Display photographs showing the signs that tell us how young babies communicate.
Provide tapes and tape recorders so that parents can record familiar, comforting sounds, such as lullabies in home languages. Use these to help babies settle if they are tired or distressed.
Share favourite stories as babies are settling to sleep, or at other quiet times.
Provide resources that stimulate babies' interests such as a shiny bell, a book or a mirror.
Plan times when you can sing with young babies, encouraging them to join in exploration of their fingers and toes.
Collect a range of board books, cloth books and stories to share with young babies.
Provide gloop (cornflour and water) in small trays so babies can enjoy making marks in it.
Provide a variety of toys that encourage young babies to reach and grasp, for example, a baby gym.
8-20 Months
Communicate with parents to exchange and update information about babies' personal words.
Display lists of words from different home languages, and invite parents and other adults to contribute. Include languages such as Romany and Creole, since seeing their languages reflected in the setting will encourage all parents to feel involved and valued.
Create an environment which invites responses from babies and adults, for example, touching, smiling, smelling, feeling, listening, exploring, describing and sharing.
Find out from parents the words that children use for things which are important to them, such as "dodie" for dummy, remembering to extend this question to home languages. Explain that strong foundations in a home language support the development of English.
Discover from parents the copying games that their babies enjoy, and use these as the basis for your play.
Encourage babies to make marks in paint or with thick crayons.
Plan a range of activities that encourage large and fine motor skills, such as throwing and kicking balls, riding push-along toys, feeding the guinea pigs.
16-26 Months
Allow time to follow young children's lead and have fun together while talking about actions such as going up, down or jumping.
Encourage parents whose children are learning English as an additional language to continue to encourage use of the first language at home.
Provide books with repetitive stories and phrases to read aloud to children to support specific vocabulary or language structures.
Plan play activities and provide resources which encourage young children to engage in symbolic play, for example, putting a 'baby' to bed and talking to it appropriately.
Collect resources that children can listen to and learn to distinguish between. These may include noises in the street, and games that involve guessing which object makes a particular sound.
Provide CDs and tapes of rhymes, stories, sounds and spoken words.
Give young children, who are keen to represent the same experience repeatedly, a range of mark-making materials.
Provide resources for finger-painting and play with soapy water, to interest young children who are not yet able to hold a brush or felt pen to make marks.
22-36 Months
Display pictures and photographs showing familiar events, objects and activities and talk about them with the children.
Provide activities which help children to learn to distinguish differences in sounds, word patterns and rhythms.
Include things which excite young children's curiosity, such as hats, bubbles, shells, story books, seeds and snails.
Provide activities, such as cooking, where talk is used to anticipate or initiate what children will be doing, for example, "We need some eggs. Let's see if we can find some in here".
Plan to encourage correct use of language by telling repetitive stories, and playing games which involve repetition of words or phrases.
Use puppets and other props to encourage listening and responding when singing a familiar song or reading from a story book.
Provide stories, pictures and puppets which allow children to experience and talk about how characters feel.
Provide dual language books to raise awareness of different scripts. Try to match dual language books to languages spoken by families in the setting. Remember not all languages have written forms and not all families are literate either in English, or in a different home language.
Provide materials which reflect a cultural spread, so that children see symbols and marks with which they are familiar, for example, Chinese script on a fabric shopping bag.
Vary the range of tools and equipment located with familiar activities, for example, put small scoops, rakes or sticks with the sand.
30-50 Months
Encourage children to express their needs and feelings in words.
Provide opportunities for children whose home language is other than English, to use that language.
Find out from parents how children make themselves understood at home; confirm which is their preferred language.
Set up a listening area where children can enjoy rhymes and stories.
Introduce 'rhyme time' bags containing books to take home and involve parents in rhymes and singing games. Ask parents to record regional variations of songs and rhymes in other languages.
Introduce, alongside books, story props, such as pictures, puppets and objects, to encourage children to retell stories and to think about how the characters feel.
Help children to build their vocabulary by extending the range of their experiences.
Ensure that all practitioners use correct grammar.
The story tent - In a busy reception class, a child and a practitioner take a quiet moment to explore a book.[transcript]
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Set up shared experiences that children can reflect upon, for example, visits, cooking, or stories that can be re-enacted.
Help children to predict and order events coherently, by providing props and materials that encourage children to re-enact, using talk and action.
When making up alliterative jingles, draw attention to the similarities in sounds at the beginning of words and emphasise the initial sound, for example, "mmmmummy", "shshshshadow", "K-K-K-K-Katy".
Create an attractive book area where children and adults can enjoy books together.
Provide some simple poetry, song, fiction and non-fiction books. Include books containing photographs of the children that can be read by adults and that children can begin to 'read' by themselves.
Create an environment rich in print where children can learn about words, for example, using names and labels.
Introduce children to books and other materials that provide information or instructions. Carry out activities using instructions, such as reading a recipe to make a cake.
Ensure access to stories for all children by using a range of visual cues and story props.
Plan to include home language and bilingual story sessions by involving qualified bilingual adults, as well as enlisting the help of parents.
Provide activities during which children will experiment with writing, for example, leaving a message.
Include opportunities for writing during role-play and other activities.
Provide opportunities for large shoulder movements, for example, swirling ribbons in the air, batting balls suspended on rope and painting.
Encourage children to make shapes like circles and zig-zags in the air and in their play, for example, with sand and water and brushes.
40-60+ Months
Give time for children to initiate discussions from shared experiences and have conversations with each other.
Give thinking time for children to decide what they want to say and how they will say it.
Set up collaborative tasks, for example, construction, food activities or story-making through role-play. Help children to talk about and plan how they will begin, what parts each will play and what materials they will need.
Provide opportunities for talking for a wide range of purposes, for example, to present ideas to others as descriptions, explanations, instructions or justifications, and to discuss and plan individual or shared activities.
Foster children's enjoyment of spoken and written language by providing interesting and stimulating play opportunities.
Provide word banks and writing resources for both indoor and outdoor play.
Resource role-play areas with listening and writing equipment and provide easy access to word banks.
Provide opportunities for children to participate in meaningful speaking and listening activities. For example, taking models that they have made to show children in another class and explaining how they were made.
Writing a letter - In a nursery class, children explore writing materials, commenting on the marks they have made. [transcript]
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Set up displays that remind children of what they have experienced, using objects, artefacts, photographs and books.
Provide for, initiate and join in imaginative play and role-play, encouraging children to talk about what is happening and to act out the scenarios in character.
Ensure that role-play areas encourage writing of signs with a real purpose, for example, a pet shop.
Plan fun activities and games that help children create rhyming strings of real and imaginary words, for example, Maddie, daddy, baddie, laddie.
When practitioners judge that children are ready to begin a programme of systematic phonic work they should refer to the guidance on the EYFS CD-ROM, which can be found in areas of Learning and Development: Communication, Language and Literacy: Early Reading.
This will support practitioners working in the EYFS and beyond to start teaching the phonic knowledge and skills children need to be able to recognise words and read them with fluency by the end of KS1. Practitioners need to make principled professional judgements as to when individual children are ready to start such work. For most children this will be by the age of five.
When practitioners judge that children are ready to begin a programme of systematic phonic work they should refer to the guidance on the EYFS CD-ROM which can be found in areas of Learning and Development: Communication, Language and Literacy: Early Reading. This will support practitioners working in the EYFS and beyond to start teaching the phonic knowledge and skills children need to be able to recognise words and read them with fluency by the end of KS1. Practitioners need to make principled professional judgements as to when individual children are ready to start such work. For most children this will be by the age of five.
Encourage children to add to their first-hand experience of the world through the use of books, other texts and information, and information and communication technology (ICT).
Provide story boards and props which encourage children to talk about the sequence of events and characters in a story.
Provide story sacks and boxes for use in the setting and at home.
Provide varied texts and encourage children to use their phonics knowledge to recognise words.
Provide some simple texts which children can decode to give them confidence and to practise their developing skills.
Provide picture books, books with flaps or hidden words, books with accompanying CDs or tapes, and story sacks.
Provide materials and opportunities for children to use writing in their play, and create purposes for independent and group writing.
Plan occasions where you can involve children in organising writing, for example, putting recipe instructions in the right order.
Provide word banks and other resources for segmenting and blending to support children to use their phonic knowledge.
Provide a variety of writing tools and paper, indoors and outdoors.
Give children practice in forming letters correctly, for example, labelling their work, making cards and writing notices.
Provide opportunities to write meaningfully, for example, by placing notepads by phones or having appointment cards in the role-play doctor's surgery.
Acknowledgements
Disclaimer
00012-2007CDO-EN