Learning and Development
Top Tips to Promote Communication and Language Development
On this page you'll find useful top tips to share with your team and families to support communication and language development in your setting and in the home.
Bolton Start Well Service
Bolton Start Well provide professional development services for the early years workforce, to train and upskill practitioners to effectively support children’s development. You can check out the variety of professional development opportunities and training available in the courses section of the website.
Useful links
Help for early years providers: communication and language (Gov.uk)
Bolton Start Well at Home - Facebook Group
Bolton Start Well at Home aims to provide support, information, advice and some fun activities for parents and carers of under 5s in Bolton. This Facebook group is managed by Bolton Start Well Service in collaboration with the Children and Young People’s Health and Wellbeing Service at Bolton NHS Foundation Trust.
The group can be accessed here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/BoltonStartWellatHome and the full programme of events is available here.
Monthly Top Tips
These change at the beginning of the month, so please access these regularly to help you to continually reflect on and improve your practice. If you would like any further support around the use of these resources, please contact: Startwell@bolton.gov.uk and request support from Kathryn or Pamela.
Guidance for Top Tips of the month
Guidance for the use of monthly speech, language and communication development top tips for practitioners.
Top Tips of the month for practitioners
Monthly top tips to update practitioners on key areas of speech, language and communication development.
Top Tips of the month for parents
Monthly tips which practitioners can share with parents to encourage activities in the home learning environment to promote communication and language development.
Songs of the month
A monthly song card to share with children and parents: one song is a traditional song and the other is a new song to teach the children and share with parents.
Bolton 5 Golden Rules
Our 5 Golden Rules really help you to embed good adult child interactions in the setting and at home. These should form part of your induction and training for your team and be shared regularly and discussed with parents. To help you with this, we have produced some short video clips which can be shared with your families to illustrate the strategies. As always, talking families through and modelling these are the best way to help embed them.
Five Golden Rules for Communication
Poster/factsheet outlining the five golden rules to support children’s early communication and language development for use by practitioners and parents.
5 Golden Rules video clips
Actions speak louder than words
Model and Extend
Eye to eye
10 seconds
A or B
The Communication Trust Factsheet: Top Talking Tips for Parents
The Communication Trust - Top talking tips for parents
Top talking tips for parents and their children.
The Communication Trust - Top tips for developing talking
Tips from The Communication Trust for developing language in children and young people of all ages.
Greater Manchester Top 10 Tips for Talking
Greater Manchester has produced the GM Top 10 Tips for Talking. These 10 tips can be used to support your families with developing communication and language in the home and will complement our Bolton 5 Golden Rules.
For more communication and language resources including videos to support the GM Top 10 Tips for Talking please follow the link: Greater Manchester's early years resources - Greater Manchester Combined Authority (greatermanchester-ca.gov.uk)
To see the GM Top 10 tips in a format you can share with parents, including links to Tiny Happy People to show these rules in action, see the links below:
- Tip 1: When I am in mum's tummy, I can hear
- Tip 2: Cuddle me closer so I can see your face and talk to me as soon as I am born
- Tip 3: Talk about things that interest me or tell me how you think I am feeling
- Tip 4: Don't ignore me
- Tip 5: I love it when we play, sing and look at books together
- Tip 6: Talk to me all the time
- Tip 7: Play talking tennis with me
- Tip 8: Teach me new words
- Tip 9: Take my dummy out when I am talking
- Tip 10: Use the language you know best when you talk to me at home
To access the GM Top 10 Tips for Talking in different languages select from the links below:
- Arabic - GM 10 Tips for Talking
- Bengali - GM 10 Tips for Talking
- Cantonese - GM 10 Tips for Talking
- English - GM 10 Tips for Talking
- Farsi - GM 10 Tips for Talking
- Hebrew - GM 10 Tips for Talking
- Mandarin - GM 10 Tips for Talking
- Polish - GM 10 Tips for Talking
- Portuguese - GM 10 Tips for Talking
- Punjabi - GM 10 Tips for Talking
- Romanian - GM 10 Tips for Talking
- Spanish - GM 10 Tips for Talking
- Turkish - GM 10 Tips for Talking
- Urdu - GM 10 Tips for Talking
- Yiddish - GM 10 Tips for Talking
Supporting the Home Learning Environment (use of dummies)
These information sheets help practitioners to share key information with parents to support them in understanding the pros and cons of the use of dummies and how to wean a child off a dummy at home.
Ideas from communication champions to share with parents regarding dummy use
I CAN Factsheets
Speech sounds from I CAN
Informational factsheet about how children learn sounds.