Tamika is female, aged 4 years, 5 months (53 months) at the time of screening.

Tamika had moved to the Reception Year of her local primary school and, after a short initial settling in period, was routinely screened using the WellComm Toolkit. Tamika was a happy and contented member of the class and did not exhibit any particular behaviours that could give cause for concern.

She joined in all the class activities and was described as ‘a quiet, thoughtful child’. Her ‘Transfer to Reception Classes – Year R’ form which had accompanied her from nursery showed an even profile across all six areas of development within the Foundation Stage, with no concerns raised.

Tamika was screened using Section 8 of the WellComm Screening Tool, scoring four out of ten, which gave her a score in the Red band. The class teacher was initially surprised at these findings, but continued with the screening to achieve a Green score, and eventually placed Tamika within Section 5.

Section Screened	Score	Outcome
Section 8 (48-59 months)	2/10	Red
Section 7 (42-47 months)	2/10	Red
Section 6 (36-41 months)	4/10	Amber
Section 5 (30-35 months)	8/10	Green

Discussion with Tamika’s parents, combined with closer observation, indeed revealed that she had a number of strategies for appearing that she had understood something which in fact she had not. She was able to use her visual skills to great effect and would look to see where an adult or another child was inadvertently looking before joining in. Thus she was adept at masking her comprehension difficulties.

Looking at the errors Tamika made revealed an uneven profile between comprehension (what the child understands) and expression (what the child uses). This analysis led to the class teacher being able to set targets for her from Section 6 and from Section 7. Tamika’s errors fell primarily within the area of understanding and using language to reason and solve problems.

As Tamika was learning through watching her peers closely and she was able to cope with group work, she was placed within a WellComm group that would specifically target linguistic concepts, thus building her comprehension skills through carefully structured activities where she had the benefit of peer modelling. The group was run three times a week and had five children in it. They were all at a similar level as measured by the WellComm Screening Tool. This enabled focused teaching of the concepts selected. Tamika benefited from watching the other children and from the repeated practice opportunities afforded.

To begin with, the group focused on the concrete concepts relating to position and size (e.g. ‘in front’/‘behind’ and ‘long’/‘not long’/‘short’). The use of gestures/Makaton signs also helped build Tamika’s understanding. Each group lasted for approximately 15–20 minutes and was run by the class teacher three times a week.

Additional activities were selected from The Big Book of Ideas and the class teacher demonstrated how to carry out these activities to her parents so that they could support Tamika at home. This practical focus provided the foundations for a strong partnership so that Tamika received both focused teaching in the group and more naturalistic intervention at home.

Given the Red score and the uneven profile, Tamika was referred for speech and language therapy assessment. Further assessment showed that she had a specific language disorder and that the WellComm Screening Tool and profile had facilitated her getting specialist input as soon as possible. Identification and intervention as early as possible were critical to a successful outcome for Tamika, who subsequently made steady progress with group-based teaching.

Misunderstood Maya

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