November 1, 2018

Does your child have the speech and language skills required for school?

It is normal to be worried about whether your child has the skills to start school with his or her peers. There are a number of speech and language skills that a child should have achieved by the age of five:

Speaking:

Use complete sentences which are understood by most people (e.g. includes all the ‘little’ words like is, are, the)
Link phrases together using and and because
Tell simple short stories and break them into a beginning, middle and an end
Produce most speech sounds correctly but errors with r and th may still occur
An s should be produced without the tongue poking out
Take turns during conversation and stay on a familiar topic

Understanding:

Follow three-part instructions (e.g. pack away your pens, put away your chair and line up outside)
Understand words related to time (e.g. before, after, later) and place (e.g. in, on, under, next to)
Start thinking about the meaning of words when learning
Begin to recognise letters and their matching sounds
Identify rhyming words and count beats in words once taught

If you are concerned about your child’s speech and/or language skills see a speech pathologist.

Claire Follent
speech pathologist