Developmental Milestones: School-Aged Children (5-18 years)

Development generally occurs in a predictable order, but skills might develop at different ages or times. Some differences between children are expected and are usually nothing to worry about.

School-Aged Children

Starting school can be a very daunting time for both the child and the parent. Often, a child's success in school depends on their readiness right from the beginning. Language, communication and other skill delays can affect a child's learning. Additionally, with the struggles of the pandemic lockdowns and study from home, many children today face language and social difficulties due to a lack of exposure to the necessary play and interaction with other children.

If your child is attending kinder or childcare, speak to your child's educator about potential language or social concerns you may have.

Early School-Aged: 5 to 8 years 

Language Development

• Few grammatical errors while speaking,

• Understands similarities and opposites,

• Uses and understands prepositions (in, out, over, under) and personal pronouns,

• Understands the things that happens around them in family, social environments and in school,

• Learning to communicate effectively and problem-solve in social settings (school, playground, and classroom),

• Increased awareness of words which they continue to extend as they learn new words.

Speech Development

• If your child had a mild stutter as a preschooler, this is often not a huge concern as stuttering won’t affect their development, however, this may be a concern if the stutter continues into primary school as they begin to become aware of it.

• Your child should be easy to understand but may still have some mild speech errors.

Literacy Development

• Progresses through stages of understanding words and sounds:

• Recognising words that start with the same sound, e.g. "mum, mat, make, move,"​

• Noticing words that rhyme, e.g. "bat, cat, fat, hat, mat,"

• Children are starting to read short, simple words (one-syllable), e.g. "pig", "ball."

Later School-Aged: 8 to 11 years 

Language, Speech and Social Development

• Able to make clear and grammatically correct sentences when prompted or able to recognise grammatical errors in others,

• Starting to understand complex or abstract concepts, e.g. colour blue versus feeling blue,

• Starting to use passive language, e.g. "the bone was eaten by the dog,"

• Recognising non-literal meanings in indirect requests, e.g. commenting "your room is too messy" can be interpreted as a request to clean your room,

• Starting to see things from other people's perspectives,

• Able to sustain a conversation through several turns,

• Starting to problem solve during communication or relationship breakdowns,

• Able to produce all elements of story grammar,

• No noticeable speech errors that impact their intelligibility,

• Developing skills in asking questions and reasoning, e.g. "why...? because..."

• Understands some language of probability, e.g. "definitely" versus "probably".

Literacy Development

• Accurately reads words with more than one syllable,

• Learning about prefixes, suffixes, and root words, e.g. colour, colourful, colourless, and discolour,

• Reads for different purposes, e.g. hobby, learning, navigation (maps),

• Explores different genres, e.g. fantasy, fiction, sci-fi,

• Describes the setting, characters, problem/solution, and plot of a story,

• Identifies and summarises the sequence of events, identify the main theme,

• Makes inferences (“read between the lines”) by using clues from the text and prior knowledge,

• Compares and contrasts information from different texts.

Teenagers: 12 to 18 years

Language and Social Development

• Continues to expand vocabulary and read more complex texts, particularly in the classroom-setting,

• Analyses how characters develop, interact with each other, and advance the plot,

• Determines themes and analyse how they develop over the course of the text,

• Uses evidence from the text to support analysis of the text,

• Identifies imagery and symbolism in the text,

• Analyses, synthesises, and evaluates ideas from the text,

• Understands satire, sarcasm, irony and understatement.

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