Communication & Language

In the Early Years one of the prime (most important) areas of development is the child’s communication and language skills. The children need to have good communication and language skills to be able to achieve in all the core subjects at school (reading, writing and maths).

‘If you can think it, you can say it.

If you can say it, you can write it.

If you can write it, you can read it!’

(Melanie Maxwell)

When the children start with us in Nursery or Reception they are WELLCOMM screened to assess their speaking and listening skills. These assessments are used throughout the year to ensure the children are making progress and to ensure any early identification of speech and language additional needs is made. These screening results are shared with parents.

For any children that are highlighted as needing extra support in their communication and language skills we make referrals to outside agencies such as NHS SALT referrals and also carry out many in-house interventions for these children. For the children in Nursery we use the WELLCOMM big book of ideas to support children and in Reception we use the NELI (Nuffield Early Language Intervention) programme to help improve communication and language development.

All the staff in Early Years at Moston Lane are committed to improving children’s communication and language skills throughout every aspect of the day. Some of the ways we do this are by asking open ended questions, giving the children sentence starters, exposing children to new vocabulary and mainly giving children time to talk to practise and improve their skills! We also use talk partners in Nursery and Reception giving children the chance to practise articulating their ideas and knowledge effectively to their peers. 

We provide the children with a wide range of experiences linked to a breadth of different topics to introduce them to new language and vocabulary and then provide them with opportunities during their play (indoor and outdoor) to use and practise the new vocabulary they have learnt. Research states that a child needs to hear/use a word 12 times before they fully understand the word, so we revisit key vocabulary as much as possible to increase children’s vocabulary banks. If you would like to practise some key vocabulary at home then please look on the knowledge organiser for your child’s current topic and all the key words are down the right-hand side!

At Moston Lane we LOVE to role play! In our role play areas the children have the opportunity to become anyone they want to be and be involved in an exciting world of imagination with their friends. Role play situations are full of opportunities for the children to practise their communication and language skills and we make sure we provide lots of chances throughout the day, for the children to engage in the world of role play!