Notice and Recognise

Progress examples to help you notice & recognise a child’s progress.

Use the phases of progress (outlined below) to help you notice and recognise a child’s progress.

Children actively communicate using their voice and body. Their vocalisations expand from coos to consonant and vowel ‘babbling’ that become more varied and increasingly reflect the languages around them.
Children increasingly recognise individual words and/or phrases in their languages, associating them with familiar people, objects, actions, and concepts. They understand more than twice as many words and phrases than they produce. Some children may respond to tactile objects that help them connect words with objects.
Children imitate the rhythm, intonation (variations in pitch) and gestures of familiar languages. They may begin using their first recognisable words or short phrases, including two syllable words with repeated sound (e.g., ‘mama’). Children start to produce signs and sign combinations to communicate with others.
Children initiate interactions and respond to others. They engage in back and forth (serve and return) interactions and turn-taking games with familiar people, particularly when given time to respond.

Children’s vocalisations increasingly reflect the sounds of the languages they hear regularly including consonant and vowel sounds, and gradually the combination of these (early words). Children make sounds and gestures to get attention, express their needs, or communicate their emotions.
Children understand and use a growing number of words and short phrases including questions. They begin using one or two-word phrases or sentences, followed by a rapid growth in the number of words used across their languages.
Children combine words, building simple phrases that may include subject, verb, and object words. They may integrate words from all their languages within phrases.
Children start conversations with others with a word, short phrase and/or gesture. They keep short conversations going with familiar adults or peers, taking short spoken and non-spoken turns.

Children’s communication is understood by familiar people most of the time. Their speech includes vowel sounds with an increasing range of consonant sounds and blends. They may also use longer words with more syllables.
Children are increasingly able to express themselves in the languages they are familiar with. Their vocabulary continues to grow rapidly across all their languages and will include conceptual and feeling words. Children can answer ‘what’, ‘where’, ‘who’ questions and are increasingly able to communicate about the past and things that aren't present.
Children use a diverse range of sentences. Their sentences are becoming longer and increasingly more complex.
Children use their languages to interact with peers and add complexity to their play. They begin to adjust their language style to suit the context, including exploring which words and phrases to use in different situations. Children with multiple languages may switch languages to match those they are talking to.

Children’s communication is understood by unfamiliar adults nearly all the time. Their speech includes a wider range of sounds including consonants, blends, long vowels, and vowel blends.
Children understand and apply language for increasingly complex purposes, including abstract concepts such as discussing imagined, future, and past events, and for humour. They can confidently answer ‘when’, ‘why’ and ‘how’ questions and follow two-step (or more) instructions without prompting. Their vocabulary grows daily across all their languages.
The diversity and length of children’s sentences continues to grow. Their sentences are usually grammatically correct and include more complex personal pronouns and tenses. Those using visual languages demonstrate fluency and accuracy in recognising and using signs or images in a variety of sentence structures.
Children use language to engage in sustained complex conversations with others, including to negotiate, express feelings, explain, pretend, joke, and talk about what is important in their lives. They organise their message logically and explain their reasoning to others, adapting their use of language to suit different situations and a wider range of people. Those with multiple languages can translate for others and adapt their choice and level of language to match those they are talking to.