How one school improved the language skills of nursery and Reception children. Deputy head teacher Helen Lombard explains

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At Littletown Junior, Infant and Nursery School in West Yorkshire, we have sought to address the long-standing problem of our children’s poor communication and language skills, in particular their vocabulary. As a school, we knew about the link between a child’s speech and language skills and their life chances and that to tackle the vocabulary problem effectively, we had to start with our youngest children.

Many of our nursery children still refer to themselves as ‘me’ (for example, ‘Me do that’) and their sentences consist of only three or four words. Conversations with them are limited, as is their vocabulary, with children often saying ‘there’ or ‘that thing’ instead of naming the place or object.

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