Language for Behaviour and Emotions – Overview

.1) Create a communication- and emotion-friendly environment

• The Language for Behaviour and Emotions programme cannot be delivered in isolation; everybody who interacts with the child/young person has an impact on – and therefore a role in – developing their communication skills.
• To create a communication-friendly environment, staff should consider:
o Non-verbal communication (how are you communicating to the child/young person without using words) – what does your body language tell the child/young person; are you using good listening skills; do you face the child/young person when you’re speaking or are you doing other jobs at the same time?
o Visual supports – are you providing pictures/symbols/diagrams/visual displays for key vocabulary?
o Check-ins – how often are you checking in with the child/young person that they have understood what has been said?
• To create an emotion-friendly environment, staff should consider whether the classroom/small group room is an environment where:
o Children/young people feel comfortable to talk and know it’s OK to talk.
o Different emotions are accepted and explored.
o Children/young people are supported to build body awareness – tuning into how their body feels in the moment and being able to assign a label to the emotion.

2) Assessment

• There is a brief Starter Assessment that all children/young people should be supported to complete before continuing with the programme. Please see our Start-up Guide for detailed guidance on how to complete this.
• Children/young people are shown an illustration and read a brief scenario, after which they are asked questions of varying complexities.
• Using guidance in the book, the child/young person’s answer to each question is given a score between 1 and 3.
• At the end of scoring, you will be able to identify what level the child/young person is working at within the Language for Behaviour and Emotions programme. You will also be able to identify if the programme is not suitable for the child/young person, either because their skills are above the level that is targeted within the programme or because the child isn’t yet ready for the programme; in this case, an earlier programme written by the same authors called ‘Language for Thinking’ may be more appropriate.
• There are seven short further assessments; they don’t all need to be completed, but may be helpful to further explore certain areas of need.

3) Profile

• Once you’ve done the assessment, you will create the child/young person’s Language for Behaviour and Emotions profile, identifying one key skill to work on with the child/young person and selecting relevant tools from the toolkit to use with them.

4) Teach skills

• Then, in twice weekly one-to-one or group sessions, you will teach the skills you have identified by working through social scenarios from the book, using the relevant tools.
• You should reassess the child/young person every 20 scenarios to monitor their progress and further tailor the intervention.