Communication, Language and Early Literacy/Numeracy
What this domain tests
This domain tests language milestones, strategies that build oral language, and the pre-literacy and pre-numeracy foundations appropriate before formal schooling.
Core rules
- Milestones. Cooing around 2 months, babbling around 6 months, first word near 12 months, about 50 words and two-word combinations by 24 months, three-word sentences by 36 months, and speech intelligible to strangers by about four years.
- Adult strategies. Serve-and-return conversation, expansion (child: 'doggie run' - adult: 'Yes, the doggie is running fast'), recasting, open questions, narrating routine actions, repeated readings of the same book, rhymes and songs, and a print-rich room with labelled shelves.
- Early literacy building blocks. Oral vocabulary, phonological awareness through rhymes and clapping syllables, print awareness and concepts of print, book handling, storytelling sequence, and drawing that moves from scribble to letter-like forms - not alphabet drills.
- Early numeracy building blocks. One-to-one correspondence, stable counting order, cardinality, subitising to three or five, sorting and classifying, comparing and ordering, simple patterns, shapes and spatial language, and measurement words such as long, short, heavy.
- Bilingualism. A second language does not cause delay; support the home language while introducing the school language through play and routine.
Worked example
A child counts 'one, two, four, seven' while touching objects. Reasoning: two separate skills are failing - stable order (the number sequence) and one-to-one correspondence (one word per object). Do not correct by rote chanting. Instead, play tapping games with one tap per object using small sets of three, model counting slowly, and let the child count steps, claps and spoons during the day. Keep the numbers small until correspondence is secure.
Traps that cost marks
Flash cards and tracing sheets for three-year-olds; teaching letters before oral language is established; harsh correction of speech errors; assuming bilingual children are language-delayed.