When I first started this blog, I had a few people asking for advice about motivating secondary school students to engage with Speech and Language Therapy (SALT) sessions. Young children typically enjoy the extra attention and are happy to be taken out of class by a professional. If you’ve ever worked with this age group, then you may have witnessed the motivational power of a few rounds of “pop-up-pirate” or a sticker at the end of the session!
But this no longer works with older students. (Well, apart from for one of my more naïve students who was absolutely delighted with the Simpsons stickers that I brought in, so never say never!)
The challenges
On the contrary, many older students are painfully aware of being “different”, and hate to be singled out for special support. Students presenting with language disorders at secondary level also typically have problems that are more ingrained. And whether or not they received consistent support, patchy support or no support earlier on, these problems have not gone away.
At the same time, expectations at school increase dramatically, and academic language becomes increasingly complex. Seeing the gap between themselves and their peers continue to grow, and feeling completely lost in class, many students become frustrated or give up. Without the right support, some lose faith in the education system and the professionals trying to help them.
Paul and Norbury (2012) also point out the considerable overlap that exists between language disorders and a range of emotional and behavioural difficulties. Some have estimated the figure to be as high as 25%. It may not always be clear whether frustration around the communication disorder is causing the behaviour, or whether it is linked to a co-occurring condition such as ADHD, ASD or another mental health condition.
What is clear is that the presence of such difficulties makes it harder for our students to benefit from instruction, both in class and in our sessions. This is not going to be the case for every single student, but Paul and Norbury (2012, p.482) warn that navigating these kinds of difficulties is a “fact of life” when working with young people with special educational needs, and something we should learn to expect.
Despite this, SLTs are not always taught the behaviour management techniques that school staff are. Our training is all about facilitation. We may be well-placed to help identify the reasons why a student is “acting out” in class, or perhaps zoning out, not completing any work. And we may be right that supporting these students’ communication skills is likely to have a positive impact on their behaviour and motivation.
But what do we do when these same behaviours start showing up in our sessions? When it becomes impossible to work on the very skills these students so sorely need because they cannot concentrate, they disengage or refuse to come to our sessions?
Logistical issues at larger secondary schools can also result in students missing out on precious SALT sessions. Working at a range of state secondaries for the NHS, I would sometimes have “no shows” due to timetabling issues, or because messages had not always been communicated to students. Teachers under pressure to improve their students’ grades, or perhaps unaware of the value of what we do are not always happy for students to be removed from their lessons and miss out on key learning.
Past failures
I have struggled with many of these issues myself. When I first qualified, I was working full-time in an enormous secondary school in a deprived part of London, with over 100 students on my caseload. Please see my first ever post to read more about my journey: https://secondaryschoolslt.com/2025/12/22/in-at-the-deep-end/
I was responsible for running multiple groups a day and felt very overwhelmed. On paper, I seemed to be doing everything right. I stayed up late, meticulously planning my sessions beforehand, with both a “step-up” and a “step-down” as I had been taught. I included games and activities to motivate my students, a visual timetable, brought a bean bag in as a “talking stick” and sweets as a reward…
Yet, my students would sometimes refuse to come to my sessions, or if they did they would “act out”. The bean bag I brought in was frequently thrown across the room, and I vividly remember one student telling me, “Your sweets are dead, Miss!” (To be fair to him, they were Werther’s Original, so maybe he had a point…) In short, they were letting me know in no uncertain terms how unhappy and frustrated they were, and how they did not believe I was helping them.
Over the years, things slowly improved. Yes, part of this was due to a change of environment that brought less overall pressure. Where I currently work, I’m lucky to have more 1:1 sessions and fewer students overall, and to feel supported by a strong and consistent behavioural management system across the whole school, which certainly helps.
Yet, it has still not always been easy, and some of these issues continued regardless of setting. In particular, as a small, friendly, unintimidating woman, I continued to struggle to run the social groups that were a key part of my role.
The students most in need of support with their social skills tended to be those with the most severe behavioural difficulties. So I’d often end up running groups consisting largely of students with conditions like ADHD and ASD. Putting them all in a room together felt like a recipe for disaster, and it often was. But I didn’t always have the luxury of picking and choosing “more suitable” attendees from a wide range of students.
Last week, in a sign of how much things have improved, a Learning Support Assistant (LSA) requested to support me with all three year groups (Year 8s, 9s and 10s, currently). After joining one of the groups for a session last year when his colleague was absent, he told me what a difference he saw in the behaviour of these students, and how they could clearly see the relevance of what they were learning to their lives.
So, without claiming to be an expert in behaviour by any stretch, I thought it might be helpful if I shared some of the things that have made the biggest difference to my practice. In Part 2 I will go on to talk about how using a “student-centred” approach helped me to motivate my students to attend and participate in sessions – coming soon!
Notes
Paul, R. and Norbury, C. (2012) Language Disorders from Infancy Through Adolescence: Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing, and Communicating. 4th edn. St. Louis, MO: Elsevier.
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