Time to Talk

Time to Talk provides a powerful and accessible resource for practitioners working to improve children's language and communication skills. It summarises research on what helps children and young people develop good communication skills, and highlights the importance of key factors: a place to talk, a reason to talk and support for talk.

Jean Gross CBE was formerly the government's Communication Champion for children. She has led many national initiatives aimed at improving children and young people's life chances, including the National Strategies' work on inclusion, SEAL (Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning), and the Every Child a Reader and Every Child Counts programmes. She is the author of numerous articles and best-selling books on children's issues, including Beating Bureaucracy in Special Educational Needs (3rd edition, David Fulton).

Preface 1. Speech, language and communication - a growing issue 2. What do we know about how to support language development? 3. Stories from schools and settings 4. A place to talk 5. A reason to talk 6. Teaching talk 7. Support for talk 8. Working with parents and carers to develop their children's language skills 9. Supporting children with more severe needs