The development of children’s spoken language underpins all seven areas of learning and development. Children’s back-and-forth interactions from an early age form the foundations for language and cognitive development. The number and quality of the conversations they have with adults and peers throughout the day in a language-rich environment is crucial. By commenting on what children are interested in or doing, and echoing back what they say with new vocabulary added, practitioners will build children's language effectively. Reading frequently to children, and engaging them actively in stories, non-fiction, rhymes and poems, and then providing them with extensive opportunities to use and embed new words in a range of contexts, will give children the opportunity to thrive. Through conversation, story-telling and role play, where children share their ideas with support and modelling from their teacher, and sensitive questioning that invites them to elaborate, children become comfortable using a rich range of vocabulary and language structures.

ELG: Listening, Attention and Understanding

• Listen attentively and respond to what they hear with relevant questions, comments and actions when being read to and during whole class discussions and small group interactions.
• Make comments about what they have heard and ask questions to clarify their understanding.
• Hold conversation when engaged in back-and-forth exchanges with their teacher and peers. response to stories or events.

ELG: Speaking 

• Participate in small group, class and one-to-one discussions, offering their own ideas, using recently introduced vocabulary.
• Offer explanations for why things might happen, making use of recently introduced vocabulary from stories, non-fiction, rhymes and poems when appropriate.
• Express their ideas and feelings about their experiences using full sentences, including use of past, present and future tenses and making use of conjunctions, with modelling and support from their teacher.

Birth to Three Years Old

• Playing with sounds and singing songs
• Communicating using facial expressions and gestures
• Using descriptive commentary
• Encouraging 2-way conversation with sounds, words, and gestures.
• Reading with the children and sharing stories and rhymes.
• Match plus one – extending vocabulary
• Building vocabulary, building on what children already know.

Nursery 3 - 4 Years Old

• Perform lots of action rhymes.
• Read lots of stories.
• Ask children to listen out for specific words. Link actions to the words 
• Use puppets
• Use Makaton
• Tell Teddy or another child/adult: what is happening                                                                

Reception 4-5 Years Old

• Share songs, nursery rhymes and stories that feature rhymes.
• Start to change rhymes
• Make up your own rhymes and stories.
• Introduce new and sophisticated vocabulary each week.
• Use retrieval practice to help children to remember and use these words.
• Creating exciting new areas in the classroom.  Allow children to find it and encourage discussions about what it is.

Birth to Three Years Old – babies, toddlers and young children will be learning to:

• Turn towards familiar sounds. They are also startled by loud noises and accurately locate the source of a familiar person’s voice, such as their key person or a parent.
• Gaze at faces, copying facial expressions and movements like sticking out their tongue. Make eye contact for longer periods.
• Watch someone’s face as they talk.
• Copy what adults do, taking ‘turns’ in conversations (through babbling) and activities. Try to copy adult speech and lip movements.
• Enjoy singing, music and toys that make sounds.
• Recognise and are calmed by a familiar and friendly voice.
• Listen and respond to a simple instruction.
• Make sounds to get attention in different ways (for example, crying when hungry or unhappy, making gurgling sounds, laughing, cooing or babbling).
• Babble, using sounds like ‘baba’, ‘mamama’.
• Use gestures like waving and pointing to communicate.
• Reach or point to something they want while making sounds.
• Copy your gestures and words.
• Constantly babble and use single words during play.
• Use intonation, pitch and changing volume when ‘talking’.
• Understand single words in context – ‘cup’, ‘milk’, ‘daddy’.
• Understand frequently used words such as ‘all gone’, ‘no’ and ‘bye-bye’.
• Make themselves understood and can become frustrated when they cannot.
• Start to say how they are feeling, using words as well as actions.
• Start to develop conversation, often jumping from topic to topic.
• Develop pretend play: ‘putting the baby to sleep’ or ‘driving the car to the shops’.
• Use the speech sounds p, b, m, w. Pronounce: l/r/w/y  f/th  s/sh/ch/dz/j, multi-syllabic words such as ‘banana’ and ‘computer’
• Listen to simple stories and understand what is happening, with the help of the pictures.
• Identify familiar objects and properties for practitioners when they are described: for example: ‘Katie’s coat’, ‘blue car’, ‘shiny apple’.
• Understand and act on longer sentences like ‘make teddy jump’ or ‘find your coat’.
• Understand simple questions about ‘who’, ‘what’ and ‘where’ (but generally not ‘why’).

3 and 4-year-olds will be learning to: 

• Enjoy listening to longer stories and can remember much of what happens.
• Pay attention to more than one thing at a time, which can be difficult.
• Use a wider range of vocabulary.
• Understand a question or instruction that has two parts, such as: “Get your coat and wait at the door”.
• Understand ‘why’ questions, like: “Why do you think the caterpillar got so fat?”
• Sing a large repertoire of songs.
• Know many rhymes, be able to talk about familiar books, and be able to tell a long story.
• Develop their communication but may continue to have problems with irregular tenses and plurals, such as ‘runned’ for ‘ran’, ‘swimmed’ for ‘swam’.
• Develop their pronunciation but may have problems saying: some sounds: r, j, th, ch, and sh , multi-syllabic words such as ‘pterodactyl’, ‘planetarium’ or ‘hippopotamus’.
• Use longer sentences of four to six words.
• Be able to express a point of view and to debate when they disagree with an adult or a friend, using words as well as actions.
• Start a conversation with an adult or a friend and continue it for many turns.
• Use talk to organise themselves and their play: “Let’s go on a bus... you sit there... I’ll be the driver.”

Children in reception will be learning to: 

• Understand how to listen carefully and why listening is important.
• Learn new vocabulary.
• Use new vocabulary through the day.
• Ask questions to find out more and to check they understand what has been said to them.
• Articulate their ideas and thoughts in well-formed sentences.
• Connect one idea or action to another using a range of connectives.
• Describe events in some detail.
• Use talk to help work out problems and organise thinking and activities, and to explain how things work and why they might happen.
• Develop social phrases.
• Engage in storytimes.
• Listen to and talk about stories to build familiarity and understanding.
• Retell the story, once they have developed a deep familiarity with the text, some as exact repetition and some in their own words.
• Use new vocabulary in different contexts.
• Listen carefully to rhymes and songs, paying attention to how they sound.
• Learn rhymes, poems and songs.
• Engage in non-fiction books.
• Listen to and talk about selected non-fiction to develop a deep familiarity with new knowledge and vocabulary.