Guide to EYLF Outcome 5

The Early Years Learning Framework is made up of 8 EYLF Principles, 7 EYLF Practices, and 5 EYLF Learning Outcomes.

The EYLF Learning Outcomes are designed to capture the learning and development of all children from birth up until 5 years of age. They are:

• EYLF Outcome 1: Children have a strong sense of identity

• EYLF Outcome 2: Children are connected with and contribute to their world

• EYLF Outcome 3: Children have a strong sense of wellbeing

• EYLF Outcome 4: Children are confident and involved learners

• EYLF Outcome 5: Children are effective communicators

What is EYLF Outcome 5: Children are effective communicators?

Communication is vital to children's development from birth, encompassing a wide range of expressions including gestures, language, and digital tools. Children are naturally social and use various media like music, dance, and drama to connect and learn. Their home language is central to identity and learning, and they have the right to maintain it while developing Standard Australian English.

Literacy and numeracy are key to learning. Literacy involves confidence and ability in written, oral, visual, and auditory language, including multiple forms like storytelling and media. It requires strong oral language skills and the ability to engage with a range of texts, including digital ones. Numeracy is the confident use of mathematics in everyday life, with learning rooted in meaningful, relevant contexts. Children explore concepts like patterns, measurement, and reasoning through problem-solving.

In a digital world, children engage with technologies that enhance learning and connection. Learning happens through shared use with peers and adults. Early childhood settings build on language, literacy, and numeracy experiences from home and community, expanding children's social interactions. Supporting positive attitudes and foundational skills in these areas is critical for lifelong learning.

The 5 Key Indicators of EYLF Outcome 5

EYLF Outcome 5 is made up of 5 key indicators. They are:

• Children interact verbally and non-verbally with others for a range of purposes

• Children engage with a range of texts and gain meaning from these texts

• Children express ideas and make meaning using a range of media

• Children begin to understand how symbols and pattern systems work

• Children use digital technologies and media to access information, investigate ideas and represent their thinking

Children interact verbally and non-verbally with others for a range of purposes

Evidence of children interacting verbally and non-verbally with others for a range of purposes:

• engaging in enjoyable interactions using verbal and non-verbal language

• Conveying and constructing messages with purpose and confidence, building on home/family and community literacies

• Responding verbally and non-verbally to what they see, hear, touch, feel and taste

• Using language and representations from play, music and art to share and project meaning

• Contributing their ideas and experiences in play, small and large group discussions

• Recounting events in their life

• Listening to and acting upon simple directions

• Attending and giving cultural cues that they are listening to and understanding what is said to them

• Being independent communicators who initiate Standard Australian English and home language conversations and demonstrating the ability to meet the listener's needs

• Interacting with others to explore ideas and concepts, clarify and challenge thinking, negotiate and share new understandings

• Exchanging ideas, feelings and understandings using language and representations in play

• Demonstrating an increasing understanding of measurement and number using vocabulary to describe size, length, volume, capacity and names of numbers

• Expressing ideas and feelings, and understanding and respecting the perspectives of others

• Using language to communicate thinking about quantities to describe attributes of objects and collections, and to explain mathematical ideas

• Showing increasing knowledge, understanding and skill in conveying meaning in at least one language

• Communicating through Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander verbal ways of storytelling and yarning, and non-verbal ways of deep listening

• Beginning to recognise the different sounds and words of languages other than English used in homes, early childhood and community environments.

Educators can promote this learning by:

• Engaging in close, confirming interactions with very young children as they use gestures and make sounds to communicate

• Being attuned, and responding sensitively and appropriately, to children's efforts to communicate

• Listening to and acknowledging children's approximations of words, to support communication and clarify meanings

• Valuing children's linguistic heritage, and with family and community members, encouraging the use and acquisition of home languages and Standard Australian English

• Encouraging children to recount events in their lives

• Playing games that promote listening and following instructions, e.g. I spy with my little eye

• Recognising that children enter early childhood settings having begun to communicate and making sense of their experiences at home and in their communities

• Modelling language and encouraging children to express themselves through language in a range of contexts and for a range of purposes

• Engaging in sustained communication with children about ideas and experiences, and extending their vocabulary

• Including real-life resources to promote children's use of mathematical language

• Providing opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander educators to share ideas about best practice when embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives into planning and practice

• Providing opportunities for children to recognise the different sound and words of languages other than English

• Providing opportunities for visual communication such as signing.

Children engage with a range of texts and gain meaning from these texts

Evidence of children engage with a range of texts and gain meaning from these texts:

• Listening and responding to sounds and patterns in speech, stories and rhymes in context

• Viewing and listening to printed, visual and multimedia texts and respond with relevant gestures, actions, comments and/or questions

• Singing and chanting rhymes, jingles and songs

• Taking on roles of literacy and numeracy users in their play

• Beginning to understand key literacy and numeracy concepts and processes, such as the sounds of language, letter-sound relationships, concepts of print and the ways that texts are structured

• Exploring texts from a range of different perspectives and beginning to analyse the meanings

• Actively using, engaging with and sharing the enjoyment of language and texts in a range of ways

• Recognising and engaging with written and oral culturally constructed texts

• Listening to and discussing stories about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history, culture, ways of sustainability and care, customs and celebrations

• Retelling simple stories in a logical sequence using a range of material and expressive forms, e.g. blocks, dramatic play

• Engaging in pretend play that draws on the use of digital technologies.

Educators can promote this learning by:

• Reading and sharing a range of books and other texts with children

• Providing a literacy-enriched environment, including display print in home languages and Standard Australian English

• Singing and chanting rhymes, jingles and songs

• Engaging children in play with words and sounds

• Exploring concepts such as rhyme and letters and sounds when sharing texts with children

• Incorporating familiar family and community texts and telling stories

• Joining in children's play and engage children in conversations about the meanings of images and print

• Engaging children in discussions about books and other texts that promote consideration of diverse perspectives

• Supporting children to analyse ways in which texts are constructed to present particular views and to sell products

• Teaching art as language and how artists can use the elements and principles to construct visual/ musical/dance/media texts

• Providing opportunities for children to engage with familiar and unfamiliar culturally constructed text

• Seeking Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander guidance to ensure that the authentic voices of Traditional Owners, Elders and community members are highlighted in planning and practice

• Engaging in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander led professional development about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ways of learning, e.g. 8 Ways and Both Ways pedagogy.

Children express ideas and make meaning using a range of media

Evidence of children expressing ideas and making meaning using a range of media

• Using language, sounds, gestures and movement to engage in play to imagine and create roles, scripts and ideas

• Sharing the stories and symbols of their own culture and re-enacting well-known stories

• Using materials to create art works (e.g. drawing, painting, sculpture, drama, dance, movement, music and storytelling) to express ideas and make meaning

• Experimenting with ways of expressing ideas and meaning using a range of media

• Beginning to use images and approximations of letters and words to convey meaning

• Enjoying engaging with and sharing a wide variety of cultural texts including those authored by Traditional Owners

• Displaying literacy behaviours by incorporating reading and writing approximations and viewing in their play (including digital technologies)

• Viewing, listening and responding to simple printed, visual and multimedia texts or music and expressing how it makes them feel

• Using simple tools and techniques to shape, assemble and join materials they are using

• Exploring a range of materials and their properties.

Educators can promote this learning by:

• Building on children's family and community experiences with creative and expressive arts

• Providing a range of resources that enable all children to express meaning through the Arts, including visual arts, dance, drama and music

• Asking and answering questions during the reading or discussion of books and other texts

• Providing resources that encourage children to experiment with images and print

• Teaching children skills and techniques that will enhance their capacity for self-expression and communication

• Joining in children's play and co-constructing materials such as signs that extend the play and enhance literacy learning

• Responding to children's images and symbols, talking about the elements, principles, skills and techniques they have used in order to convey meaning

• Critically reflecting on how they are embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives and voices into every part of their planning and their setting

• Using a range of questioning strategies appropriate to each child's capabilities to gain insight into their thinking

• Providing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children opportunities to communicate how they are feeling through writing, the Arts, and construction.

Children begin to understand how symbols and pattern systems work

Evidence of children beginning to understand how symbols and pattern systems work:

• Using symbols in play to represent and make meaning

• Beginning to make connections between and see patterns in their feelings, ideas, words and actions and those of others

• Noticing and predicting the patterns of regular routines and the passing of time

• Developing an understanding that symbols are a powerful means of communication, and that ideas, thoughts and concepts can be represented through them

• Beginning to be aware of the relationships between oral, written and visual representations

• Beginning to recognise patterns and relationships and the connections between them

• Beginning to sort, categorise, order and compare collections and events and attributes of objects and materials in their social and natural worlds

• Beginning to identify and use the names of basic colours and simple shapes

• Listening and responding to sounds and patterns in speech, stories and rhyme

• Drawing on memory of a sequence to complete a task

• Drawing on their experiences in constructing meaning using symbols

• Identifying Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander signs and symbols relevant to their area and investigating and beginning to recognise with assistance representations of stereotypes or narrow depictions of diversity

• Beginning to identify the different purposes of text types, e.g. environmental print, informational texts, narratives

• Using mark-making and drawing as symbols of communication.

Educators can promote this learning by:

• Drawing children's attention to symbols and patterns in their environment and talking about patterns and relationships, including the relationship between letters and sounds

• Providing children with access to a wide range of everyday materials that they can use to create patterns and to sort, categorise, order and compare

• Engaging children in noticing, using and discussing symbol systems, such as letters, numbers, time, money, musical notation and other symbol children are exposed to in the environment, texts and images

• Encouraging children to develop their own symbol systems and provide them with opportunities to explore culturally constructed symbol systems including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander signs and symbols

• Responding to children's signs and symbol systems and identifying elements used to convey meaning

• Identifying concepts of rhyme and predictable sequences when sharing texts with children

• Using music to develop children's understandings of patterns, e.g. clapping names

• Incorporating familiar family and community texts as well as those in different languages and dialects

• Scribing descriptions of children's drawings and displaying results for comment and reflection.

Children use digital technologies and media to access information, investigate ideas and represent their thinking

Evidence of Children using digital technologies and media to access information, investigate ideas and represent their thinking:

• Identifying technologies and their use in everyday life

• Incorporating real or imaginary technologies as features of their play

• Using digital technologies to access images and information, explore diverse perspectives and make sense of their world

• Developing simple skills to operate digital devices, such as turning on and taking a photo with a tablet

• Using digital technologies and media for creative expression (e.g. designing, drawing, composing)

• Engaging with technologies and media for fun and social connection

• Identifying basic icons and keys (e.g. delete button), using them to support their navigation (e.g. click, swipe, home, scroll), and understanding these terms

• Adopting collaborative approaches in their learning about and with digital technologies.

Educators can promote this learning by:

• Acknowledging that technologies are a feature of children's lives and, as such, will be a feature of their imaginative and investigative play

• Providing children with access to a range of technologies

• Integrating technologies across the curriculum and into children's multimodal play experiences and projects

• Teaching skills and techniques, and encouraging children to use technologies to explore new information and represent their ideas

• Encouraging collaborative learning about and through technologies between children, and children and educators

• Providing opportunities for children to have access to different forms of communication technologies

• Researching topics and searching for information with children

• Teaching children critical reflection skills and encouraging them to evaluate the quality and trustworthiness of information sources

• Having opportunities to develop their own knowledge and understanding of appropriate digital technology use and safety with children and families

• Assisting children to have a basic understanding that the internet is a network that people use to connect and source information.

What next for understanding EYLF Outcome 5?

Using these examples in accordance with EYLF principles and practices ensures that educators are assisting children in achieving EYLF Outcome 5.

But it's also important to show evidence. So here's 3 ways to help your team when it comes to educating children:

1. Use a tool that helps saved educators 4hrs per week on documentation - Book Your FREE Demo Today!

2. Get some more resources on the EYLF from ACECQA.

3. Download the EYLF Outcome 5 Sheet below, so you always have this on-hand 👇