SALLEY is both a prevention and intervention programme. It was designed by speech & language therapists and educational psychologists and piloted in Shropshire via the County Council's Early Years & Childcare team.

SALLEY is a structured programme of activities which focuses on:

• Listening
• Attention
• Memory
• Sequencing
• Discrimination
• Developing phonological awareness

These concepts have been identified by research as being crucial to the acquisition of literacy and to help children with speech sound difficulties.

The SALLEY pack includes:

• The manual contains all of the material for 100 daily sessions, with instructions for delivery and photocopiable resources
• The handbook gives details about the research study and explains the many uses of the programme
• The video shows examples of the programme in action in a real setting
• The audio cassette is a recording of everyday sounds to practice listening skills and sound discrimination
• The SALLEY squirrel puppet is a tactile glove puppet that draws all the children into the sessions

Used in small groups on a daily basis

Ideally during the year the child has their 4th birthday but has been used as an intervention programme in year one and two

Session length last between 10 and 20 minutes

Differentiated

Is multi-sensory – children look, listen and do!

Uses visual referents

Involves errorless learning

Uses pure phonics

IT IS FUN – staff and children enjoy the sessions

Examples of activities in a session

• Always starts with good sitting and listening
• Activities that the children have a turn at
• Sounds are introduced gradually
• Children have to match sounds to letters and letters to sounds
• Focus on syllables
• Language concepts like long/short and beginning/end are introduced

SALLEY in Buckinghamshire

During 2006-2007 a pilot was carried out in Buckinghamshire involving a range of early years settings from across the county.

4 x 2 hours training sessions were delivered by EYCS SEN Team & Buckinghamshire PCT SLT Service to prepare 2 practitioners from each setting for the programme. Support was provided throughout the programme by visits from the EYCS SEN Team, telephone support from the SLT Service & EYCS SEN Team, and a mid-programme get-together.

The training was provided from July - October 2006. Settings then carried out the programme from Oct 2006 – July 2007.

Feedback received from the pilot settings indicates that both the training and carrying out the programme has been very beneficial to the setting.
 
 Comments (write-in responses)

• We really enjoyed doing SALLEY
• We found it really helped the children we used it with.
• The children would ask “When is it SALLEY?”
• The only problem was running out of time as the sessions got longer.
• The children have benefited from the repetition, but sometimes hard for staff to remain enthusiastic.
• The children have done really well and the staff have enjoyed most of it.
• Time is a constraint.
• Initially hard work and dedication was required, but has been extremely rewarding to witness the achievement of the children.
• I have learnt so much and built up my confidence.
• The programme was very interesting and gave us a systematic way of developing a range of skills.

 

 Plans for continuation of the programme (write-in responses)

• We have a SALLEY table available throughout the day. All the staff are now involved.
• Plan to continue with older 3s & 4 year olds.
• Plan to continue in September.
• Will ‘tweak’ to spread across the 2 years the children attend.
• Will certainly continue, but would like to involve all staff.
• We hope to have a staff training session so that all staff become familiar with the programme.

 
SALLEY
(Structured Activities for Language and Literacy in the Early Years)

Future plans for SALLEY in Buckinghamshire

• The pilot settings indicated that the children and staff have benefited greatly from carrying out the SALLEY Programme and intend to continue to deliver the programme.
• Following the very positive feedback and progress results from the pilot settings, training is planned to be delivered to a further 72 settings during 2007 – 2008.
• The support from the EYCS SEN Team & Buckinghamshire PCT SLT Service will continue as for the pilot i.e. 4 x 2 hours training sessions, visits from the EYCS SEN Team, telephone support from the SLT Service & EYCS SEN Team, and a mid-programme get-together.
• A proposal is being put together to plan for the training and delivery of SALLEY to further settings during 2008 – 2010.
• The EYCS Quality Improvement Team is planning on supporting Early Years practitioners in schools to deliver the programme in the Foundation Stage classes.

 

SALLEY Programme Developments

• A CD of ‘pure phonics’ sounds has been produced by the SLT Service, which is available for all settings participating in SALLEY.
• Additional colour pictures been produced by the EYCS SEN Team to supplement the line drawings provided in the SALLEY pack.
• Discussions are taking place with one of the authors of SALLEY, about SALLEY in relation to the Primary National Strategy’s Letters and Sounds Programme. It is intended to provide information for pre-school settings to show how SALLEY prepares children for Letters and Sounds and delivers aspects of Phase One.