The ShREC approach

1 July 2025

The EEF’s early years specialist Fliss James explains how educators can use the ‘ShREC’ approach to engage young children in high-quality interactions.

Fliss James

Content Specialist for Early Years

Supporting children to become better communicators is one of the most powerful things we do as early years educators. Oral language skills are fundamental to children’s learning, thinking and emotional wellbeing. Children who can communicate well can make friends, play, resolve conflicts and tell us how they are feeling. In the short term, children who are better communicators at age five become better readers. In the longer term, they go on to achieve better exam results at age 16 and are more likely to gain higher-paid employment as adults (Shuey and Kankaraš, 2018).

Prioritising communication and language development

Research tells us that we should prioritise the development of children’s communication and language through socially meaningful interactions. Children thrive on conversation with people they have a strong relationship with, focused on things they want to talk about.

High quality interactions often look effortless, but they are not easy to do well. The ShREC approach provides us with a simple and memorable set of specific, evidence-informed strategies which we can embed into everyday practice. We can use these strategies with every child, every day.

So, what happens during the ShREC approach?

Share attention

Tuning in’ and showing genuine interest in what a young child is focused on lets them know that you value and want to spend time with them. It is a powerful way to establish a connection.

Getting down to the child’s level and engaging in their choice of activity provides a crucial opportunity to pay attention to what they look at, what they do, and what they say. Sensitively joining in with a child’s play motivates them to communicate with you.

Respond

How we respond to a child once we have established joint engagement is dependent on our knowledge of them as a unique individual. Adaptive, attuned responses should be sensitive, supportive and stimulating. Educators should warmly acknowledge children’s verbal and non-verbal communication. Non-verbal responses may include eye contact, looking expectantly, nodding or smiling. Verbal responses may include narrating what the child is doing or commenting on what they can see, hear, feel. You may articulate the link between their activity and previous learning or experiences.

Expand

The ‘back and forth’ rally of engagement is getting underway: the educator and child are sharing attention, with the educator responsively following the child’s lead. This is where modelling and scaffolding begins, with the educator pitching their language just above the level of the child.

If a child gives a one-word response such as ‘dog’, we should expand on what they say. Educators can do this by repeating and building on this utterance by adding a few more words (‘Yes, it’s a dog. A small, brown dog’). This helps children to use more complex utterances. Your knowledge of the child will inform what may be helpful to model.

Conversation

The goal is to develop sustained back-and-forth conversations that involve many turns. The beauty and power of conversation is that it offers children an opportunity to practise talking and to receive feedback from an adult.

To encourage rich back-and-forth conversations: comment more, question less. When used sparingly, questions can be useful to cue turn-taking during conversation, especially ‘Wh’ (who, what, where, when) and open questions which invite children to elaborate.

As children’s conversational skills develop, we can sensitively challenge children, shaping the conversation to incorporate more abstract topics that are removed from the ‘here and now’.

These strategies encourage us to become more responsive and attuned to children. They encourage children’s active participation in meaningful, stimulating and linguistically rich back-and-forth conversations.

Watch the video of ShREC in action below: