Junior Language Link
Junior Language Link is our award-winning package used to identify and support children with mild to moderate SLCN and those new to English in Key Stage 2. The assessment will also identify any children who may have more severe language needs, such as Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), so that these children can be considered for further investigations and diagnostic assessment with your local speech and language therapy team. Suitable for children aged 7 to 11 years, it focuses on vital higher level language skills such as making inferences, complex grammar and figurative language.
Watch our video to find out why over 3,500 schools use our packages.
Identification
Our online, standardised assessment is fun, quick and easy to administer. Usually adult led, older children can work independently through the assessment. It is fully audio supported so no demand is placed on literacy ability. It looks at key areas of understanding of language for the classroom.
It is used universally in year 3 or 4 and then to track identified children. Instant results identify where support is needed and recommend appropriate class and small group interventions. If a child needs specialist support this is clearly highlighted to help you make the most of your external agency support.
Intervention
Junior Language Link provides planned and resourced interventions for a graduated approach. Recommended high quality teaching strategies and classroom resources allow the teacher to support SLCN universally. Our planned and fully resourced language groups allow support staff to provide targeted interventions and for children who need a little bit extra our supplementary teaching plans offer intensive focussed individual support.
In-Package Training
A popular feature of both our Language Link packages is our video walk through. This takes staff though each package step by step. Our regular webinar training sessions feature our speech and language therapy team and cover different aspects of use of the package allowing staff to ask the experts questions.
Measuring Progress
Junior Language Link enables you to track impact with a powerful set of Progress Measures. Our Teacher Engagement Ratings help teachers set targets for improvement across key classroom skills including, communication, participation, self regulation, active involvement and social confidence. Our Parent and Pupil Views allow you to form a holistic view of the child to track changes across skills that matter to parents as well as the children themselves.
Our flexible dynamic reports provide the information you need at the touch of a button. Reports and provision maps show in-school improvement for each child, class, year group and even the whole school. While preparing for an inspection, one school commented recently “Language Link provided, at the touch of a button, the information the SENCo didn’t even know she needed!”
Using Language Link with EAL children
Junior Language Link can be easily adapted for use with children with EAL. The standardised assessment will show how well your students are understanding English in comparison to English speaking children of the same age. For children who are just beginning to learn English the assessment will identify areas for development. Our reports and provision maps clearly show where a child is identified as a learner with EAL, allowing progress with learning English to be tracked across terms and years.
We always recommend that students with EAL work alongside English speaking children who can provide good models of language to aid language acquisition. Our language groups and supplementary teaching plans can be used with groups or individual children with EAL to encourage the development of spoken and social use of English.
What our customers say
The Language Link packages are used in over 3500 schools. Each year over 100,000 assessments are completed and over 8500 intervention groups are run. We asked some of our customers to tell us about why they use Language Link year after year.
