Our aim is to develop happy, well-adjusted, confident children who have the strong academic and speech and language basis required to cope with formal education.
The Talk Shop’s exciting specialised environment for pre-school children with special speech and language development needs, was founded by parents and by Barbara Bennett, an experienced professional who is qualified in both education and speech and language therapy.
At The Talk Shop, we believe in offering your child a single solution to their academic and therapy needs, and therefore offer both a nursery school programme and therapy at the school. This enables the multi-disciplinary team dealing with your child to be involved in all areas of his/her development thereby ensuring a more holistic approach. It also saves you the hassle of driving to different therapists in the afternoons, and makes your child feel more settled. All parents are encouraged to participate in the various therapies and activities that form part of your child’s overall programme.
Although our admission criteria is strict and we try our utmost to ensure that the children we accept are able to follow the mainstream curriculum without any adaptations, we do believe in inclusion, and will therefore accept a maximum of two high support children per class. They may be high support in terms of some of their academic skills, their behaviour or their physical ability, including fine motor skills.
Children are admitted into the full-time programme at 3 years of age. The Talk Shop follows a mainstream curriculum but the programme may be modified in terms of pace and possibly content dependent on the children/class.
The Talk Shop can accommodate up to 62 children with varying degrees of speech and language difficulties. We have three age groups and these include:
- Two Gr 000 classes (the year the child turns 4)
- Two Gr 00 classes (the year the child turns 5)
- Two Gr R classes (the year the child turns 6)
Children are admitted to the Talk Shop on a case-by-case basis, but we very rarely accept children in the year they turn 7. Under some circumstances we may allow, or even encourage, one of our Grade R children to repeat their Grade R year with us if we feel that it will positively change their placement following their time at The Talk Shop.
Our class sizes are a maximum of 10 children in the Grade 000 and Grade 00 classes and may go to a maximum of 11 children in the Grade R classes. Each class has a teacher and a classroom assistant. This high adult-to-child ratio ensures that each child is able to cope with the work presented, some with higher levels of support than others.
