Inferencing skills – ‘Talking About Home’

Talking About is a series that focuses on developing situational understanding and verbal reasoning skills in children. Each pack focuses on a specific aspect of the child’s life and how these skills may be put into practice (in this case inferencing skills). The idea originated from Educational Psychologist Marion Nash and has been developed by Helen Rippon, SLT.

Talking About Home  – inferencing skills is a resource designed for children in Key Stage 2 and beyond, depicting a range of challenging social and educational scenarios that may arise in a child’s home life. Successful management of these situations is dependent on the young person’s social skills, emotional intelligence, and interpersonal problem-solving capacity, as well as the response of others and the context of the event. This pack aims to provide children with strategies to manage these situations.

The materials are ideal for small-group work, although they can be easily adapted to one-to-one settings, and they are suitable for pupils who have semantic-pragmatic difficulties or an autistic spectrum disorder.

The pack is full of charming illustrations by Helen Rippon, which provide a high level of visual support for the scenarios that the pack discusses. The pack offers a range of 12 different scenarios that a child may be confronted with at home, as well as potential courses of action, some appropriate and some inappropriate. Each situation and possible response is accompanied by an engaging illustration, to be presented to the individual or group during discussion. This will allow for a lively discussion about the pros and cons of each solution. Many of the situations lend themselves to role-play and ‘rehearsal’ of social conversations. Scenarios include:

• Gemma finds her younger sister Amy in her bedroom trying on her clothes and make-up
• Liam wants a dog but Mum says no
• Liam does not want to help Mum and Dad in the kitchen
• Leroy has spilt blackcurrant juice on the carpet
• Liam’s little brother Jack wants a turn on Liam’s games console
• Shane refuses to eat the meals that Dad cooks – he only likes ‘junk food’
• Leonie is feeling left out after the arrival of a new baby
• Liam would like a pair of very expensive new trainers

Format: PDF file, 12 large pictures, 48 small pictures, instructions and question sheets.

Age: 7-11yrs+, KS2+

Snippets: Upgrade your account to send specially selected extracts of this resource, via our website, to parents and carers for homework exercises. The snippets for this resource include the following activities:

• Can I have a dog?  Liam really wants a dog and he’s seen puppies being advertised for sale. He’s asked his Mum if they can have one, but she says no! Four small pictures are included in this activity, which can be used to help decide what Liam should do.
• Junk food. Shane just won’t eat the nice meals that his Dad cooks. He’ll only eat junk food! Which of the options included in the activity would be the best solution for Shane’s Dad?
• New baby. Leonie’s parents have had a new baby and Leonie is feeling left out as no one is taking any notice of her, even though she’s received a star for good work at school. How might Leonie react to this situation and what should she decide to do for the best?