Post-Covid, early years children are struggling with language and communication. Sophie Hutton looks at how to help them.
Pull quote: “96% of schools have expressed significant concerns over the communication and language development of post-Covid Reception cohorts”
You’re watching a TV programme, and it’s a key scene. But there’s noise from the street outside, the actors aren’t speaking clearly, and you can’t make out what anyone is saying.
You really want to know what’s going on in the scene, but it’s confusing and you’re having to guess what’s happening from one moment to the next.
For children whose first experiences of life took place during the Covid pandemic, entering education feels a lot like watching that TV programme.
The children currently in Reception were anywhere between six and 18 months old when the first lockdown was announced in 2020. For those vital months when they were acquiring first language skills, the only people who spoke to them were their immediate family.
As a result, 96% of schools have expressed significant concerns over the communication and language development of post-Covid Reception cohorts, according to a 2022 study led by Louise Tracey of the University of York, published by the Education Endowment Foundation.
A 2022 report published by the charity Coram Family and Childcare also found that Covid has left early years children unable to adapt to new situations, socialise and develop self-regulation skills.
Put together, these two findings mean that children unused to dealing with new social situations and lacking the language they need to express their difficulties are finding early years education a bewildering, frustrating and often stressful experience.
So, what can early years settings do to help?
1. Start at home, bringing parents on board
Introducing new concepts in a new environment is doubly challenging for early years children. They are being asked to absorb new information in a setting that is inherently distracting – and sometimes anxiety-inducing – purely because it is unfamiliar.
By contrast, children feel most comfortable at home; it is the place they know best.
Involving parents and carers in their children’s early learning introduces good habits for everyone. The Education Endowment Foundation has consistently found that the more engaged parents are in their children’s learning, the better children’s communication, language and literacy is likely to be.
We therefore regularly ask parents to use family photos to stimulate conversation at home. A picture of Mummy driving the car or Daddy at the beach will immediately pique a child’s interest.
We then suggest that parents ask simple questions, such as “What is Mummy doing?” or “Where is Daddy?” This encourages children to construct short sentences about familiar people and common activities. It also develops a habit of conversation, which is the bedrock of literacy.
2. Understand that communication does not have to involve words
Early years children often struggle with the transition from one activity to another. So, every time that we have a transitional activity – such as tidying up or washing our hands before eating – we use a song to accompany it. Children often process songs much more easily than they process spoken language.
We also use visual timetables to help prepare children for change, and to explain why we’re asking something new of them. Visual timetables using images, such as Widgit Symbols, are already common in the SEND community. However, they can also play an important role in mainstream education.
A visual timetable uses simple and easily decodable images to show children what is going to happen during the day. These can include specific activities, such as painting or outdoor play, or constituent parts of one activity, such as washing their hands, fetching their lunchbox and then eating.
While a verbal message disappears as soon as it’s delivered, visuals are permanent. For children who take longer to process information, having a visual timetable to refer to can help reinforce the message they have just heard. Together, the verbal and the visual messages teach children how to use language.
3. Explain emotions using storybook characters
Children with undeveloped language skills can easily feel overwhelmed in a new setting, which can lead to dysregulation. Often, they can’t understand the emotions they’re experiencing or name these emotions, so that they can ask staff for help.
Odessa Stephenson, SENCO and early years lead at Monkhouse Primary School in Tyne and Wear, uses storybook characters to initiate conversations about emotions that children might experience in daily life.
“We help children to interpret the emotions of others by using story characters,” she says. “For example, we might ask, ‘How did the Billy Goats Gruff feel when the troll said he would gobble them up?’ So when it comes to helping children with their own feelings, they are already developing that emotional literacy.”
Once an emotion has been named, staff can then ask questions such as, “What would make Baby Bear feel better?” or “What could Goldilocks have done instead?” This opens up a conversation about how children can also manage difficult emotions.
From there, it becomes easier to move on to questions such as, “Can you think of a time when you were feeling scared like Red Riding Hood?” Staff can then suggest a coping strategy with prompts such as: “When we’re feeling like that, we can do this.”
The more children learn to express themselves, process their emotions and feel in control of what’s happening around them, the better they will be at regulating their behaviour and managing their emotions by the time they start Reception. This can help to ensure that their experience of school won’t feel like a mumbled TV programme. Instead, it will be more like an absorbing drama, from which they emerge enriched.
About the Author:
Sophie Hutton is a speech and language therapist, and CEO of Nest Therapy, where she uses Widgit Symbols to help meet children’s speech, language and communication needs. She is also a contributor to the recently published report How to build confident early learners.
