1. Explain to the group of pupils that they have been given an important opportunity to lead this intervention in their schools. They are communication role models at school. Emphasise that they are leaders and are taking on an important leadership role in their school, helping younger pupils to develop their communication skills and helping to let others know about the importance of communication.

2. Depending on how many Communication Leaders you’re working with, you can either do this activity in small groups, or as a whole group.
You might like to think about – What do we use communication for? Why is it important? What does ‘communication’ mean? Who do you like to communicate with? What does communication look like at home and at school?
Discuss all the words that come to mind when you think of the word ‘communication’
See how many words the pupils can generate themselves. Hopefully they will think of ideas like: Speaking, talking, listening and understanding but you may need to prompt for other words such as signing, eye contact, facial expression, body language, tone of voice etc. Pupils might also think about other forms of communication like texting, writing, posting on facebook etc. These are all valid forms of communication, but it’s important to let pupils know that this intervention is also about using spoken language and communication.
If pupils have worked in smaller groups, ask them to share their ideas

3. Now, in your larger group, or small groups think of what you use their communication skills for – WHY do we communicate?
Here are some examples:
They help us learn
They help us talk to our friends, find out about people and things
They help us sort out our feelings and interact with all kinds of people
They help us get a job and get on in life
They help us ask questions and say what we think
If pupils have worked in smaller groups, ask them to share their ideas

4. Summarise that all the points you thought about in the previous slide are skills for LIFE. Communication skills are important not only now, but also for the future

5. The Like2Talk resource pack is available on The Communication Trust website:
Have some copies of the pack available during your first session with the Leaders so that they can refer to them.
Talk through the contents page and together look through the different sections of the pack in turn. Emphasise that the Leaders don’t have to do everything in the pack, they can choose the activities that they want to do, and they can also think of their own activities if they want – as long as they are based on communication skills. They are the leaders, so they can choose!
Take a look through the packs and see what activities interest them. Have a think about how they might implement the different activities, for example how might they organise to spend time in a reception classroom for a short session each week? If they’re interested in presenting, how might they organise to make a communication presentation for their class, year group, or even the whole school?!

6. A big part of the Communication Leaders role is likely to be working with foundation stage children. The following 4 slides are to discuss with your Communication Leaders some really important things to think about when they’re working with younger children:
1. Give praise
Ask the Leaders what they think praise means? Have they got any examples of when they’ve been given praise at home or at school? You might be able to think of some school examples like when the head teacher gives out certificates in assembly, or getting house points in class, or being given verbal praise about some good work or good behaviour.
Explain that praise is telling someone when they’ve done well at something. Everyone likes hearing when they’ve done something well – even adults! Telling younger children when you think they’ve done really well will help them to get more confident with talking and communicating with others. There are stickers in your pack – that’s a really good way to let a younger child know that they’ve done well.
Ask the Leaders if they can think of any other ways that they can praise younger children? You might need to help them with some ideas, like:
Telling them verbally that they’ve done something well
Smiling or laughing to show that you’re happy with them
Telling their teacher about the good work that they’ve been doing

7. 2. Use more simple language
Think about the following questions in your group:
When we learn to talk, do we immediately start by talking in sentences? (no, we learn how to talk as we get older)
How do we get better at talking and communicating? (we learn from our parents, our teachers, our friends – we hear other people talking and that’s how we learn)
Do we ever stop developing our language and communication skills? (no, it’s a skill that we develop throughout our lives – even adults are learning new vocabulary and about how to communicate with people)
One of the most important things you can do when you’re talking with younger children is to make sure that you use language at the same level as them. Imagine if suddenly you were dropped in to a university instead of school and had to listen to all the language that was going on there and were expected to understand it? This is how some children feel when they start school. As a Communication Leader, your job is to help younger children get more confident with their talking. You can do this by making sure that you use simple language when you speak with them.
Can you put the instructions on the slide in to least -> most complicated? What makes them easier/more complicated? (make sure that Leaders put them in order so that the instruction with the fewest words is the least complicated, and the longest instruction is the most complicated)
Talk about what makes an instruction more complicated? E.g. Number of words, how long the instruction is... In the most complicated one there is also loads of ‘extra’ bits added, which wouldn’t help the child. If you need to give a lot of information, don’t say it all in one big sentence! Try breaking it down in to chunks to make it more simple.

8. 3.Think about your non-verbal communication
Non verbal communication is all the ways that we communicate WITHOUT using words – try to come up with a list of non-verbal communication skills (facial expressions, body language, gestures, eye contact etc). Think about Mr. Bean, or a mime artist, or a silent movies – in all of these we know what’s going on even though no words are used. How?
Look at all the people on this slide – have a discussion about how they’re all feeling/what they’re thinking – how do we know that?
After the activity, ask the Leaders to think about the relevance of considering our non-verbal communication skills when working with younger children? (helps to keep them interested if we show interest, helps to boost their confidence if we show we’re happy with them – it’s a form of praise, can help them to understand what we’re saying if we use gestures alongside words, it’s important to model non-verbal communication skills).

9. 4. Listening
Listening is a really important part of communication – you’ll need to not only use your really good listening skills when you’re working with younger children, but listening is also really important as a general communication skill.
Discuss with the Leaders what good listening means – what exactly are we doing when we’re listening?
Try to encourage pupils to think about the following points:
Looking at the person who is speaking
Sitting still and not moving around or fidgeting
Being quiet and not speaking while someone else is speaking
Thinking about what the speaker is saying, not daydreaming about something else.....!
As a Communication Leader, you’re a role model, so pupils need to show other children how to listen well! It will also be important for them to help the younger children to use these skills themselves during the communication activities.

10. Being a Communication Leader isn’t just about working with younger children. There are lots of things that Leaders might like to do around school to help their whole school get excited about communication!
One of the activities in the pack is about a School Campaign (find this activity in the pack and look at it with the Leaders).
Talk about: who knows what a campaign is? What does it mean to run a campaign? A campaign is a series of activities to achieve some kind of goal – your goal will be to spread the word about how important communication is!
The school campaign is an opportunity to spread the word about communication throughout your school. Last year, one school ran a ‘switch off and talk’ campaign, to encourage people to switch off their TVs/radios/computers etc when communicating with others.
Ask the group for any ideas they might have as to something they think they would like to let the rest of their school know? Either about Communication Leaders, or about communication in general? You could plan your campaign at a later planning session.

11. Make your action plan!
As a group, think about your next steps as Communication Leaders.
What will you do next? How will you do it? Do you need to plan another meeting? Who needs to come to the meeting? What will you need? Etc etc.