What is Wellcomm and how is it used at Golborne Maxilla?
Wellcomm is a complete speech and language toolkit which can to be used with children from 6 months to 6 years. Although this toolkit is only one aspect of how we support and develop young children’s language development it 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.
How does it work?
Every child is assessed for around 10 – 15 minutes on their understanding of what is being said to them (receptive language) and also how they communicate verbally (expressive language). This assessment is partly completed through the everyday observations that your child’s teacher carries out in class to assess his/her progress throughout the whole of the Early Years curriculum. But also involves few targeted questions such as asking your child to point out various pictures or follow some easy instructions.
Each child’s own pace and concentration span is taken into consideration and the overall assessment may be done in several stages. As this assessment is visual it also supports are children for whom English is not their first language.
Once a profile has been drawn up for each child, The Big Book of Ideas provides focused teaching and intervention activities to meet individual needs. Reports for each child are easy to follow. Green = no intervention needed, Amber = provide extra support and Red = consider referral to an SLT. Advice and follow-up activities are suggested, and re-screening shows you whether the child is improving. Once a child has been assessed, and then screened using the toolkit it enables staff to target support to meet your child’s needs. Twice weekly intervention groups are run using games/activities provided in the big book of ideas and then at the end of term your child is re assessed. The activities are fun and use everyday resources which can be found at home, this means that parents can support your child at home.
If you would like to know more you can talk to SENDco Veronica H or Begoña Communication and Language Co-ordinator