ELSA

ELSAs are emotional literacy support assistants. They are teaching assistants who have had special training from educational psychologists to support the emotional development of children and young people in school 

An ELSA in a school is an Emotional Literacy Support Assistant. There is a recognised ELSA training course aimed specifically at Teaching Assistants in schools. Examples of things covered on the course are social skills, emotions, bereavement, social stories and therapeutic stories, anger management, self-esteem, counselling skills such as solution focus and friendship. ELSA is an initiative developed and supported by educational psychologists, who apply their professional knowledge of children’s social and emotional development to areas of need experienced by pupils. They provide on-going professional supervision to help maintain high quality in the work undertaken by ELSAs, thereby helping to ensure safe practice for ELSAs and pupils alike.  

Fun Friends and Friends for Life

The Fun FRIENDS curriculum helps build the social and emotional skills of young children by using fun, play-based group activities. 

The Fun Friends program was created to assist young children to build resilience, self-esteem and confidence and to learn important skills and techniques to cope with feelings of fear and worry. The symbolism drawn from the word FRIENDS is based on the following principles:  

• Our body is our FRIEND and tells us when we are feeling worried or nervous by giving us clues.  

• It is important to learn to be our own FRIEND and reward ourselves when we try hard.  

• It is important to make FRIENDS, so that we can build our social support network and feel happier.  

• FRIENDS can help us to cope with difficult situations more effectively.   

• The word FRIENDS helps children to remember each of the skills taught throughout the program (i.e. each letter stands for a new skill learned).  

F-Feelings- All feelings are ok.  

R-Relax- Have quiet time.  

I-I can try my best.  

E-Encourage.  

N-Nurture.  

D-Don’t forget to be brave.   

S-Smile-Remember your values, role models and support networks.   

Social Communication

Social Communication- group helps children who struggle to interact with others in an appropriate manner to develop the skills needed to behave appropriately in social situations. The group aims to increase and improve children's social skills.  

The group is intended to improve children’s social communication skills. The aims include:  

To improve children’s ability to recognise and respond appropriately to verbal and non-verbal communication, improve friendships and turn taking/sharing and time.  

To improve social communication skills of children in order to develop better conversational skills and interactional skills.  

To improve communicative behaviour and general behaviour in social settings through learning and recognising appropriate and inappropriate behaviour in different settings.  

Drawing and Talking

Drawing and Talking is a person-centred therapy focusing on prevention, early intervention and recovery. The child sets the pace and decides what to bring to the session.

The Drawing and Talking technique is a safe and easy to learn short term, time-limited therapy to be used with anyone (age 5+) who has suffered trauma or has underlying emotional difficulties. It supports those who are not realising their full potential either academically, professionally or socially. The purpose of the method is to draw with a person with whom they feel comfortable at the same time each week. The trusted person will learn to ask a number of non-intrusive questions about the drawing, and over time a symbolic resolution is found to old conflicts and trauma is healed. Work with the individual needs to be carried out safely and non-intrusively, with respect for their own pace and state of being. This is why anyone using Drawing and Talking learns to stay in the world of the individual’s drawing. The individual sets the pace and decides what to bring to the session. Often in a first session, the individual will produce a very neutral drawing, something in the room or the view from a window, however, once they feel safe and have created a secure attachment, their imagination begins to unfold. After completion of Drawing and Talking Therapy, individuals are more able to control their behaviour and most importantly have higher self-esteem; this allows them to thrive in the world around them. We want all children, young people and adults to have the opportunity to achieve and develop better emotional skills and character.  

Talk Boost

Talk Boost is a targeted and evidenced based intervention, which supports language delayed children in KS1 to make significant progress with their language and communication skills.  

A 10 week evidence based intervention programme has been developed that includes;  

• 30 sessions of activities with materials  

• Activities for the whole class and parents  

• Monitoring and evaluation documentation  

The graphs for this tracker are colour coded.   

A red score means the child is working below age expectations and further investigation or referral to a speech and language therapist is recommended.  If a child is still scoring in the red after completing Early Talk Boost we strongly recommend that you refer them to a speech and language therapist.  

An amber score means the child is working towards age expectations but would benefit from targeted support, e.g. Early Talk Boost. If the child has just completed the programme, and made progress, but still falls within this range s/he would benefit from continued monitoring and targeted support within the setting using the approaches introduced in the intervention.  

A green score means the child is working at age expected levels and you should continue with quality first teaching and monitoring.  

The red and blue graph at the end of your report shows the percentage of children in your group who are working at age expected levels (receiving a green score) before and after Early Talk Boost. These are the children who will benefit from good practice to support language and communication, but should not need additional support.   

If there are no children in the group working at expected levels then this figure with be 0%.  

Wellcomm

A Speech and Language Toolkit for Screening and Intervention in the Early Years: Revised Edition plays a crucial role in identifying children with potential language difficulties and offers a range of customised intervention activities to help support their language development. 

The screening tool uses a unique traffic light system to help practitioners understand the child’s current level of speech and language and to provide a pathway for action, ensuring every child gets the support they need.  

⬤ Consider referral to a specialist service for further advice/assessment  

⬤ Extra support and intervention required  

⬤ No intervention currently required  

Therefore, children from Nursery up to Year 2 who require further intervention are receiving Wellcomm on a weekly basis.   

Frequency: Wellcomm session once a week for 10/15 minutes on a 1:1 basis.   

Cost: £349.95 for the complete set.   

Resources/Training: Wellcomm set contains: The handbook, Little book of score sheets and rules, The picture book and The big book of ideas.   

Narrative Project

The Narrative Project is being delivered jointly by Wrexham LA and the BCU Speech and Language Therapy service. 

It aims to offer children in Wrexham schools additional support for their language skills by providing them with narrative therapy through groups and one-to-one sessions. Spoken language skills are vital in building and maintaining friendships, in understanding and expressing feelings and emotions and in problem solving.  Narrative is essentially the ability to tell a story but narrative skills are used all day and are integral to all aspects of language, literacy and learning.  Narrative intervention teaches story grammar, extended language structures, vocabulary, inferencing, and social pragmatics and promotes comprehension and production of more complex language. Developing children’s narrative skills works towards enabling them to interact more socially, think more logically and help them learn.   

Narrative intervention :  

*Gives children a framework to organise information.   

*Is a highly structured programme with clear lesson plans and follow-on activities  

*Addresses attention and listening, receptive and expressive language skills  

*Is based on meaningful activities that are common to classrooms  

*Is flexible and adaptable for different age groups : there are different programmes for reception, KS 1, KS 2 and KS 3.