According to a new Ofsted report, young children are unable to speak and listen properly when they start nursery school because of continuous noise and poor conversation at home.
The Report states: "Schools attributed weak listening skills not only to poor conversation in the home but, very often, also to continuous background noise, such as constant television, the noise of siblings and raised voices, which are bound to dull sensitivity to the nuances of sounds."
Listening & attention skills are the building blocks of speech & language development.
A child needs to listen to sounds, words and sentences around him, before he can learn to speak for himself.
There are 5 developmental stages that children need to pass through to develop good listening & attention skills. Beginning at stage 1, where a child is very distractible through to stage 5, where a child can support dual channelled attention, where they can concentrate on more than one task at a time. Ideally most children should have well established dual – channelled attention by the time they begin full-time education.
Here are some of our Top Tips to support your child’s listening & attention:
Turn off the T.V. for periods throughout the day. Young children can find screening out background noises very hard. Without distracting background noise your child can focus on listening to you and interacting with you.
Try to have time each day when you play face to face with your child. Sit or lie on the floor together. Let your child ‘lead’ the activity. Young children’s attention is more focused on an activity of their own choosing.
Begin to encourage your child to pay attention to a game or activity for a little bit longer … even if for only a few more seconds. If you involve yourself in what they are doing, it can help to stretch out their attention for a little bit longer.
Young children aren’t able to shift attention easily. You can help by supporting the shift of direction of attention by focusing them back to the original task. For example, you might say “Look at me I’ve got the blue one … you look down here and find the blue one”
Use the power of the pause. This is very effective in gaining the attention of even very young children. As children become aware of the pause they may turn and shift their attention to you.
At Talking Tots we have lots of fun games that help support and develop children’s levels of listening & attention.
Contact us to find and more or to find a class near you.
www.talkingtots.info or 01253 735 355
