School age advice sheets

Communication and speech

Expressive Language

Expressive language is the way we put words together into phrases and sentences to express meaning.

Social communication skills

Children can struggle with aspects of their social interaction skills at various points in their life and in particular social situations.

Speech Sound Development - School Age

Children often substitute more mature sounds for easier sounds when developing their pronunciation skills.

Stammering - Older children

Stammering is a communication difficulty, not just a specific speech problem.

The ability to understand language involves the following skills: listening, remembering spoken information (auditory memory), understanding vocabulary and concepts, understanding the importance of word order in a sentence (grammar)

Vocabulary

Vocabulary is the bank of words children can understand and or use meaningfully. This includes naming words, action words, describing words, concepts, position words etc.

Motor skills

Active Childhood

Physical activity assists the development of healthy bones, muscles, joints and cardiovascular systems (i.e. heart and lungs).

Balance

Balance is our ability to maintain a stable posture while engaged in motor activity.

Bike Skills

You may need to work on other skill areas before trying to learn a bike such as: balance, core stability, motor planning and safety awareness.

Ball Skills

Ball skills can include but are not limited to: throwing & catching, dribbling, kicking and aiming for a target.

Core Stability

To have good control of movement, we need to be able to stabilise our joints.

Flexible (hypermobile) Joints

Hyper’ means more and ‘mobility’ means movement so children who are hypermobile have more movement in their joints than their peers.

Hand Gym for the Older Child

Sometimes it is difficult to make our arms move as quickly and precisely as we would like and therefore we need to warm the muscles up and loosen the joints in order to make our upper limbs work more effectively.

Motor Planning

Motor planning is our ability to have an idea of how we want to move, plan how we are going to achieve that movement and then execute that movement.

Motor Skills for the Older Child

Children develop gross and fine motor skills at different rates.

Pelvic Stability

Pelvic stability is the ability to tense the muscles around your hips and pelvis, in order to secure this part of your body in preparation for movement.

Shoulder stability

Shoulder stability is the ability to tense the muscles around the shoulder, in order to stabilise the joint for use.

Sensory and cognitive

Auditory Processing

Auditory processing is the ability to perceive and understand what is heard in the environment.

Bilateral Integration

Bilateral integration is the co-ordination of the right and the left sides of the body to complete a task.

Confidence and Self Esteem

Children with motor difficulties can be vulnerable due to the difficulty in attaining a level of physical competence that seems to come easily to others.

Handwriting

You have been directed to this fact sheet due to handwriting concerns for a child you are working with.

Organisational Strategies for School and Home

Many children can become overwhelmed by too much visual and/or auditory information. By controlling the classroom environment, you can maximise children’s ability to remain focused and organised.

Screen Time

As technology continues to progress, children have more and more access to different screens such as televisions, tablets, phones and computers at home and in their preschools and schools.

Sensory System Proprioception

Just as our eyes and ears send information about what we see and hear to the brain, parts of our muscles and joints sense the position of our body and send these messages to the brain as well.

Cookies on our website