Concepts are really important for children's communication, learning and for understanding in everyday situations. They cover a wide range of words, for instance shapes, colours, emotions, time words, positional words and quantity are all concepts.
Make the most of everyday routines for introducing and reinforcing concepts. For example, when washing hands you can talk about hot/cold/warm, wet/dry, full/empty, clean/dirty, on/off, as well as lots of action words and other adjectives.
These words will often, but not always, appear in opposites. For example - hot/cold, first/last, up/down, more/less.
To develop the child’s understanding of the concepts, they will need to experience the concepts in a range of different situations. For example, dirty boots, dirty hands, dirty car - as well as being taught the concepts in more structured activities.
Concepts should be targeted one at a time. For example, ‘big’ then 'small', ‘cold’ then ‘hot’, ‘dirty’ then ‘clean’. It is important not to teach opposites at the same time as this can be confusing. So don’t teach ‘big’ and ‘small’ together, instead teach ‘big’ by taking lots of opportunities to talk about and find lots of big things. When a contrast is needed, talk about them as 'not big' until the child is confident with the new concept.
When carrying out structured activities use real objects. Progress to using pictures and then see if the child can talk about the concept with minimal visual prompts - this is more abstract as the child cannot see it.
Using a multi-sensory approach is really important when teaching concepts. For example, if you are teaching the concept ‘next to’:
Children don’t learn all concepts at once, so it’s helpful to know which concepts to support a child with first.
The table below is based on Ann Locke's 'Living Language' programme. Locke states that the different word lists should not be adhered to rigidly, but that the words listed in the first column should be learnt before proceeding to the next.
You can access Speech and Language support by calling Just One Number on 0300 300 0123. Our opening hours are 8am-6pm Monday-Friday (excluding bank holidays).
