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How do respectful and responsive relationships support young children's communication skills?

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With the beautiful weather outside this morning, many of the children were playing outside while some of the younger babies were inside having their morning sleeps.  I was inside when I noticed ‘E’ (10 months) starting to wake up from her nap.  She stood up in her cot and started to bounce up and down while she held onto the side of the cot and babbled away to herself. While she was happily playing in her cot I prepared her bottle for her to have.  Once it was ready I walked over to her and asked if she would like to get out of her cot and have her bottle.  She looked me in the eyes and smiled at me and bounced her body up and down so I picked her up out of the cot and gave her a big cuddle.  We decided to head outside and join the others so ‘E’ could have her bottle outside.

We found a nice spot to sit in the shade and I held ‘E’ on my lap, preparing to give her a bottle. As soon as we sat down, ‘L’ who was playing in the sandpit spotted us and walked straight over to the mat where we were sitting and stood next to us and pointed to the bottle.

‘E bottle’ said ‘L’, using the babies full name.

‘Yes it is ‘E’s bottle.  Would you like to help feed ‘E’?’ I asked ‘L’.

‘L’ then looked at me with a big smile ‘I feed E’ she said.

I then handed ‘L’ the bottle and she gripped onto the end of it and slowly guided it towards ‘E’s mouth.  ‘E’ lay in my lap with her eyes wide open looking closely at ‘L’ holding the bottle and started to drink her milk.  I could see ‘E’ was watching everything ‘L’ was doing as she fed her the bottle and seemed quite content and relaxed.  ‘L’ held the bottle and watched as ‘E’ drank, watching her intently and smiling down at her in my lap.  It took quite some time for ‘E’ to drink the whole bottle and ‘L’ happily stood holding the bottle the whole time.

Finally  ‘E’ had finished all the milk in the bottle.  I explained to ‘L’ that it was all finished.  ‘L’ held up the bottle and peered inside ‘All gone’ she said and she walked over to the drinks trolley and popped the bottle on the top.

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This afternoon the children were playing outside in the outdoor play space. I decided to put a water tray into the sandpit and fill it with water for the children to play with.  I filled a bucket with water from the outdoor tap and poured it into water tray, getting it ready while most of the children were playing in another section of the outdoor space.  ‘F’ you were sitting nearby having a drink of water and noticed what I was doing and walked straight over.  You pointed to the small amount of water in the water tray ‘Would you like to play with the water?’ I asked you and you smiled. You started to splash your hands in the water.

I continued to fill up buckets of water and pour them into the water tray.  You picked up a bucket, held it up and looked at me.  ‘We need more water, would you like to help me?’  I asked you.  You smiled back at me ‘F’ and then you held onto your bucket and followed me to the tap.  You held the bucket under the tap and watched it as it slowly filled with water.  We walked back to the sandpit together and ‘F’ you poured the water from your bucket into the water tray.

You then started to splash your hands up and down in the water happily.  You brought your hands out of the water and looked at them as they were shiny and covered in water and then put them in your mouth, sucking all the water off.  ‘F’ you then spotted a small round container nearby so you picked it up and scooped up some water into it. You poured the water back into the water tray, and as you poured it out it made lots of bubbles in the water and I could see you watching as the bubbles appear.  ‘Can you see the bubbles?’ I asked you.  You looked up at me ‘Bub bub’ you said excitedly.   ‘F’ you continued to splash and scoop and enjoyed this play for quite some time.

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My name is Julia Coad and I have been undertaking my placement in my workplace for my 0-2 yar old placement which started on the 30th of October 2023. The service is located in the inner city suburb of North St Kilda in Melbourne. It is a long day care setting which provides education and care to 65 children from the community across 5 rooms. The centre is clearly divided into two sections by a walkway and entrance into the building. One side of the building has two rooms which cater for children aged 0-2 and the other side of the building has three rooms for children aged 3-5 years old. The centre is well established and both younger and older sides of the building have a large expansive space outdoors for the children to explore with large trees, lots of plants and a rich natural environment. As most families in the area live in apartments with little space for the children to go outside, the outdoor space here is so valuable to the community at the centre. The room that I have been working in for my placement has 8 children per day aged 8 months to 2 years old with most of the children being around 18months old. The children have all been in the room for the whole year with consistent educators and they are all very settled and engaged. Through my observation I was able to focus on many of the children’s emerging interests and for this documentation panel I will be focusing on how respectful and responsive relationships support these young children and there emerging communication skills.

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Today in the Koala room the children were all having their midday sleep.  After a nice long sleep ‘S’ started to slowly wake up, he moved around on his floor bed and opened up his eyes and looked towards me in the room.

‘Hello ‘S’, your awake’ I said to him as I slowly came over to see him.

‘Up’ said ‘S’ looking towards me as he lay on the bed.

‘ah are you ready to get up?’ I asked him as I walked over and sat down beside him.

‘S’ smiled and then sat up on his bed, rubbing his eyes as he was still waking up from his sleep.  There was a small basket of books on the floor nearby and ‘S’ spotted them straight away.  He started to stand up on his bed, looked at me and said ‘Train book’ as he pointed to the basket nearby. I asked if he would like to get the train book for us to look at together, he smiled and walked over to the book basket and picked up a board book with a picture of a train on the front. ‘S’ then walked back to his bed, slowly making his way past some of the other children that were still sleeping and sat back down on his mat next to me and handed me the book.

We started to look at the pages of the book together.  I was holding the book and ‘S’ sat close by and turned the pages. As he turned each page, ‘S’ would point to the pictures and I would say the name of what we could see on the page. The first page there was a picture of a house, ‘It’s a house’ I said as ‘S’ looked at the book and then looked up to me smiling. He continued turning the pages and arrived on the page with a bus picture,‘S’ pointed to the picture and said ‘Bus’ and looked up at me.  ‘Yes I can see it’s a bus, I wonder if you know the wheels on the bus song?’ I asked.  I then started to sing the ‘Wheels on the bus’ as we looked at the picture of the bus together.  ‘S’ sat on his bed while I was singing and started to wiggle and bounce his body up and down as I sang the song.  ‘The wheels on the bus go round and round all day long..’ I finished singing.

Meanwhile one of the other children in the room had started to wake up so I went over to help them. ‘S’ stayed sitting on his bed and continued to look at the book.  He turned the pages and found the page with the bus on it once again and started to wiggle his body ‘all day long, all day long..’ he sang as he looked at the book.

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The three observations recorded above have the common theme of communication.  Each observation shows different ways that children are able to communicate to express themselves in their everyday interactions with others.

In all three observations we can see that the children are developing their communication skills and are able to engage in enjoyable interactions with others using verbal and non-verbal language. As seen in observation one and two, the children were able to use their body language and verbal language to communicate to the me what they wanted. Similarly in observation three, the child was able to use his body language and gestures to communicate with me about filling up and exploring the water play.  This learning links to the ideas from the Victorian Early Years learning framework (2016), which explains that children communicate with others from birth.  They begin by using gestures, visual and non-verbal cues, sounds, language and assisted communication in forming relationships.  And they respond verbally and non-verbally to what they hear, touch, feel and taste. Over time, communication becomes more intentional.

We can also see some examples of Bruner’s theory on language development in the observations.  Bruner believed that social interactions play a fundamental role in children’s language development by scaffolding their learning (Nolan, 2015).  In all three observations we can see that the children who are beginning to use their oral language to communicate are learning to extend their language by their interactions with me as I respond and engage in conversation with them. In observation one, ‘S’ is able to learn and repeat ‘all day long’ after signing it together.  And in observation three, ‘F’ begins to make the beginning sounds of ‘bubbles’ as I talk to him about what we can see while he is playing.

The three observations also show us examples of serve and return interactions.   Serve and return interactions help to build brain architecture. When a young child tries to communicate by babbling, gestures or crying and an adult responds appropriately, neural connections are built and strengthened in the child’s brain that support the development of communication and social skills(Harvard University, 2023). In observation one there were numerous serve and return interactions, in particular when the child pointed to the pictures in the book and I asked questions and used words to respond to support his development. In observation two when ‘E’ woke up from her sleep I was able to engage in a beautiful serve and return interaction and she smiled and engaged with me and I was able to ask if she was ready for her bottle.  In Observation three ‘F’ was able to hold up the bucket to show me he wanted to fill it up with water and I responded to him in a positive serve and return interaction.

The Reggio Emelia approach and the pedagogy of listening gives us much to think about in relation to communication with children.  It explains that listening and reciprocal expectation is an important quality, enabling communication and dialogue and demands to be understood and supported.  It states that children are the greatest listeners to the world around them and they listen to life in all its shapes and colours (Rinaldi, 2001).  We can link these ideas and theory to the three observations as we see many examples of both children and the educator being listeners.  In Observation one and three the children able to take in all that surrounds them, the language, images and the environment around them and engage in a reciprocal interaction with the educator.  Observation two also shows us a wonderful example of listening. When the older child was feeding the baby the bottle there was a great sense from them both that without using any words they were able to watch each other, be present and connected with each other and know that they were both content and comfortable in this interaction.

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The three observations demonstrate the different ways in which young children communicate. The observations show us that at this young age the children are using body language, sounds, expressions and verbal language to communicate to the world around them.

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Based on the observations and analysis above I am interested to explore the ideas of our role as educators in supporting young children’s developing communication skills, specifically how respectful and responsive relationships support young Childrens’ development in this area.

There are so many possibilities of how we can support young children’s communication development and I would like to start by thinking about the routines and rhythms we have in place for this group of children.  I have found that working with younger children can often feel hurried and doesn’t allow much time and space for respectful interactions and authentic communication to happen.  So I would like to look at ways we can create more time and space in the rhythm of our day so that educators have more time to listen, respond and communicate with the children.  How can we slow down and take the time to communicate and respond to each individual child? As Magda Gerber (2002) explains through the RIE approach to caring for infants, it is important to communicate with even the youngest of infants about what is going to happen to them and what you would like to do in everyday caregiving tasks. This helps to foster a style of two-way communication that respectfully involves the child.  This might look like taking the time to ask a child if they are ready for lunch before picking them up and putting them in the highchair or explaining to the child all the steps of what you are doing when you are changing their nappy.

I would also like to look at the environment and the resources we have available to the children.  I wonder, are we providing an environment full of rich resources to support the children’s communication skills?  Having quality books readily available to the children in both indoor and outdoor spaces for them to access independently will further support their development. As well as changing the books around more frequently so the children have a range of different books available to them.   Also creating spaces for reading which are inviting to children, educators and families so that when an educator is available, or a parent picks up or drops the child off they can also comfortably sit and read to the children.

We need to also think about the resources available to educators and how they can support children to further develop their communication skills. Having puppets, musical instruments and quality books for the educators to use is also important. The Department of education and training [DET] & Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority [VCAA], (2016) states that from birth, intentional communication is strengthened and broadened. Children learn to take turns in communication exchanges through their relationships with responsive adults, exploring sound and movement patterns, singing songs, reading stories, playing games and recording their thoughts and ideas. I would like to encourage educators to access different resources to support the children’s communication skills, including learning new songs with actions to sing to the children.

I would also like to focus on educator’s interactions and conversations with the children throughout the day.  The first two years are critical for language development, and the brain is being wired for language with every interaction and conversation. A conversation with an infant requires educators to respond to smiles, frowns sounds or gestures with words and attention (Greenman et al., 2008).  So I would like all educators to take the time to respond to the children, ask them questions and really listen to them where possible. And continue to engage in serve and return interactions to further support the children in their developing language and communication skills as seen in the observations above.

Finally I would like to introduce some key word signs with this group of children to support their communication. Key word signing is a hugely valuable tool for communication and learning in early childhood. Key Word Signing fosters responsive and meaningful interactions between educators and children building trusting relationships, which engage and support each child to feel secure and confident (Scafidas, 2023). It also supports and inclusive environment for the children as it can be used by all children in the group to support them to communicate with others. I would like to make a display of the basic key word signs in the room to prompt whoever is working in the room to use them with the children. And provide information to families so that they can also use them at home.  I will be interested to see how the children respond to the use of key word sign and how they use it to communicate to educators and other children.  And what impact might it have on the overall learning and behaviour of the children in the group?

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When considering implementing some of these ideas I decided to first make a new reading space in the outdoor environment.  With the children spending so much time in the outdoor space at the service I thought it would be a great opportunity to make a space where children had access to a range of books and an area where educators could have enough space to sit and read to the children.  I discussed my ideas with the rest of the team and we all agreed that having a space in the shade would be ideal.  So, I collected some books from the Centre library and put them in a basket, found an outdoor mat and some cushions and positioned them all under the big tree at the top section of the outdoor space.  I took some books out of the basket and spread them around the space as an invitation to the children to interact in this space with the resources. To begin with I stood back and watched how the children interacted in the space.  The children were instantly engaged and sat down on the cushions and mat and picked up the books that were laid out and looked at them.  Some children turned the pages and pointed to the pictures, other children were able to say the words of some of the things they saw in the books.  Only one of the children went to the basket to get the books out, the others used the ones I had spread out on the mat, so I think already having the books out for the children would work better in the future. Then throughout the day myself and other educators sat in the space and read to the children. Many of the children came over to the area when the educators were there and they all enjoyed reading in this space together.  This allowed opportunity for storytelling, connection, conversations and questions between the educators and children. We have decided to keep the reading area in the outdoor space and I would like to continue to observe the children in this area and change it according to their needs.

While changing or adapting the routine for the children is something that will take some more time and consideration, I have implemented some small changes in the way I interact with the children throughout the day.  The quote ‘we see the children speak to us, even when they don’t speak’ (Rinaldi, 2001) has really stuck with me throughout the remainder of my placement.  I have been trying to be more aware of my interactions with the children and paying close attention to the different ways in which they communicate with us.  I have also been more intentional about communicating with the children and allowing them the time and space to respond.  For example, one of our younger babies was due to have her bottle but was happily crawling around outside. I sat down outside close by to her while still giving her some space.  I called her name and asked her if she would like to come and have her bottle.  She looked over to me and smiled and bounced her body.  She started to crawl my way and stopped to push a wooden dog toy that was on the ground and then finally crawled over and climbed up on my lap.  She happily drunk her bottle and then crawled off and continued to play.  Clearly communicating with the child, asking her questions and allowing the child the time and space to come to me on her own terms created a more authentic and respectful interaction, rather than just picking her up and telling her it was time for her bottle. I hope to put more of the ideas of Magda Gerber into practice and continue to be more intentional and unhurried with my interactions with the children going forward.

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Department of Education and Training, & Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority. (2016). Victorian early years learning and development framework: For all children from birth to eight years.
https://www.education.vic.gov.au/Documents/childhood/providers/edcare/veyldframework.pdf

Gerber. (2002). Caring for infants with respect. (2nd  Ed.). Resources for Infant Educarers (RIE).

Greenman., Stonehouse., & Schweikert. (2008). The first two years of life: What do toddlers need most. Prime time: A handbook for excellence in infant and toddler programs (pp. 52-66).  Addison Wesely Longman.

Harvard University. (2023). Serve and Return. Centre on the developing child: Harvard university. https://developingchild.harvard.edu/science/key-concepts/serve-and-return/

Nolan, A. (2015). Theories into practice: Understanding and rethinking our work with young children and the eylf. Essential Resources Educational Publishers Ltd..

Rinaldi. (2001). The Pedagogy of Listening: the listening perspective from Reggio Emilia. Innovations in education: the Reggio Emilia exchange. Wayne State University.

Rinaldi. (2001). Reggio Emelia: The image of the child and the child’s environment as a fundamental principle. Gandini & Edwards (Eds.), Bambini: The Italian approach to infant and toddler care (pp. 49-54).  Teachers College Press. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/vu/reader.action?docID=4699807&ppg=66&tm=1519615978116

Scafidas. (2023). Key Word Signing at Kids College Childcare. Kids College. https://kidscollege.com.au/key-word-signing-at-kids-college-childcare

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Implementation of outdoor reading space 

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Implementation of outdoor reading space 