Effective communication skills are essential for a child's overall development. These skills will influence how they engage with others, express themselves and make sense of the world around them. As children develop speaking and listening skills, they're building the foundations for literacy and learning.

Speech, language, and communication are critical areas of development for our children. They play a vital role throughout their lives, helping them to understand what is going on around them, communicate their basic needs and feelings, hold conversations, think and learn, develop relationships, solve problems, and more.  These are all incorporated into our aspects of learning and encourage and build upon this through quality interactions.

Listening to other people speaking enables children to develop vocabulary, comprehension and language skills. Their listening skills also influence their ability to learn to both read and write, and they greatly influence their social skills as well.

Children who enjoy music, singing and rhyming on a regular basis tend to learn to speak more easily. They have more words to express themselves and are more confident and creative. Singing also strengthens their lips and tongues which encourages clear speaking, and also expands their vocabulary and teaches them about creative language and rhyme. We hold rhyme time sessions, singing our favourite songs and building up a large repertoire of rhymes.

Story time enhanced imagination to help visualise spoken words, improve vocabulary, and more refined communication skills. Our children are encouraged to sequence, act out roles from a story, and re-tell a familiar story. We do this through immersing the children in the book, discussing new vocabulary and key phrases associated with the story.

Our EYFS children have lots of visits from outside speakers, who immerse the children in their learning or can bring deeper expertise to a topic. In EYFS all our children have opportunities to listen to the information and experiences of these visitors and discuss their roles. The children are then encouraged to ask questions to find out more and develop their vocabulary on the different topics.

Learning new words not only allows you to communicate better but it also enhances your overall understanding. It allows you to understand and enjoy what you read, and learn about the people and the world around us. It also enables us to express our thoughts and become better listeners. We promote vocabulary through quality interactions, story time and throughout the areas within provision.