The SMILE group aimed to provide:
- Social opportunities
- Modelling (of communication strategies)
- Interaction opportunities and
- Language Enrichment
The group followed the same schedule each week, to support children’s attention and listening skills and ability to follow a routine e.g. hello song, bucket time, snack, play, song, story, home.
It was amazing to see the children’s progress from week 1; many found sitting for, and engaging in, circle time activities difficult initially, however all made progress throughout the weeks and parents commented the difference in the group’s engagement and ability to follow the routine.
It was also positive to create a space for parents to chat and interact with one another and offer advice and recommendations regarding SEN support/provision in the local area. We saw all parents become more confident throughout the weeks in interacting with one another and also in joining their child in play interactions.
Creating fun play opportunities and motivating activities was our aim and of course we had to have themes. Here’s some photos of what we got up to… can you guess our 3 themes?!
We chose three adult-child interaction strategies to focus on:
- ‘Offering my child choices (between objects and/or photos/symbols)’
- ‘Using sign/gestures for key words when communicating with my child’ and
- ‘Keeping my language simple’.
We modelled these strategies throughout the activities each week and had regular discussions with parents throughout the sessions. On week 1, we asked all parents to rate how confident they felt using these strategies. At week 6, all parents rated higher levels of confidence than week 1. Please see below for an example:
Holly and I really enjoyed running the SMILE groups. Keep an eye on our social media pages as we hope to have the opportunity to run similar groups in the future! Finally, here’s what parents thought…
