Understanding and speaking “between the flags”. Children learn to communicate by interacting with early childhood educators, family, and friends. Early childhood educators and speech pathologists can support children to build their communication and keep them developing “between the flags”. Early childhood educators and speech pathologists can work together to: find out which children are understanding and speaking “between the flags”, create communication-supporting learning spaces, and help children with a range of communication needs. Speech pathologists can also provide therapy to help children with: understanding and using pictures, symbols, signs, gestures, speech sounds, words and sentences, taking turns and making eye contact, building skills for later reading and spelling, stuttering, and voice difficulties.
This poster describes the stages of typical language development, with examples of what you might see and hear. Language development in the primary years steadily builds on the solid foundations that are established during the early years. Children’s attention, listening,understanding, vocabulary, speech, grammar,storytelling and conversations all develop further in terms of skills, knowledge and complexity. Children develop at different rates and this poster tells you what to expect at different ages. Although it is not an assessment, the information could help you identify children who are not developing language skills as expected. Children with English as an additional language are at the same risk of speech, language and communication needs as any other child, however, this can be more difficult to identify.
This poster gives information to teachers about language and communication development in secondary pupils. It may help families and teachers identify those pupils who have an underlying speech,language and communication need. Language development in the secondary years is a gradual process with many subtle but important changes taking place. Pupils may fail to develop age appropriate language skills for a range of reasons including: they may have general learning difficulties, they may have had less support to develop their language and communication skills fully, or they may have a specific difficulty with language that is out of step with their potential to learn. Children with English as an additional language are at the same risk of speech, language and communication needs as any other child, however, this can be more difficult to identify.
