Alice Greening
Reception teacher
Used Infant Language Link weekly for 5 years+
Sep 2021
I am afraid I really don’t like using Language link in Reception. I find the assessment very time consuming and sometimes erratic in its response. It flags up children who have no difficulties day to day and misses those that do. I find the questions ambiguous and have some issues with the gender bias in the pictures and questions, as well as the clarity of the images and questions for this age children. I then find the group work unmanageable in terms of resource preparation and time taken out of the classroom. I feel with more explanation of why a particular child has been picked up, with actual examples of their needs, along with classroom strategies rather than intervention would work much better in EYFS.
Alice Greening found Infant Language Link :
- Does not reduce teacher workload“It generates a huge amount of work with the preparation of resources for intervention groups. The photocopying and setting up scenes, finding items etc. The language link assessment takes at least 20 mins per child which takes a teacher or ta away from the class impacting on workload.”
- Does not improve teaching efficiency“It is very time consuming for the outcome. A 20 minute session could be done within the classroom in 5 minutes. The planning is very wordy and doesn’t really explain what the outcome of the activities are.”
- Does not improve teacher knowledge“It just generates a program without explanation of how and why it has reached those conclusions, without specific examples, and nor what the expected outcome in the classroom in practical terms should be.”
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