Between five and seven years, children have developed good communication skills. They are better at using
language in different ways e.g. discussing ideas or giving opinions. They should be able to understand more
complex instructions, and concepts such as first/last, same/different.
Children develop skills at different rates, but between five and seven years, usually children
will:
Aut R
1. Focus on one thing for longer without being reminded.
2. Have developed grammar and this is usually correct in spoken sentences, but they may make occasional errors.
3. Speak clearly and be easily understood
4. Rely less on pictures and objects to learn new words.
5. Learn that the same word can mean two things, such as 'orange' the fruit and 'orange' the colour.
6. Learn that different words can mean the same thing such as ’minus’ and ‘take away’.
7. Understand feelings and descriptive words like 'carefully', 'slowly' or 'clever'.
8. Use language for different purposes such as asking questions or persuading. They should be able to understand most types of
questions.
9. Share and discuss more complex ideas. Children should be able to take part in a longer conversation: usually saying things
which are relevant to the conversation, and take turns in speaking.
10. Use language in a range of social situations. They should be able to tell you about an event fairly clearly and should have
started to understand jokes and humour.
11. Use their language skills in learning to read, write and spell.
Notes:
Spr R Sum R