Kindy Uplift Program and Children’s key word signing (KWS)

Key word signing, previously known as MAKATON, involves the use of manual signs, facial expressions, and natural gestures alongside spoken words to enhance communication for individuals who are pre-verbal or have communication difficulties. It is one of the most widely employed strategies for those who cannot rely solely on speech to communicate.

In Australia, the signs used in key word signing are kindly borrowed from Australian sign language (Auslan), although it differs significantly from Auslan as signs are used in conjunction with speech, with only the key words being signed. For more information on key word sign, click here.

Children’s key word signing is essentially the same as key word sign (KWS), with the distinction being that we exclusively develop resources, services, and training materials for children and those who work with children.

Furthermore, while key word signing was initially developed for individuals with communication difficulties and their communication partners, our goal is for Children’s key word signing to be embraced wherever children are present, offering all children an alternative means of communication.

It is an excellent tool for all children and an excellent use of your Kindy Uplift funding.

In April 2022 more than 400 Queensland kindergartens received funding as part of the Kindy uplift pilot to improve early learning outcomes.¹ The Kindy Uplift grants have 6 priority areas namely:

1. Culturally safe, inclusive and responsive kindergarten programs
   1. Embedding Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives
   2. Equity and Access for all
2. Social and emotional learning
3. Physicality
4. Executive function
5. Oral language and Literacy
6. Mathematics and numeracy¹

Children’s key word signing meets the criteria for 5 priority areas.

The evidence based benefits of Children’s key word signing and how it they meet the Kindy Uplift priority areas are set out below.

Children feel safe, secure and confident in themselves and the learning environment, enabling them to take risks and make decisions. Children have the skills to sustain engagement in learning, manage emotions and connect positively with peers and significant adults.

mplementing Children’s Key Word Signing (KWS) in your early childhood education and care setting is a powerful strategy to support children’s social and emotional development. This approach aligns perfectly with the Kindy Uplift grant’s priority on enhancing social and emotional skills, providing children with essential tools to understand and express their emotions from an early age.

Strengthening Educator-Child Relationships

Research has demonstrated that incorporating Children’s Key Word Sign fosters strong attachments between children and educators, creating a safe and secure learning environment. This secure foundation empowers children to take risks and make decisions confidently, supporting their overall social-emotional growth.

Key findings from research include:

1. Educators using Children’s Key Word Sign show increased responsiveness to preverbal children, demonstrating greater warmth, affection, and attentiveness to their needs².
2. This approach enhances bonding between carers and children, leading to higher self-esteem in children and a stronger appreciation for the child’s autonomy and desires³.
3. Educators who use Children’s Key Word Sign encourage more independent actions, empowering children to develop their skills and make choices⁴.

Early Emotional Expression and Regulation

Children’s Key Word Signing enables children to communicate their feelings and request emotional support from an early age, a crucial aspect of social-emotional development. Research has shown that:

1. Toddlers can initiate conversations about their emotions through sign language, promoting open communication and emotional well-being⁵.
2. Infants demonstrate attempts at emotional regulation through sign, such as seeking comfort, indicating preferences during routines, and signalling for parental attention⁶⁻⁸.

Evidence-Based Benefits for Emotional Intelligence

Key Word Sign plays a vital role in supporting social-emotional development by providing children with tools to express their feelings and understand others. Vallotton and Ayoub (2011) found that toddlers who used symbolic gestures displayed better emotional regulation and fewer behavior problems³. This improved emotional control directly supports the Kindy Uplift focus on social-emotional learning.

Additionally, research by Kirk et al. (2013) demonstrated that gesture use in early childhood was associated with improved perspective-taking abilities⁴. By incorporating KWS into your program, you’re equipping children with non-verbal tools to express emotions, leading to enhanced empathy and social understanding.

How KWS Supports Social-Emotional Development

Children’s Key Word Signing supports social-emotional development in several ways:

1. Immediate emotional expression: KWS provides children with immediate tools to express emotions before they can verbalize them, reducing frustration and promoting emotional awareness.
2. Enhanced emotional literacy: The visual and kinesthetic reinforcement of emotion concepts through signs helps children better understand and articulate their feelings.
3. Conflict resolution skills: KWS gives children alternative ways to communicate their needs and feelings, facilitating more effective conflict resolution.
4. Improved self-regulation: The ability to express emotions through signs helps children manage their feelings more effectively, leading to better self-regulation.
5. Stronger relationships: By enhancing communication between children and educators, KWS fosters stronger, more secure relationships.
6. Increased empathy: As children learn to express and recognize emotions through signs, they develop a better understanding of others’ feelings, promoting empathy.
7. Boosted confidence: The ability to communicate effectively from an early age boosts children’s confidence in social interactions.

By implementing Children’s Key Word Signing in your kindergarten program, you’re providing a research-backed approach to social-emotional development. This strategy not only supports children in understanding and expressing their emotions but also fosters a more inclusive, emotionally intelligent learning environment.

Invest in Sunshine Sign and Sing’s Children’s Key Word Signing program to enhance your educators’ skills, meet Kindy Uplift requirements, and provide children with evidence-based support for their social-emotional journey.

Children demonstrate coordination, strength, gross and fine motor skills in a range of learning situations. Children are confident to make use of the learning environment to support their physical wellbeing.

By incorporating signing into your Kindergarten curriculum, you provide children with a valuable opportunity to engage in what researchers refer to as “hand babbling.” Just as vocal babbling plays a crucial role in language development, hand babbling using signs nvolves the same essential components necessary for linguistic growth, as highlighted by Petitto⁸. Through this process, infants and children focus their attention on their hands, their movements, and the various handshapes they can produce.

The impact of signing on children’s development goes beyond communication skills. Numerous studies have shown that infants and toddlers exposed to signing demonstrate improved hand-eye coordination⁹. The act of mimicking hand movements and learning signs enhances their motor skills and coordination, providing a strong foundation for physical development. Additionally, these children exhibit significant improvements in fine motor development, showcasing their increased dexterity and control compared to their non-signing counterparts.¹⁰

By incorporating key word signing into your Kindergarten program, you empower children to explore and engage with their hands in a meaningful way. This active involvement not only enhances their physical abilities but also supports their overall cognitive and linguistic development. Key Word Sign becomes a tool through which children can express themselves, develop coordination, and further their fine motor skills, setting them up for success in various aspects of their lives.

Children take in verbal and non-verbal stimuli and process this information to make meaning linked to their current knowledge and experience. Children demonstrate their understanding and respond in a variety of culturally appropriate ways.

Kindy Uplift Priority: Children demonstrate the ability to plan, organize, focus attention, remember instructions, and manage multiple tasks.

Key Word Sign has been linked to improvements in executive function skills, crucial for children’s cognitive development and future academic success. Research by Kuhn et al. (2014) found that bilingual children who used gestures showed enhanced executive function compared to monolingual peers⁷. This suggests that the use of KWS can provide cognitive benefits similar to those observed in bilingualism.

Moreover, Biau and Soto-Faraco (2013) demonstrated that observing speech-associated gestures activated brain regions involved in executive control⁸. By incorporating KWS into daily activities, you’re providing children with opportunities to strengthen these vital cognitive skills.

KWS supports executive function by:

• Enhancing working memory as children learn to associate signs with spoken words
• Improving cognitive flexibility through the use of multiple modes of communication
• Supporting attention and focus by providing visual cues to reinforce verbal instructions

Children express their thoughts, feelings and emotions for a range of purposes and can make themselves understood through verbal, non-verbal or augmentative technologies. Children seek to understand and listen to others and make meaning by exploring texts. 

Kindy Uplift Priority: Children communicate effectively through listening, speaking, and early reading and writing skills.

Children’s Key Word Signing (KWS) plays a crucial role in supporting early language acquisition and literacy development, aligning perfectly with the Kindy Uplift priority of enhancing communication skills. By implementing KWS in your kindergarten, you’re providing children with powerful tools to express themselves from a very early age and supporting their journey towards effective communication.

Early Expression and Language Development

Children’s Key Word Signing ensures that children can express themselves from a very early age. When babies are introduced to sign, they are often able to sign back as early as 8-10 months old. This early communication ability is particularly crucial considering that an estimated 1 in 6 children have a language delay¹². KWS empowers children in your kindergarten to express their thoughts, feelings, and emotions through sign before they develop verbal skills.

Research-Backed Benefits for Language Acquisition

Contrary to concerns that baby signing might delay speech, research has shown quite the opposite. A longitudinal study discovered that infants taught baby signs demonstrated significantly better receptive language (understanding of what was being said to them) and expressive language (ability to speak to express themselves) compared to non-signing infants¹³.

Key findings from research include:

1. Signing babies met their word-count milestones earlier¹⁴.
2. Multiple studies found that infants and toddlers exposed to signing and speech frequently used spoken language before their peers exposed only to spoken language¹⁵.
3. The use of signs encourages more varied communication and increased use of word labels by caregivers¹⁶.
4. Key Word Signing helps in segmenting words from each other in running speech, aiding vocabulary building crucial for language acquisition.

Facilitating Early Communication and Vocabulary Growth

Research has shown that Key Word Signing “facilitates early communication, increases vocabularies, and facilitates shared communication”¹⁷. A study by Leech and Cress found that the most effective way for a child to produce target words was “through routine and play structure combined with access to AAC [Alternative and Augmentative Communication]”¹⁸.

Moreover, infants who gesture earlier or more frequently, including manual pointing, have been found to have larger vocabularies than their peers¹⁹. By encouraging signs, educators can increase children’s use of gestures, potentially assisting their long-term expressive communication.

Enhancing Literacy Skills

Sunshine Sign and Sing’s Children’s Key Word Signing pack for Early Learning Services includes a storybook with signs (“Cheer Up Daisy”). This resource is designed to help children understand the meaning of the text and assist in the association of signs, written words, and visuals within the book.

A meta-analysis by Capirci et al. (2022) found that gesture use in early childhood predicted later language outcomes, including vocabulary size and syntactic complexity⁹. This demonstrates the powerful role KWS can play in supporting oral language development and early literacy skills.

Furthermore, Özçalışkan et al. (2016) showed that children who used more gestures early on developed larger vocabularies and produced longer sentences¹⁰. By incorporating KWS into your literacy curriculum, you’re providing children with a multi-modal approach to language learning that accelerates their communication skills.

How KWS Supports Oral Language and Literacy

Children’s Key Word Signing supports oral language and literacy development in several ways:

1. Reinforcing new vocabulary: KWS provides visual and kinesthetic cues that reinforce new words, making them easier for children to remember and use.
2. Supporting narrative skills: Signs give children additional tools to sequence and retell stories, enhancing their narrative abilities.
3. Enhancing phonological awareness: Pairing signs with spoken words helps children distinguish individual sounds in words, a crucial skill for early reading.
4. Facilitating early communication: KWS allows children to express themselves before they can speak, reducing frustration and encouraging continued attempts at communication.
5. Increasing vocabulary: The use of signs often leads to increased word labeling by caregivers, exposing children to a richer vocabulary.
6. Supporting comprehension: Signs provide additional context for spoken language, helping children understand and retain new information more effectively.

By implementing Children’s Key Word Signing in your kindergarten program, you’re providing a research-backed, multi-modal approach to language and literacy development. This approach not only supports children with language delays but benefits all learners by creating a rich, inclusive communication environment.

Invest in Sunshine Sign and Sing’s Children’s Key Word Signing program to enhance your educators’ skills, meet Kindy Uplift requirements, and provide children with evidence-based support for their early language and literacy journey.

The service and educators are ready to support all children and families so they feel welcome, engaged and culturally safe. Inclusive practices are embedded in the service and support all children’s active participation in the kindergarten program. The service and other partners provide supportive and responsive transition pathways for children and families across early years settings and work collaboratively to support all children’s learning, wellbeing and development. 

Kindy Uplift Priority: Children engage in inclusive practices that promote respect for diversity and support all children’s participation.

Key Word Sign (KWS) creates an inclusive communication environment that supports all learners, regardless of their linguistic or developmental background. This approach aligns perfectly with the Kindy Uplift goal of promoting equity and access, fostering a sense of belonging for all children in your kindergarten program.

Research-Backed Benefits

Research by Dunst et al. (2011) demonstrates that using manual signs alongside speech improves communication outcomes for children with and without disabilities¹. This inclusive approach benefits all learners, not just those with specific communication needs.

Furthermore, Fitzpatrick et al. (2014) found that sign language use in inclusive classrooms facilitated peer interactions and social acceptance among diverse learners². By incorporating KWS into your kindergarten program, you’re creating a universal language that bridges communication gaps and promotes inclusivity.

Supporting Diverse Learners

Children’s Key Word Signing is particularly beneficial for neurodiverse individuals, such as those with autism, Down’s syndrome, apraxia, or developmental language disorder (DLD). However, it’s crucial to recognize that limiting signing to only those who require it for communication severely restricts its potential. That’s why Sunshine Sign and Sing’s children’s key word sign packages teach you how to use key word sign with all children.

Creating an Inclusive Environment

By incorporating Children’s Key Word Signing (KWS) into your kindergarten, you can create an environment that fully embraces non-verbal / non-speaking children, eliminating any potential stigma they might face elsewhere. KWS serves as an unaided communication tool, accessible to all children regardless of their verbal abilities.

Extensive research indicates that when Key Word Signing or other Alternative and Augmentative Communication (AAC) tools are limited to non-verbal / non-speaking individuals and a select few communication partners, it often leads to stigmatisation and widespread exclusion²¹. By encouraging all educators and children to utilize multi-modal communication methods, you eliminate potential stigma and empower all children to feel confident about joining in with their peers.

Enhancing Participation and Engagement

For a non-verbal/non-speaking child, the ability to communicate effectively significantly influences their willingness to engage and play with others. By implementing KWS throughout your program, you ensure that these children can enjoy meaningful interactions with a diverse range of peers and educators. As a result, they become active participants in the kindergarten program, contributing to their overall development and growth.

Implementing KWS Supports Equity By:

1. Providing multiple modes of communication, benefiting visual learners and children with auditory processing difficulties
2. Reducing frustration and enhancing participation for children still developing verbal language skills
3. Creating a shared communication system that promotes inclusivity and peer interaction
4. Eliminating potential stigma associated with alternative communication methods
5. Empowering all children to engage confidently with their peers and educators

Sunshine Sign and Sing: Your Partner in Inclusive Education

Choosing to implement Sunshine Sign and Sing’s comprehensive kindy package using your Kindy Uplift funding is the most effective way to ensure the successful integration of Children’s Key Word Signing into your kindergarten.

Our package provides:

• Necessary resources for seamless implementation
• Comprehensive training for educators
• Ongoing support to help your team incorporate Key Word Signing into daily activities and interactions

With Sunshine Sign and Sing, you can be confident that you are making the best use of your funding to create an inclusive and empowering environment for all children in your care. Our approach ensures that KWS becomes an integral part of your kindergarten’s communication strategy, supporting equity and access for every child.

By investing in Key Word Sign training through Sunshine Sign and Sing, you’re not just meeting Kindy Uplift requirements – you’re creating a truly inclusive environment that supports the diverse needs of all children and sets the foundation for their future success.

Kindy Uplift Priority: Children demonstrate an understanding of early mathematical concepts and use mathematical language.

Key Word Sign has shown promising results in supporting early mathematics education. Novack et al. (2014) found that children who learned mathematical concepts through gestures showed better transfer of knowledge to new problems¹¹. This suggests that KWS can play a crucial role in helping children grasp abstract mathematical concepts.

Research by Pier et al. (2019) demonstrated that using gestures during math instruction improved children’s problem-solving abilities¹². By incorporating KWS into your math curriculum, you’re providing children with concrete, visual representations of abstract numerical concepts.

KWS supports mathematics and numeracy by:

• Providing visual and kinesthetic reinforcement for number concepts
• Supporting spatial awareness through signs that represent mathematical relationships
• Enhancing problem-solving skills by offering alternative ways to represent and manipulate mathematical ideas
  
  For more information on the research into gestures and mathematics and how key word sign can assist with the children’s mathematical skills please click here.

Due to the strong links between gestures use and assisting children learn and retain mathematic concepts Sunshine Sign and Sing has developed a mathematics key word sign professional development training based on positional language and key word sign.