Jules Pottle

Talk in the home and talk in the classroom is so important. Talking with children, in conversation, where their words are listened to, respected and responded to thoughtfully, is what encourages children to keep talking. Why bother talking if no one is listening? If conversations are never instigated by a parent or their child, how is that child supposed to acquire all the words they need to be able to access their own education?

I remember reading to the whole class from a text that was completely accessible to most of the children. Once child, however, kept stopping me with questions, to the point where the flow of the story was completely lost. I said, albeit gently, “Just listen… see if you can work out what is going on in the story,” to which she replied, “But there’s so much I don’t know!” That little voice has stuck with me.\nHaving now read Alex Quigley’s “Closing the Vocabulary Gap” (Routledge, 2018), I am painfully aware that understanding only 75% of the words in a text can make it almost unintelligible. We need to use as many words as possible, using them time and time again, from birth, to really give our children the best chance at accessing texts and thereby succeeding within our education system. Research from the 1990s in the USA (Hart and Risley, 1995) showed that parents in professional families spoke 32 million more words to their children than those on welfare. As teachers, we need to make sure that children are immersed in language, in vocabulary and discussions about the meaning of those words as they may not be getting this kind of chance to engage in conversations at home. \n

In my first few years as a teacher,

So, the first thing we need to do is listen to what a child is interested in and then seek to keep the conversation going, seeding that talk with vocabulary for the child to try out for themselves. There are particular questions which lead to conversations whilst others close them down. Consider these two approaches to answering a child’s question: \n\nChild: If I put an ice cube in the puddle, will the whole puddle turn to ice?\nAdult 1: No\n\nor \n\nAdult 2: I don’t know. I’ve never tried. Shall we have a go? Where do you want to put the ice cube? What happened? That’s interesting – what would you like to try next?\n\nWhich of these answers will do justice to the child’s question? Which will lead to the most conversation? We must all remember to keep the conversation going, like adult 2.\n\nThis has a particular importance when we consider science. There are many factors which contribute to our young people’s success in science at KS5 and beyond. A recent study by the EEF and the Royal Society (2017) reported that:\n\n“ in correlational studies of science learning, the strongest and most consistent predictor of pupils’ scientific attainment has undoubtedly been how literate they are.”\n\nIt also reported that “the mediating role of reading comprehension between SES (socio-economic status) and science attainment is independent of measured intelligence.” (p. 10) \n\nSo, exposing all children, of all abilities, to a vocabulary-rich environment will raise attainment through improved reading and comprehension. Reading stories with the language of science or history embedded within them will help children to access the vocabulary they need but non-fiction texts also play an essential role, even if they don’t seem as cosy when choosing a bedtime story.\n\nThis process of acquiring the science-specific vocabulary needs to begin as early as possible to give every child the best chance at achieving their academic potential. But what can we do in the early years to promote our children’s learning in science?\n\n•	Get alongside children as they are playing. Chat about what they are doing with them.\n•	Read stories with a STEM theme (e.g. “Jasper’s Beanstalk”, Butterworth (Hodder Children’s Books, 2008)) and chat about what you have read.\n•	Get out and about in the forest, a park or a museum and chat about what you have seen or done.\n•	Share non-fiction books, written for the very young, such as “1,000 Words STEM” (DK, 2021). Chat about the words in the book.\n•	Invite parents into the nursery/classroom to model playful book sharing and book talk.\n•	Engage in observing nature, in kitchen science or in forest school activities and talk about what you have seen and done. Use the vocabulary e.g. freeze, melt, mix, heat, tree, leaf, seed etc.\n•	Provide equipment to instigate scientific activities e.g. magnifying glasses, pots nets, tweezers, water play, thermometers (child-safe ones), torches, model insects, model dinosaurs, toy cars, play-tools etc. Use the vocabulary as you talk to the children about what you are doing.\n•	Train all your staff to engage children in conversations with open questions  and curiosity, rather than closing down the conversation with a closed question or a definitive answer. \n\nIn short, there is a huge benefit from simply filling the environment with vocabulary, so listen to what children are saying and keep the dialogue going. Introduce science-specific words as early as you can. There are many three-year-olds who can correctly use the names for dinosaurs. Why not extend this to plants, insects, types of material, science equipment, names of planets or words for processes like dissolve, melt, heat or freeze. And fill the environment with books which will spark curiosity and conversation, setting those words in concrete memory, even before they are fully understood.\n\n* The impact of Covid-19 on School Starters: Interim briefing 1 Parent and school concerns about children starting school April 2021\n

The Early Years classroom is the one place where a child’s personal interests can lead their education.

Teachers are in conversation with children all day long. My voice is often croaky by the end of a school day, not through ‘teaching from the front’ but through being in constant conversation: listening, explaining, questioning, checking in with my children’s well-being. In educational settings, we are constantly communicating and using vocabulary. We clarify and refine what children are saying to us and sometimes we playfully get it wrong to elicit more conversation with the child. However, many homes are places where the voices our children hear most often are those on the iPad or TV. In addition, parents are often distracted from interacting with their children by their own lives. They may be unaware that their children would really benefit from engaging with them, face to face. So many moments of interaction are lost this way; so many words are left unsaid by parent and child.\nWhen surveyed, post-Covid, by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF)*, many teachers reported that children were exhibiting a delay in their speech development having spent so much time at home during lock-down. 58 schools were surveyed. 44 of those schools (76%) reported that children starting school in September 2020, after the first lockdown, needed more support than previous cohorts and 55 of those schools (96%) reported that they were struggling with communication and language. In contrast, whilst 33% of parents were concerned about their child’s social and emotional development, only 3% expressed concern about their child’s communication and language - it was definitely not their priority.

Science Talk in the Early Years

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