Abstract
This little book is full of children’s comments and the methods used to elicit them. It is based on qualitative research that has produced an accessible methodology for eliciting the views of children aged between 5 and 10 years. It is based on discussions around their communication and related issues. The pack includes four A4 colour pictures: in the classroom, in the playground, in assembly and at home. These are for use with the children to assist the adult in engaging the children in discussion by giving them a focal point.
The book is full of tips and guidance on how to avoid children giving the adult what they think they are asking for or to clam up. It also divides the subject up, e.g. it shows how you can prompt children to talk about their difficulties, their learning, their behaviour, their strengths, their relationships and being taught. As teachers or speech and language therapists, we have always needed to access pupil voice but many of us have struggled to elicit meaningful conversation from children whose difficulty is with conversation itself. To meet the expectations of the new special educational needs and disability code of practice (Department for Education and Department for Health, 2014), it is now vital that this issue is addressed and this book goes a long way to assist us in this task.
I trialled the book and materials with a seven-year-old child and I found the pictures very helpful to get a conversation going. We looked at the children in the pictures and then compared it with the child’s situation. I also used the prompts from the book to direct the conversation to the aspects of her learning that I wanted. She found naming her strengths very hard but after talking about her difficulties and then her behaviour (prompted by the classroom picture in particular) she was able to come up with some strengths such as ‘being kind to open door for people’ and ‘me pick up things ’cos they drop it.’ This then led to knowing she has an understanding of when others needed help and, if she thought about it, when she did herself. I also wanted to tackle the subject of the playground as I had noted how isolated she was, and this book and the playground picture really helped us both discuss this issue. She came up with quite a few pointers that we felt we could work on to improve things. For example, she really related to two children whispering apparently about another child and the boy standing on his own looking miserable. This led to some actions the school could take and she herself could take.
I think it will need several attempts with a child who is not used to conversing in this way using the various pointers in the book to come up with a well-informed and comprehensive viewpoint. This is, however, a great improvement on a one-off, and probably fruitless, session when one is left wondering how best to take things forward. The book is easy to read and digest and imparts a lot of knowledge about communication difficulties and how to elicit and also interpret children’s replies. It would be lovely to have more pictures to use but on the other hand once started on this road it would be easy enough to find one’s own.
I think this book is well worth buying and having a read-through by all staff about to converse with children with communication difficulties. We all need to talk about things that worry us, things we have enjoyed, things that puzzle us, etc., and children with communication difficulties often miss out on this vital skill and rarely get the opportunity to be able to express themselves fully. This book could encourage many teachers, therapists and assistants to allow these children the ability to talk about issues concerning them for whatever reason and to make it a normal occurrence rather than being raised only once a year at the annual review meeting.