Exploring words
Support children to recognise and produce sounds, and learn new words.
Contents on this page
Why exploring words is important
Stories are an important part of life. Loving printed books and developing an enjoyment of looking at or hearing stories is an integral part of early years practice. Research shows that the amount of input young children receive from the adults around them makes a significant difference to how children learn to read and write in reception classes. This section outlines the knowledge and skills that children need to develop:
- phonological awareness, the awareness of all of the sounds of language, it’s the ability to hear and distinguish sounds
- vocabulary
- expressive language, vocabulary, grammar and changes to words such as plurals (known as morphology)
- receptive language, the ability to understand what is said
Word reading is explicitly taught in reception classes, and all the early communication experiences parents and early years settings provide helps children to learn to read successfully.
Enjoyment of books, rhymes and songs helps children to read because you:
- share books on a daily basis
- provide opportunities to use spoken language and take part in talk (verbal interaction)
- read aloud
- discuss books
- extend spoken language by introducing new words in context, drawing attention to letters and sounds
- develop thinking and reasoning
- listen, giving a spoken account of a set of events (narrative) and developing vocabulary skills
Word reading and language comprehension are essential building blocks. Children in the EYFS need word support from an early age, to develop hearing, saying and recognising words or word parts.
Video
In this video, an early years expert explains the importance of exploring words in the early years foundation stage framework. There are also some tips on how to support children in this area.
Transcript
Transcript
It is crucial for children to develop a lifelong love of reading.
The early years setting should ignite a natural curiosity and interest in words, playing with sounds, making up rhyming words, and enjoying the whole process of reading for pleasure and for information. This will provide a strong foundation for skilled word reading taught later in reception.
We want children to feel confident playing with sounds, rhyming words, and enjoying the whole process of reading and being read to. This will help them start to realise that words carry meaning and how they are structured in sentences.
What I’d like us to talk about now is actually how we explore words.
Hearing and playing with sounds is what we’re going to concentrate on in their spoken language to begin with, and we’re emphasising children’s phonological awareness.
Now, whilst phonics is formally taught in reception, there are a huge range of activities that we do that actually help children develop that phonological awareness.
So would you be able to start to share some of the examples that you give in your setting? Well, I think staff being role models to the children and emphasising certain letter sounds, if it’s the first letter of their name and things like that, that all helps them to obviously hear things very differently.
And in terms of actually helping them to hone into the ends of words or the beginnings of words, do you sort of play with anything around alliteration or tongue twisters, rhymes? How do you do that?
Yeah, quite often the children like making up rhymes. It doesn’t have to make sense, but silly spaghetti Simon and things like that, building on that alliteration and playing around with words. They love it, and the funnier the better.
The other day we did going to the shops. That’s one of the little girl’s favourite games to play in the car, and I added the ABC. So we sang the ABC and we were trying to remember what letter came next in the ABC. So we went to the shops and we bought apples, and then we bought some brownies.
The next little bit that we’re going to just emphasize in exploring words is developing children’s awareness of the sounds in words.
Would you be able to share some of the things that you do to expose children to more experiences where they have to actively listen?
So we do a lot of sound walks around the nursery, around the local environment. Also body percussion, using body parts, breaking words down, particularly clapping the rhythms of their names.
Getting them to hear those syllables in their names is a great way of getting the children to explore those sounds.
When we’re talking to children, engaging them in the listening, they’re surrounded by sound. How do you, within your setting, Emma, really work out whether children are really listening accurately?
Obviously ensure you’re always giving children time and space to listen, making sure they’ve processed and understood what you’ve asked maybe, or what you’re speaking about, and monitoring their language. Is it developing as it should?
Not only do we have the books where we have a limited number of words, or words that rhyme at the end, or pick up and retell fairy tales, we’ve also got a whole rich vein of books that actually have no words in them at all. How do you use those in the setting, and why would you do that?
So it’s a great starting point for children to make up their own stories. Giving them that picture and asking them to put it into words.
If they can’t put it into words, helping them obviously, the younger ones just talking about it, building on those initial words that they’re saying.
Playing with words and having fun with words and sounds helps to develop children’s interest and curiosity.
This in turn starts their interest in words.
It’s important that all children hear new words in context through play.
A critical skill for early years children is to build their auditory discrimination skills. I check how much they understand what is being said, and if they are accurately hearing the sounds and syllables in each word.
Singing songs and rhymes with children is a great way to find out if they understand what is being said, and if they are hearing the sounds and syllables in each word. You can change the words in a familiar song and see if they notice whether they still rhyme. Research tells us that the more we talk to children, the more words they hear and understand. We need to think in advance about how we make sure children’s activities will extend their vocabulary.
Reading books is essential to expose children to words that they do not normally hear or say. Providing opportunities to explore formal language through play activities helps children experience words and phrases in context.
What the EYFS framework says
It is crucial for children to develop a lifelong love of reading. Reading consists of two dimensions: language comprehension and word reading.
Skilled word reading, taught later, involves both the speedy working out of the pronunciation of unfamiliar printed words (decoding) and the speedy recognition of familiar printed words.
Statutory framework for the early years foundation stage.
What this means in practice
Adults use books all the time. Having lots of books in the setting, reading enthusiastically, and talking to the children about why you love books starts to develop a love of reading. Making sure children have a lifelong enjoyment of books, starts by helping them understand that pleasure, fun and joy are associated with books, stories and rhymes.
You support children’s understanding of words through a range of activities, with enthusiasm and showing an exaggerated love of books. You talk about the children’s focus of interest finding books to support and extend their experiences. You connect new words to meaningful events in the child’s daily life. You explain, pretend, talk about past and what may happen in the future to broaden children’s understanding of word meaning.
Encourage children to notice signs, symbols, notices, numbers, rhymes, books, pictures, songs, and poetry, considering their different interests, understanding levels, home backgrounds and cultures.
Children should hear a wide range of songs, poems and stories, covering a selection of sounds to isolate. This helps them to develop their phonological awareness.
Provide experiences of:
- rhyme
- rhythm
- alliteration, or words that repeat the same sound in a sentence. For this, at snack time you could say ‘Aman, would you like an awesome apple?’ ‘Tam, have you brought a tasty tomato?’ ‘Saskia has some squishy strawberries’
Provide opportunities to ‘hear’ sounds. On walks, point out lorries as they rattle past, or quiet forest sounds and louder street sounds. Talk about these. Children could either hear or make sounds themselves. Focus children’s attention on a rich variety of vocabulary, including rare and infrequent words. When it rains, grab welly boots, coats and umbrellas. Can children hear raindrops ‘pitter pattering’? Take a bubble machine out with you. Children can enjoy dancing and singing under the bubbles. How do bubbles sound when they pop?
When reading with children, let them repeat and emphasise words with expression so they can react to your story. For example, ‘I’ll h-u-ff and I’ll p-u-ff and I’ll blow your house down. Ph-ee-ww (stretched whistle)’ Consider which songs and rhymes you naturally choose. Cover all sounds equally. Fill gaps of any sounds covered less often.
Make sure you get the support and help from the family by asking parents or grandparents to share songs, rhymes and stories from their cultures and childhoods, helping children identify new sounds and widen their vocabulary.
Suggested activity
Volcano
You’ll need a book to read. For example, here we use ‘Going to the Volcano’ by Andy Stanton and Miguel Ordonez, which supports harder letter sounds like ‘v’ and ‘z’.
In the story, two children visit a volcano. The book repeats sentences with a rhythm and beat. Words also play with ‘o’, for example ‘volcano, jane-o, lane-o, dane-o, train-o, plane-o’. The pictures are simple, with hidden clues, like:
- lava bears have letters on their chests, spelling out ‘volcano’
- there is a colour-changing cat to find on each page
- space characters are called Zib, Zob, Zub, Zab and Zoob
It’s easy to match story parts with setting toys like dinosaurs, a crane, a train, a plane, the weather and nurses and doctors named after the volcano.
Read the book, looking at pictures while playing with any repetitive words. Consider building on the story with roleplay, for example:
- pack a rucksack, what will you bring? Do you need a list?
- bring toys and characters along. Roleplay train journeys, plane journeys. For older children, notice sounds and spellings
- look at the animals, dog, cat, panda, rabbit and bird. What words rhyme with them? What letter do they begin with?
- there is a band in the book, what songs do they sing? What songs do you know? Be the band, with instruments. Or be an instrument. Play a pretend trumpet or trombone, or bang on a drum saucepan
- build a volcano. What does the explosion sound like? What about smells? Your volcano model can be any size, depending on you and your space.
For a volcano model, you’ll need:
- a small bowl
- a cup
- 1 tbsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
- 1 tbsp washing up liquid
- 2 tbsp water
- ½ cup vinegar
- 1 tbsp red food colouring
In a bowl, combine bicarbonate of soda and washing up liquid. Add water and mix thoroughly, then pour mixture into your volcano.
In a cup, mix together vinegar and food colouring.When ready, pour the vinegar into the bicarbonate bottle.
Wait for it to erupt, watching the lava flow.
This short National History Museum video shows how to make a volcano.
How this activity links to other areas of learning
Children imagine how they would feel on a journey to a specific place (imagination and creativity). They’re able to see how a volcano works (spatial reasoning) and respond to it (exploration of materials). They’ll want to talk about what they saw (communication and language).
Other activities
Let’s get moving with action words.
A good selection of babies and children’s nursery rhymes from the BBC.
ICAN have a resource library created by speech and language therapists.
What other nurseries and childminders are doing
“On our walks, we use stories and rhymes to engage children. Recently we walked through the woods, coming to a hill. The 3 year old children climbed it first, followed by the 20 month old who needed some help. We sang ‘The Grand Old Duke of York’ as we climbed, and the younger child joined in saying ‘up, up.’ The big ones ran down saying ‘down again’. We stopped halfway, finishing the song ‘neither up nor down’. Another time we used Jack and Jill. I changed the song names to children’s names, making it personal to them. I got muddled because the song didn’t rhyme, but the children found it funny.”
Caroline, childminder, Rotherwick.
Summary
- Sound knowledge starts at birth. Support children to recognise and produce sounds in words. Help them to learn the meaning of new words through the activities they do with you, help children to notice how the word appears, (representation), and learn how to use words correctly.
- How are you linking spoken language to developing reading and writing? For example, focus children’s attention on labels on objects that interest them, talk to children using a variety of words that have similar meanings.
- Provide opportunities for children to express their ideas verbally and explore a rich vocabulary through high quality books.
- Children with better language skills will develop stronger reading skills.
Next steps
- Consider talking opportunities for your children. Are you playing with words and making up your own? Are you extending their sound knowledge?
- Check for sounds that children struggle with. Some sounds and letters are more difficult. Once you have identified these, give them attention. Seek out opportunities to play with them more often.
- Proving children with lots of opportunities to understand and hear sounds building helps them in the reception year develop their formal phonic journey.