The Speech Bubble
The Speech Bubble is our designated specialist provision (D.S.P.) within Greenacres mainstream primary school which provides a transient placement for children with a DLD whose difficulties are currently preventing them from thriving in their own mainstream school.
We offer an inclusive, broad and balanced, mainstream education alongside social opportunities for children who have a high level of special educational need associated with developmental language disorders (D.L.D.). Whilst with us, they access specialist interventions from specialist teaching staff who identify the barriers to their learning, individuals are experiencing and provide strategies and scaffolds to overcome them.
Specialist resource teachers deliver or support the delivery of an age-appropriate differentiated and accessible curriculum, specialist resources, high quality SCLN teaching approaches and strategy tool kits.
The Speech Bubble promotes and enables the inclusion of each individual child supported within Greenacres School on a personalised basis. It recognises that periods of transition and specific need mean that - at different times and for different individuals - there may be variation in the amount of mainstream lessons children can access. We provide personalised timetables to ensure individual needs are met in order to facilitate their future pathway to accessing the mainstream.
We strive to:
- Provide high quality, intensive speech and language therapy at a clinical, targeted and universal level to ensure developing skills and strategies are transferred and applied across the curriculum.
- Have high aspiration for children's academic progress and narrow gaps in attainment from difficulties with language or accessing the curriculum.
- Provide a broad and balanced curriculum through personalised levels of differentiation and support which is reviewed regularly to ensure it meets individual needs.
- Promote and enable increasing inclusion within mainstream classes personalised to meet individual needs.
- Utilise clear assessment and tracking of systems to monitor and address children's academic and speech and language skills.
- Use early identification of and graduated response towards recognising additional needs.
- Secure knowledge of additional difficulties often experienced by children with a D.L.D. such as social, emotional, sensory or literacy difficulties and a range of personalised intervention to support children in these areas.
- Provide support tailored to and responsive to children's individual needs. This may be 1:1 for some sessions, small discrete groups for interventions, specialist support in core subjects (either in class or within Speech Bubble classrooms) and independent access to mainstream classes. Each child has a regularly reviewed personalised timetable to reflect current need.
- A high level of staff to support the personalisation of provision for different individuals.
- Ensure children have rich language models from mainstream peers, staff and the school environment
- Support children’s social skills and self – esteem.
- Identify individual children’s barriers to learning and address these.
- Plan personalised targets and long-term goals alongside children and parents.
- Work with parents to develop networks of support and tools and techniques to help their children.
- Support children to identify what helps them and what strategies they can use to develop their independence and confidence.
- Prepare children for transition back to their mainstream schools or onto secondary education.
- Support all mainstream staff to be expert practitioners of high-quality inclusive teaching for children with social, communication, language needs (SCLN).
- Provide home schools for returning children with support to develop the skills and strategies they need to meet children's individual needs.
- Provide outreach to schools requesting SCLN teaching support.
Entry into The Speech Bubble is strictly through Royal Greenwich’s SEN admissions panel.
When children are awarded a place a period of transition is usually arranged with their current school and parents. Depending on individual need, this usually involves a visit by a member of staff to their home school and discussion with class teacher/Senco, a meeting with parents to plan transition days to The Speech Bubble and visual support to aid the transition.
Children usually remain in The Speech Bubble until speech and language therapists deem that their needs can be met through a universal school offer and children have developed the strategies and independence necessary to access mainstream lessons through high quality teaching, where necessary differentiated learning and reasonable adjustments (as is expected of all schools as part of their universal provision). This transition back to their home school is planned for and supported by Speech Bubble’s specialist staff and speech and language therapists to ensure a successful transition. Children will return to home schools with a strategy tool kit designed to enable them to access learning.
Occasionally, additional needs are identified during children's time at The Speech Bubble which transpire to be a more complex or prevalent primary need. For these children, their Speech Bubble teachers and the SENCO will support them and their parents in deciding what pathway may be best to support the child's identified needs. This may mean returning to their home school with 1:1 support or accessing a different specialist setting.
DLD Awareness Day presentation
Application Information downloadable for SENDCos only
Application Form for SEND Admissions Panel For a Specialist Placement