'What’s an emperor penguin?’

Did you know that a child’s vocabulary size at age three can predict their future academic success? Discover how a guided play approach can spark children’s curiosity and build their language skills.

Research evidence tells us that helping children to understand and use a large vocabulary is crucially important.

• Good language development matters whilst children are in the early years – strong communicators can make friends, join in with play, and talk about their feelings and needs.
• Good language development also gives children the foundations they need to for reading and learning across the whole curriculum when they are older.

One way to support children’s language development is by establishing a culture where new words are regularly introduced to children and discussed with them. Sharing your enjoyment of new words and introducing them in a real context helps children feel motivated – this isn’t about having a dry list of ‘words of the week’.

Motivation doesn’t just come from building on children’s existing interests. Children are curious about places beyond their immediate life-experiences. We can use play-based approaches to expand children’s horizons and harness the power of make-believe to introduce them to new words.

Guided play is one way to do this. Play can give children a rich context for communication. The adult can guide the play sensitively to introduce new words to the children in an informal, conversational way. Research evidence highlights the importance of extended back-and-forth conversation, with the number of conversational turns being more important than simply the number of words a child hears.

• You can find out more about how to encourage back-and-forth conversations in our blog and video about the ShREC approach.
• Our new mini-guide about high-quality interactions explains how you can use everyday interactions with children to boost their language and learning

The ‘Exploring Polar Animals’ video is an example of Teaching and Modelling vocabulary with children aged from two to four-years old, taken from the Communication and Language theme of the Early Years Evidence Store.

As you watch the clip, reflect on how Beverley keeps the children engaged, staying at their level and using the following four practices:

• Naming and labelling: She provides the spoken word for different polar animals throughout the play, introducing children to words they might not know. The children themselves then copy her strategy, with one child telling another about the ‘emperor penguin’
• Explaining and showing: She helps the children to understand specific words by having resources to point to, like pictures
• Commenting: She highlights and repeats key words, like ‘cub’, in the context of commenting on the play
• Extending: She introduces the word ‘iceberg’ to name the picture, and then extends this by describing it as ‘an enormous iceberg’

You could use this clip to start off a professional discussion with a colleague. What new words could you introduce whilst playing with children in your setting? What might you do to sustain play and conversation?

• Visit the Communication and Language theme on the Early Years Evidence Store to find out more.
• Visit our Early Years Hub to explore more of our early years resources.