We reached an important milestone at Steps last night with the completion of our first ever speech and language training course for teachers. 
 
Our Speech and Language Therapist Hayley Thomas has been leading the course for the last 10 weeks. It ended on a high with all learners designing a poster to showcase their new-found knowledge.
 
Hayley said:
 

“It was such a pleasure to train this awesome group of teachers who, week after week, developed new skills and strategies for supporting speech, language and communication needs within the classroom.”

Pepa, a reception teacher at St Andrews 71, said:

“I have found this course to be extremely useful and have already put in place in my class a lot of the strategies learnt in the course to enhance speech and language not only for those children that have difficulties but for all the children in the class as many of them are EAL learners. Being aware of the way children learn to communicate really makes you focus on how you can help them best by using different strategies for different speech and language difficulties, focusing on each child´s individual speech and language needs.”

This is the first group of teachers in Bangkok to train on the UK-accredited Elklan Speech and Language Support for 5-11s, and Hayley is currently the only qualified trainer in Bangkok.

The course brought together 14 classroom teachers and learning support staff from NIST, Bangkok Prep, St Andrews 71, St Andrews 107, Early Learning Centre, Shrewsbury City Campus, Traill International and ISB. Delegates worked through weekly tasks focusing on specific areas of speech, language and communication to deepen their understanding of speech and language needs in the classroom.

Thanks to all the delegates for taking this important step towards making their classrooms more inclusive.

If you’re interested in signing up for our next round of Elklan  training, you can find out more on our training for schools page.