Students with severe communication difficulties aged 5-8; their teachers.
Learners will develop the essential language foundations to enable them to participate in learning.
Teachers will be provided with the necessary professional learning and development to make changes to their own communicative behaviours in the classroom.
Essential to the LLi approach is engaging teachers in reflection on their teaching and learning practice and supporting changes in teachers’ interactions.
These children are likely to have had a very high level of speech-language therapy in early intervention. The existing access process for new referrals to the Communication Service will inform the decision to provide the intervention.
Primarily Speech-Language Therapists (SLT) will deliver this intervention. Approximately 40 hours per learner per year, which includes the teacher professional learning and development.
Factors considered important for engaging teachers (Timperley, 2007) in learning and influencing practice changes are integrated through the use of a learning cycle approach. In each learning cycle teachers are guided through a series of four steps (introduction, information, individualisation, and implementation) that encourage them to:
Central to the baseline data collection is a video recording of the child’s participation and socio-communicative skills in a typical interaction with other peers and their teacher. Baseline data is also collected on the child’s emergent literacy skills, phonological awareness skills, classroom oral language measures, reading and numeracy measures.
The support to teachers is around being reflective of their communicative behaviours and how they can adapt and differentiate their interactions with students who have communication disorders.
LLi provides the opportunity to develop and support collaborative planning and intervention between school personnel and special education staff. Teachers who have received the support are more able to successfully include learners with communication delays and disorders in their classroom programmes.
One thousand additional learners, their teachers, families, and special education personnel participate in this collaborative intervention, which will develop language and learning goals and facilitate learning within the learners' everyday interactions.
One-on-one support to teachers and learners, teacher's aide support time, teacher release time to attend learning modules.
Ongoing learning through systemic support.
Ministry of Education Special Education
Teachers, parents, whānau, principals, and SENCOs all commit to a service agreement that outlines the scope of the intervention, intervention goals, roles, and responsibilities of the team members.
Systemic support in schools is essential in supporting the success of this classroom-based approach.
Special education speech-language therapists primarily deliver this intervention. They establish the team around the learner. Essential members of the child’s team are the speech-language therapist, teacher and teacher’s aide, whānau, SENCO or senior school staff member, Resource Teacher: Learning and Behaviour (if assigned), and other special education personnel (if required).
Updated on: 01 Sep 2014
