Simon Currigan: 0:44

Did you know language processing disorders can be a major driver of challenging classroom behaviour? Often overlooked, but critical in supporting students with special needs. We look into how difficulties with understanding and expressing language affect students' emotions and actions. Tune in for valuable insights that could transform your teaching. Welcome to the School Behaviour Secrets podcast. I'm your host, Simon Currigan. My cohost is Emma Shackleton, and we're obsessed with helping teachers, school leaders, parents, and, of course, students when classroom behaviour gets in the way of success. We're gonna share the tried and tested secrets to classroom management, behavioural special needs, whole school strategy, and more, all with the aim of helping your students reach their true potential. Plus, we'll be letting you eavesdrop on our conversations with thought leaders from around the world, so you'll get to hear the latest evidence based strategies before anyone else. This is the School Behaviour Secrets podcast. Hi. Simon Currigan here. Welcome back to another mini essentials episode of School Behaviour Secrets, where we revisit key strategies from past episodes that can make a real difference in your classroom right away. In this essentials episode, my co host Emma Shackleton and I head back to original episode number 29 where we unpicked 3 overlooked factors that cause challenging pupil behaviour in school. We pick up this interview around the 18 minute mark where we narrowed our focus on language processing disorders and the link with emotional development and behavior. And just before we start, I'd like to ask you that if you found this episode helpful, please subscribe and share the School Behaviour Secrets podcast with your friends and colleagues. It helps us continue to grow and support more teachers. So the third overlooked driver of behaviour in the classroom we're going to look at is language processing disorders. Now believe it or not, many kids who have difficulties with behaviour and emotions end up being assessed with some form of language processing disorder, and it turns out that difficulties with language is a really strong predictor of having emotional problems in the classroom. A 2013 longitudinal study followed kids from age 7 to 13. And what a longitudinal study does is it doesn't just take a short term snapshot. It follows those kids over weeks months years to find out what's happening in terms of their emotions and behaviour. And the researchers found that language ability predicted behaviour problems, things like aggression and outburst and defiance and bullying and lashing out, and it predicted inattentive behaviour issues. Researchers also did a comparison of things like ethnicity, social economic status, demographics, children's ability academically and intellectually, and it was found that this ability with language or these issues with language were the strongest predictor of behaviour problems. And also when they looked at the data, interestingly, it wasn't the behaviour issue that was causing problems with language. It was definitely the language disorder that was causing the problems with behaviour.

Emma Shackleton: 4:00

And when we're thinking about language processing, there are actually two types that we need to to think about. So we've got receptive language and expressive language. So what's the difference? Well, receptive language refers to how the child understands language, how they receive those words and how they interpret them. Expressive language refers to how the child uses words to express themselves. So you can see how an issue with those skills would really impact on children's ability to integrate into the classroom, socialise with their peers, and could easily make a child feel defensive or embarrassed or frustrated. If they're struggling to understand and process the words around them, that could lead to confusion, and if they're struggling to say what they mean or get their needs met because they can't express themselves, then that's obviously gonna cause issues with frustration, which could lead to behaviour difficulties as well. Many children with language processing disorders feel frustrated, helpless, and the way that they're gonna demonstrate this is by acting out or acting in. So that might be hitting out physically or verbally, but it could also be withdrawing from situations that make them feel uncomfortable, avoiding speaking out in class, avoiding putting their hand up to answer, avoiding asking other children if they can join in with the game, for example.

Simon Currigan: 5:30

One thing as an adult in the classroom you should be aware of is the issue of masking. So some kids mask their needs so they don't stand out or get noticed. So what they do is they watch their peers and they learn to nod in the right places so they don't stand out. They learn to say yes. They appear to understand what's happening, but then when they go back to their task, if you're thinking about an academic task or when they go to the group, they don't know what to do and they get left out or they may have some sort of social emotional issues. This can stand out a lot in P.E. So if you're teaching P.E. and the child appears to know what they're doing, but then they go back to the group and they do completely the wrong thing, that might indicate there's an underlying need around language processing. And the same with the work, if the child's nodding in all the right places when you're explaining the task, but then goes away and does something completely unrelated to what you've asked them to do, that may well indicate there's a language processing disorder.

Emma Shackleton: 6:23

And sometimes those children can't actually get started with the task because they're not a 100% clear of what to do because they haven't processed the instruction. So it can look like refusals. It can look like laziness, it can lead teachers to ask questions like, weren't you listening? Or to accuse the pupil of being lazy or work avoiding because they're not able to express themselves, or they might not be able to hold on to a series of instructions. So they might get the first couple, but then they fall off task and get into trouble. This always reminds me of a colleague that I worked with from the communication and autism team, and he explained to me that it can take up to 7 seconds for a child to process one instruction. Imagine that, 7 seconds. If you think about it, when do we ever give 7 seconds processing time between instructions? Most of the classrooms I go into, we are firing off instructions one after the other in quick succession and expecting the children to keep up.

Simon Currigan: 7:30

And then if you've got a child with language processing disorders, what happens is they go away and do the wrong thing, and then we get focused on the behaviour, what they've done wrong, or we start to think about the wrong cause. We think they're lazy or inattentive rather than digging down into the true cause of that problem, which might be expressive and receptive difficulties. So if you think this may be an issue with a child that you're working with, the best thing to do is speak to your SENCO or to the support services that work with your school and ask them to conduct a language screen, and they can give you really specific advice on next steps because what you need is a program of support around that individual pupil to help them get over their needs because every child is different. And if you'd like to know two more significantly overlooked factors that cause challenging pupil behaviour, feel free to pop back to the original episode. That's episode number 29. I definitely recommend you have a listen. I'll put a direct link to it in the podcast description. If you love helping others, why not share the School Behaviour Secrets podcast with a friend or a colleague? All you have to do is open up your podcast app, click the share button, and let them in on all the great insights too. With a quick tap, they'll be listening in no time. And that's it for today. So thanks for listening, and I look forward to seeing you next time on School Behaviour Secrets.