At Chatham Nursery School, language development is at the heart of everything we do. We know that speech, language, and communication difficulties can impact many areas of a child’s life, so early identification and intervention are essential.

In Liverpool, WellComm is used across early years and school settings to screen children’s language skills and identify strengths and areas for support. This allows us to provide timely interventions within the nursery to help children progress.

To begin, practitioners complete a profile of each child’s needs and strengths. This helps us:

  • Identify children who need targeted support and close monitoring
  • Determine if a referral to a specialist (e.g., Speech and Language Therapy or a community paediatrician) is needed
  • Provide immediate support while awaiting external services

With long waiting times for speech and language therapy, WellComm ensures children receive help straight away. Reports from WellComm can also be included in referrals for specialist support.

Phonics

Phonics is a method of teaching children to read by correlating sounds with individual letters or groups of letters. Before children learn to read and write they need to develop a range of knowledge, skills, understandings and attitudes that underpin explicit, formal, literacy teaching.

At Chatham Nursery School, we focus predominantly on Phase 1 Phonics activities to develop these skills so that children can become confident readers and writers once they start primary school. We may introduce phase 2 phonics to those children who are ready for this. In Phase 2 Phonics, children begin to learn letter-sound correspondences (phonemes) and start blending sounds to read simple words. This phase is typically introduced in Reception classes (Primary School) and builds on the listening skills developed in Phase 1.

We have made a video to help explain this a little more clearly:


There is a really helpful article here to help parents understand the importance of not rushing into formal reading and writing teaching: https://abcdoes.substack.com/p/what-comes-before-phonics-guest-article

Ideas for home learning:

There are many ways that you can support your child to tune into sounds, and help focus their listening and attention skills.

Please have a look through this booklet for ideas: Phase 1 phonics activities for home