ABSTRACT
Since spending time working with so many children and young people and analysing how and when they made progress in different areas, therapists began to see patterns. This led to the creation of a visual aid to map out the route from preverbal to verbal, showing where different skills and approaches might be introduced in order to help children make progress. Therapists have identified ‘wake up shake up’ and ‘action rhymes’ as useful activities to begin thinking about speech as a goal during the pre-intentional communication stage. Therefore, working on imitation is going to be key to supporting a child from left to right along the speech graphic, through early social skills to language to speech. Intensive Interaction moved things away from adult-led task-oriented approaches to working with children and adults at the pre-intentional, preverbal stage of communication. At the point where communication becomes intentional, some children need additional help to send their message when they want, to another person.
