Building Language Everyday

Language development doesn’t only happen during planned teaching activities. It grows through the everyday interactions children share with responsive adults.

Our Building Language Everyday course explores how children learn oral language and provides practical strategies for creating richer communication opportunities throughout everyday routines, play and learning.

You’ll explore why responsive, back-and-forth interactions are so important for language development and learn to recognise communication as much more than spoken words. The course also considers how these strategies can be used in a neurodiversity-affirming way, recognising and responding to each child’s individual communication style.

At the centre of the course is the Language Loop™ - a practical framework built around five key strategies: following the child’s lead, observing and waiting, commenting more than questioning, expanding communication and building language into everyday routines.

Participants are shown how to use these strategies naturally during play, meals, dressing, books, songs, games and other familiar routines, as well as how to adjust their language to match and gently extend a child’s current communication level.

The course also explores practical ways to support communication through gestures, signs, visuals and AAC, and includes guidance around when additional communication support may be helpful.

Course Objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Understand how young children learn language through responsive interactions.
• Recognise communication as more than spoken words.
• Identify and respond to a range of communication attempts, including gestures, sounds, signs, visuals and AAC.
• Use the Language Loop™ to create more opportunities for communication and language learning.
• Follow a child’s lead and join their focus of attention.
• Use observing, waiting and listening to support initiation and participation.
• Use comments more often than questions to provide richer language models.
• Expand a child’s communication by modelling language slightly beyond their current level.
• Build language opportunities into everyday routines, play and book sharing.
• Adapt language-building strategies for children at different stages of development.
• Use songs, rhymes and people games to support participation and turn-taking.
• Apply language-building strategies in a neurodiversity-affirming and responsive way.
• Recognise when further communication support may be appropriate.