computer programme for the visual time table was expensive, it will benefit all the other children in all the rooms, most children will want to know what is happening next in their day. The only other major expense incurred in supporting this child was the extra staff needed to cover in the rooms when he was on a one to one with his key worker, and although having a one to one benefits a child greatly for a small part of the day, it would be impossible to do this if there were a few children who were displaying the same problems. We followed the gradual approach and after observations on the child, we completed an individual education plan, with the recommendations from the speech and language therapist