New Ofsted report - Children unable to speak properly when they start nursery school

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

 

 

Comments

[Crystal Jigsaw]

I think background noise has been a constant distraction for young children for a very long time. Since televisions and video games were invented this problem has escalated. But siblings can't take the blame! Parents should be more responsible but also, I do think that if the class sizes are large this can also lead to a huge distraction. So it's not all the fault of the home environment.

CJ xx

[Lisa & Tracey]

Hi CJ,
When we were delivering speech & language therapy programmes in schools for children with specific speech & language difficulties, we were increasingly alarmed by the poor listening & attention skills of the general population of children who wouldn’t necessarily fall under the care of the speech & language therapist. Good listening & attention is the foundation for all learning and in these huge sized classes, many children are unable to attend to and process instructions.
L & T xx

[Leila]

As a KS1 teacher I am horrified by the decline of speech and communication skills in children. Keep up the good work!
Leila.