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 confidence 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 WordUp 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.
Give the Leaders a few minutes to 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 with some year 7 students 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? How might they practise their interviewing skills – do they have any interviews coming up to practise for? It helps if you can make the activities as relevant as possible to the Leaders to encourage them to really understand how communication is a part of everything that we do and is everywhere.
This might be a good opportunity to practise some of the activities in the pack – perhaps you could all have a go at one of the icebreakers, or one of the talking transition activities.

6. Some things to consider when thinking about working with Year 7s:
Some of the support that the Leaders might offer is to help Year 7s with their transition to their new secondary school. Ask the Leaders about their own experiences with moving to secondary school - Can anyone remember what it was like? How did you feel?
What are some of the main differences between being at primary and being at secondary school?
In small groups, or as one big group – think about what are the top 5 bits of information that you think is ESSENTIAL for new year 7s to know about your school (who’s the strictest teacher, what’s the best thing to eat for lunch, where's the best place to go for after school snacks etc)
It’s important at this stage to let the Communication Leaders know that some of the year 7s they may be supporting aren’t necessarily going to be as confident as they are, or they might be struggling with their language and communication development. Leaders will need to keep this in mind when they’re supporting them – the year 7 pupils might sometimes struggle to understand or have difficulty expressing themselves

7. Some things to consider when working with younger students: 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?
Think about the relevance of non-verbal communication in their role as Communication Leaders – Leaders might need to use more actions or gestures to help some of the younger students understand, or they might need to think about their body language, facial expression or tone of voice when trying to build a younger pupil’s confidence etc.

8. Developing the Leaders communication skills: Interviews
Discuss with Leaders how communication skills are important when you’re going for interviews? Why are communication skills important?
Recent research found that employers rate ‘effective communication’ as the top skill that they’re looking for in people who they interview for jobs.
Part of the pack includes some activities that help Leaders to practise interviews – both asking and answering questions. Have a practise of some of these activities in the introductory session. You might like to plan another session in the future to focus just on interview skills, or preparing for any interviews that the Leaders may have in the future e.g. for work experience or a school event.

9. Being a Communication Leader isn’t just about developing the communication skills of the year 7s you’re working with. 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.

10. 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.