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“Talk in the foundation stage is like anything else,” says Ros Bayley, “The challenge is to get the right balance of teacher- and child-initiated activities. If you over-formalise the process, you won’t address the developmental needs of young children. But if you’re not clear about exactly how you cover vital skills, you’ll miss opportunities. Then some children will be denied access to the building blocks of literacy.”

Ros and I have been working together on a book called Foundations of Literacy, a seven-stranded approach to the development of ‘pre-literacy skills’ for three to six-year-old children. Though our backgrounds are very different – Ros is an early years consultant and storyteller, I’m a literacy specialist – we’re both passionately convinced that the most important skill of all is speech. As educationist James Britton said thirty years ago, “Reading and writing float on a sea of talk.” Yet increasingly teachers tell us that many young children arrive in nursery and reception classes with very poor oral language skills. It’s therefore a matter of urgency to compensate for any language delay and get all children talking (and listening) effectively, before formal teaching of literacy begins. One of the problems, however, is achieving that critical balance between adult- and child-initiated learning.

During activities they’ve chosen themselves, children are highly motivated to learn and there’s a direct, concrete link between what they do and what they say which aids language development. However, if they have limited vocabulary and expressive language, their capacity for talk will be limited (‘Car do brmm’ as opposed to ‘Now the racing car’s starting up and steaming down the track, brmm...).. While the ideal would be to provide all children with sustained one-to-one conversational opportunities with an informed adult, that simply isn’t possible in a busy early years setting.

Children therefore also need to work in a group with a practitioner on activities specifically designed to improve discriminative listening, increase attention span and auditory memory, teach social skills such as turn-taking, and develop vocabulary and expressive language. The best UK and European settings have rigorously structured programmes to develop oral language – not that the children realise this, of course, as the activities take the form of songs and games designed to appeal to little ones. And sessions are not long, but spread throughout the day – little and often works best.

Nursery classes, for instance, might have a short ‘welcome session’ lasting 10 to 15 minutes when children have all arrived and self-registered, another before or after snacks and outdoor play time, and a final gathering before hometime – the length of any session depending on children’s attention span. As children grow older, there’s time in the school day to add more of these whole-group sessions. Each can involve an number of activities, such circle time games, storytime, action songs and rhymes.

Teacher-initiated activities rooted in the children’s interests are opportunities to plant the seeds of language development which can then grow during child-initiated learning. For instance, it is useful to target specific vocabulary on a weekly basis, both in teacher- and child-initiated learning, particularly words that

You can display a poster of current key words, so that all adults in the setting are constantly reminded of them and make an effort to bring them into talk. It’s also important to target the types of expressive language use which children from ‘language poor’ backgrounds may not use naturally. The mnemonic PREPARE is useful here – see Box 1.

In many classes, however, there may be some children whose spoken language is so delayed that they are still unable to join in. These children need extra help, including as much one-to-one talk as possible, preferably every day. One way to tackle this is to give each adult in the setting a list of three or so of the most needy children, with each of whom they’ll always spend 5-15 minutes each day. As well as pole-bridging, they should use the following techniques:

If possible you should also provide extra help for such children in a small group situation, and some LEAs have developed excellent courses, informed by speech and language therapists. A simple but effective published course which can be run by a teaching assistant is Spirals by Marion Nash and .......... (David Fulton Publishers).

Explore I wonder what this is? What might that be for? Considering possibility

N.B. The questions here are not intended for bombarding the children! They merely indicate the type of language enquiry involved in each type of language use.

Ros Bayley’s tips for talking with children during child-initiated activities

Follow the children’s lead

When deeply engaged in activities, children usually have a clear sense of purpose and a well-defined pattern of thinking. The most productive talk takes place when adults tap into this, and take turns with the child. Any attempt to introduce another agenda can only result in frustration and lost opportunities.

Be conversational

Use their comments as conversational openers. Listen carefully to children and repeat back what they say. This gives value to their ideas and encourages them to keep talking, e.g.

Child: This car go fast...fast...very fast.

Adult: This car goes very, very fast.

Child. That 'cause it racing car.

Adult: That's because it's a racing car. Would you like to drive a racing car?

Avoid the Spanish Inquisition

Ask questions sparingly. Questions can put children on the spot. If they don’t know the answer – or if they don’t have the vocabulary or facility with language to answer – they often just freeze up. Tentative language is often more effective, e.g. I wonder why the sand did that...

Seek enlightenment

One type of questioning that is often successful is a display of ‘genuine’ curiosity – for instance, asking children how they did something or asking for their help. This less direct, social questioning shows you are interested in and respect their ideas, and can also help move their ideas on.

Expand and extend

As in natural conversation, expand and extend on what children say in order to develop new ideas and vocabulary, e.g.

Child: When I went to the fair I went on the waltzers and it was great.

Adult: I went on the waltzers once, but I didn't like it.

Child: Why not, why didn't you like it?

Adult: It made me dizzy.

Child: Why did it do that? (You now have an opening to introduce new ideas and vocabulary.)

Model pole-bridging talk

It is natural for young children to talk to themselves as they do or make something, giving a sort of running commentary on their activity. This ‘pole-bridging talk’ is an important element in cognitive and linguistic development. For children with poor language development, however, pole-bridging talk may be involve vague and impoverished language. It therefore helps to model pole-bridging talk, thus providing them with the vocabulary when the context is most meaningful:

- during any play (indoor and out) and role-play

- when you or a child are making something or engaged in any creative activity.

You can pole-bridge on behalf of the child or children you are sitting with, describing their actions, e.g. You are putting all of the dinosaurs in the bucket! Or you can pole-bridge about what you’re doing yourself as you sit alongside a child, e.g. I think I’ll make a necklace. I’m going to thread this piece of macaroni on to the string. I’ll have to push it through the hole there. Now I’m pulling it along....

But remember to leave plenty of long gaps between sections of your commentary, so the child can join in or take over. And if the child is clearly irritated by your presence, stop!