Semantic Skills – Meaning of Language Bundle, ages 5-11 years

Making semantic links is a vital skill in a child’s vocabulary development. This highly engaging selection of full colour word association illustrations and games is suitable for use in speech and language clinics, in the classroom and for home programmes too.

The bank of word association games and activities target the development of semantic linking skills and more logical and meaningful word retrieval.

Ideal for one-to-one and small group settings.

For more information see below:

This multi-task resource, designed for children 6 years and upwards with language delay, specific language impairment and semantic/pragmatic disorder, targets the improvement of question formation, understanding idioms, homophones and discussing feelings.

The pack includes our trademark colourful and engaging illustrations.

The pack is ideal for small group work or one to one, to facilitate repetition, modelling and reinforcement.

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Inferencing is a difficult skill to achieve for many children. This pack provides a collection of colourful and engaging illustrations and associated questions, ready for discussion, designed to develop inferencing and reasoning skills in children aged 6-11 years.

In addition, mind-mapping strategies are described and explained.

The activities are useful in one-to-one sessions or in groups. Many children benefit from group discussions where they can listen to the opinions of others. They may discover that sometimes, there are no right or wrong answers to questions.

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Our popular Mr Goodguess resource was specifically designed to help children in the development of crucial inferencing skills - promoting the use of visual clues, and the drawing of inferences. Devised by Catherine Redmayne and illustrated by Helen Rippon, the pack includes a range of colourful picture based exercises inviting the child to consider 'What Mr Goodguess thinks...'.

Suitable for use in the classroom, small group sessions or therapy sessions with children at KS1 and 2 (ages 6-11 years).

Each section includes additional self contained homework or reinforcement exercises with full instructions.

For more information, see below.

A practical and entertaining pack which offers a structured and highly visual approach to improving the understanding of idiomatic language. The pack contains illustrations that depict both the literal and non-literal interpretations of a range of common idioms and jokes.

Some children and young people may require additional support to develop an understanding and appreciation of the subtlety of figurative comments, phrases, and verbal jokes. Particularly for children with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD), idioms or figurative language can be confusing -  they require a clear understanding of the speaker’s intentions to be able to see beyond the literal of meaning in their words. (Our resource on Sarcasm may also be useful for these pupils).

For more information see below.

This pack offers a structured and visual approach to aid children's understanding of how and why people use sarcasm, and to recognising sarcasm both through context and intonation.  The pack will help to demonstrate that sarcasm may be signalled by intonation alone, but also by the context in which the utterance is made - an example is when someone says 'Lovely day' when in fact it is pouring with rain!

Full of Helen Rippon's engaging illustrations, this resource will be useful to practitioners working on social communication skills with pupils who have Autistic Spectrum Disorder.

Suitable for use with children aged 7 years+

For more information see below.

Every day, children and young people are expected to respond to a wide variety of social situations that occur in their daily lives. This entertaining pack of role-play scenarios helps to prepare them for these situations where they may struggle to respond with appropriate understanding, empathy or listening skills.

This practical resource uses charming, illustrated role-play activities to promote appropriate responses to common social enquires. Appropriate responses to such situations demonstrate a knowledge of ‘social code’ as well as listening and empathy skills. This pack works at a basic level. Intermediate and advanced level resources are also available.

For more information see below.

Every day, children and young people are expected to respond to a wide variety of social situations that occur in their daily lives. This entertaining pack of role-play scenarios helps to prepare them for these situations where they may struggle to respond with appropriate understanding, empathy or listening skills.

This practical resource uses charming, illustrated role-play activities to promote appropriate responses to common social enquires. Appropriate responses to such situations demonstrate a knowledge of ‘social code’ as well as listening and empathy skills. This pack works at an intermediate level. Basic and advanced level resources are also available.

These activities are suitable for children ages 7 to 11.

For more information see below.

Explain, Predict and Imagine provides opportunities for children at Key Stage 2 and beyond, to develop their verbal reasoning skills. The pack contains a range of eye-catching illustrations depicting a complex situation or dilemma. Each illustration is accompanied by a set of questions which requires the child to explain what is happening, predict outcomes and use their imagination.

The National Curriculum for English recognises the important role good language skills play in the development of reading and writing. As pupils progress through the higher key stages, the receptive and expressive language demands required of them significantly increase. They are expected to participate in verbal reasoning and problem-solving tasks which require advanced language and thinking skills, well beyond simple cause and effect. These include predicting, hypothesising, explaining, and comparing. It is, therefore, inevitable that pupils with speech, language and communication difficulties are often disadvantaged in their acquisition of literacy skills.

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Our Causal Sentences – Why... Because resource provides an engaging intervention to support comprehension of ‘Why’ questions and the use of the causal connective ‘because’. The ability to understand and produce cause-and-effect statements is essential for children’s explanation skills and overall narrative development.

This full-colour resource pack includes a bank of illustrated sequences designed to help children form two-clause sentences and independently create cause-and-consequence statements with visual support.

It is most suitable for use with children aged 3- 7 years and full instructions are included.

For more information see below.

A good vocabulary is an essential factor in supporting a child’s ability to learn and thrive in the school setting. During literacy development, children need to recognise and understand the direct relationship between the written word and its meaning but also require a depth of understanding of words in their vocabulary.

Synonyms and Antonyms is an addition to our extensive range of packs on semantic language skills and aims to develop an understanding and use of synonyms and antonyms in children aged 6 – 9+ years.

Children with normally developing language skills build up layers of meaning for new words they learn, such as understanding how words can be categorised, synonyms and antonyms, figurative language, multiple meanings and so on. These are known as semantic language skills. This pack is an addition to our extensive range of packs on semantic language skills and aims to develop an understanding and use of synonyms and antonyms in children aged 6 – 9+ years.

Activities to support early question formation skills for children between the ages of 4 and 7 years.

Practitioners will be aware that, while many resources are available to help children understand questions, far fewer offer activities which develop sentence construction and provide opportunities for the child to practise asking questions in a meaningful way. This ‘Let’s ask questions’ resource offers activities for question formation, to support the modelling and repetition required for children to learn.

The fully illustrated pack is accompanied by clear instructions and ideas for extension activities.

For more information, see below.

The pack is full of activities aimed towards managing emotional responses and its resulting behaviour in the school setting.

Talking About School  - developing situational understanding is a resource designed for children aged 5-7 years+ who may have difficulty managing their emotions in the school setting. The pack depicts a range of challenging social and educational scenarios which children in this age group may encounter when at school.

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 charmingly illustrated pack aims to provide children with strategies to manage these situations.

For more information see below.

Talking About Friends : situational understanding is a resource designed for children 5-7years+ (Foundation Stage 2 and Key Stage 1), depicting a range of challenging social and educational scenarios that children in this age group may encounter. The pack looks in particular at situations that may arise around friendship. 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 teach children specific strategies to manage these situations.

The pack is full of activities and charming illustrations designed to manage emotional responses and resulting behaviour in situations focussing on relationships with friends.

For more information see below.

The transition to secondary school can be a daunting time for any child, particularly children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) or a learning disability. Talking About Secondary School is a resource designed to help ease the transition between Primary and Secondary School.

This resource  gives children the opportunity to discuss common situations and challenges  that may arise in Secondary School, thus, helping them to cope with the extra social demands and complicated routines. 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 teach children specific strategies to manage these situations, as well as preparing them for the changes that they will face when starting secondary school.

For more information see below.

Talking About Home is a pack designed for children in Key Stage 2 and above (7-11years+), including those with higher level developmental language disorders.

The pack aims to develop verbal reasoning, prediction and inference skills. It focuses on the topics relevant to a child’s experiences at home, providing engaging illustrations and a variety of different scenarios.

Every day, children and young people are required to handle a wide range of challenging social situations. Successful management of these is dependent on the child’s social skills and interpersonal problem-solving capacity, as well as the responses of others and the particular social context.

Talking About Classroom Behaviour is a resource designed children aged 6 years+ , depicting a range of challenging educational scenarios that children in this age group may encounter. The pack is full of activities aimed towards developing social skills, situational understanding and verbal reasoning focus, helping them to develop appropriate classroom behaviour.

Aimed at a primary school age group, this pack includes many real life situations encountered in classrooms, depicting challenging classroom behaviour and communication breakdown and suggesting alternative ways of dealing with them.

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Identifying and Describing is a series of fun activities and games designed to develop semantic skills in children aged 3 years – 7 years.

The pack of resources aims to help develop skills in identifying and describing objects according to function and location, using adjectives (for example, “Find something you might see on a pond ”).

The attractive activities in a game format also help to improve

• vocabulary development;
• use of adjectives;
• attention and listening;
• social skills;
• group discussion skills

For more information see below.

This is one of a series of resources devised by Felicity Durham, a specialist speech and language therapist, and developed by Helen Rippon. Felicity identified the need for attractive, simple activities in a game format, to develop semantic skills, problem solving, verbal reasoning, turn taking & attention & listening skills. Additional targets include vocabulary enrichment and use of prepositions.

A  fun set of games and activities  help develop these semantic skills by encouraging discussion on how to cross a range of barriers in order to “get home”. The activities continue to build on new vocabulary and sentence structure and provide opportunities for the children to participate in verbal reasoning tasks and to use descriptive and imaginative language

Suitable for small group & one-to-one settings for children aged 4yrs – 7yrs.

For more information see below.

A fun pack which is  designed to develop number concepts and food categories along with a wide range of social communication skills including turn taking; and listening. It is also useful for developing self-confidence, expressive language, vocabulary enrichment and question formation.

Suitable for children aged from 3 - 7 years

The 'Cafe Game' enables children to role play a café scenario, acting as either the ‘waiter’ or a ‘customer’.  Lots of suggestions for activities are included.

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This pack aims to teach children the concept of ‘category’ and to improve word finding skills through a set of  illustrated games and activities in which children sort common objects (for example, teddy bear, jumper and giraffe) into categories . It includes a range of fun games including pairs, board and lotto (bingo).

The pack will also help support vocabulary enrichment and to develop a wide range of communication/social skills including listening, turn-taking, and to help with developing self-confidence through talking in context.

The barrier games are particularly useful for developing listener awareness and giving appropriate information -  both essential talking and listening skills.

Suitable for age range 3 – 7 years and for both small group and one-to-one settings.

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Difficulties with ‘word finding’ – the feeling when a child knows and understands a particular word but has problems retrieving it – it’s a feeling that many people recognise… “It's on the tip of my tongue”

This pack of word-finding activities is highly visual and offers a range of fun and engaging activities designed to improve semantic and phonological processing skills, and includes strategies to assist word retrieval.

Clear instructions and sample ‘scripts’ are included making the pack suitable for parents, speech and language professionals, teachers and support staff to use.

This pack give teachers and speech therapists/pathologists suggestions for varied and entertaining activities to promote speaking and listening in four key areas of oral language; asking questions, active listening, building vocabulary and using language for thinking. These can be used as whole class activities to meet curriculum targets, or to address individual therapy targets.

Suitable for use with a wide age and ability range from KS1-KS3 (6- 14 years)

For more information see below.

Every day, children and young people are required to handle a wide range of challenging social situations. Successful management of these is dependent on the child’s social skills and interpersonal problem-solving capacity, as well as the responses of others and the particular social context.

Talking About Conversations is a resource designed for children aged 7 years+, depicting a range of social and educational scenarios that children in this age group may encounter.

The pack is full of activities designed to develop social skills, situational understanding and verbal reasoning focus, ultimately supporting the child's conversational skills.

For more information see below.