"This powerful series of practical books fully supports the SENCo and class teacher in implementing the 2014 SEND Code of Practice in order to close the gap between children with SEN and their peers.

The Target Ladders books provide an overview of the range of difficulties experienced by children with a particular SEN, enabling the busy teacher to get a better understanding of the child’s learning priorities. Photocopiable materials include checklists to help you identify children who may be in need of extra help, and templates for records of progress and monitoring sheets.

Target Ladders focus on what a child can do, rather than what they cannot do, in order to identify next steps, presenting ‘small steps’ targets for children and suggested strategies for achieving these targets. They provide the structure and flexibility to recognise that every child is different and will follow their own pathway through the targets.

Speech, Language and Communication Needs (SLCN) is an umbrella term covering a range of difficulties that can affect a child’s ability to access school curriculum and make appropriate social relationships. A child with SLCN may have speech that is difficult to understand, may struggle to say words or sentences or to understand what they hear.

Using Target Ladders: Speech, Language and Communication Needs will enable teachers, teaching assistants and SENCOs to identify appropriate learning goals for independent learning, to adapt the suggested strategies or ideas for their own pupils, and to begin to impact on children’s speech, language and communication needs in order to close the gap between these children and their peers.

Target Ladders: Speech, Language and Communication Needs provides ‘small steps’ targets and helpful strategies based on seven key aspects of challenge to help and support children with Speech, Language and Communication Needs:

oAspect 1: Early communication

oAspect 2: Attention control

oAspect 3: Play and social interaction

oAspect 4: Comprehension

oAspect 5: Expressive language

oAspect 6: Social communication

oAspect 7: Phonological awareness, auditory discrimination and speech

About the authors

All the authors are paediatric speech and language therapists working for East Coast Community Healthcare CIC in Children’s Centres, Child Development Centres, children’s homes, mainstream schools and special schools. They support children and their families as well as offering advice and training to early years staff, teachers and teaching assistants.

Series Editor

Kate Ruttle is an experienced SENCO, a leading practitioner for inclusion and a specialist teacher and assessor of SpLD. She has an M.Ed and Advanced Diploma in SEND and is the author of numerous books, including Target Ladders: Dyslexia, Target Ladders: Dyscalculia and Target Ladders: Working Memory and Auditory Processing in this series."