Home / Educators / Professional Development (3 - 5 YEARS) / Supporting Older Infants’ Learning
- Introduction
- Expand Language—All the Time
- Use Language to Support Exploration and Problem Solving
- Help Children Connect with Each Other and Make Friends
- Try It
- Wrap Up
- Learning Guidelines and Standards
- baby sign language: a set of conventional signs designed to make it easier for older infants and young toddlers to communicate with their caregivers
- expressive language/communication: the words and phrases a child speaks and/or the specific, mutually-understood signs and gestures she uses to communicate meaning
- joint attention: a shared focus on an item; an older baby and an adult pay joint attention when they notice where the other is looking or pointing (by one year, babies should be able to point, gesture, or vocalize to get an adult to pay attention to something)
- parallel play: playing near another child and noticing each other but without interacting
- receptive language: the words and phrases a child understands
- social referencing: the process by which young children check with trusting adults to see how to react to new situations and people, including whether new people can be trusted
Wrap Up
Now you're ready to implement the best practices you’ve learned with the infants in your program. Complete the second half of the Self-Assessment to discover how much your skills may have improved.
Congratulations! Whether your progress was subtle or dramatic, you've undoubtedly increased your understanding and strengthened your skills. But this is just the beginning—there are many ways to improve and support your children’s learning experience. Look for more informative self-paced tutorials in the Professional Development section of this website.
For a summary of best practices, download the Best Practices (PDF). To see the standards this module correlates to, download the Learning Guidelines and Standards (PDF).