Written Communication Development Checklist

Instructions: Answer all questions up to your child’s current age bracket by answering ‘Yes’ on ‘No’.

Interpretation: If you tick 2 or more boxes with a ‘Yes’ contact Kid Sense Child Development on 1800 KIDSENSE (1800 543 736).

Does your child have difficulty with:

Age	Skill	Yes	No
0-2 years	Not applicable
2-3 years	Distinguishing print from pictures.
2-3 years	Pretending to read when others are reading.
3-4 years	Knowing basic shapes (-,\|,O).
	Recognising numbers 1-5.
	Recognising and naming letters.
4-5 years	Forming pre-writing shapes (-,\|,O,+,/,square,\,X, triangle).
	Writing their name
	Knowing some letter names and identifying about 10 letters (usually if it's in their name).
	Recognising and writing the numbers 1-5.
	Learning the alphabet song.
	Recognising and naming letters.
	Knowing that print is what you read.
	Understanding that letters 'have' sounds (i.e. grapheme-phoneme relationship awareness).
	Recognising that clusters of letters separated by space, form words.
	Recognising their name in print.
	Reading a book from front to back.
	Recognising environmental print on signs and labels (e.g. reads the word 'stop' on a stop sign).
	Following left-right progression of print.
5-6 years	Recognising environmental print on signs and labels (e.g. reads the word 'stop' on a stop sign).
	Reading a book from front to back.
	Following left-right progression of print.
	Understanding alphabetic principle (i.e. words are made up of sounds; sounds can be represented by letters).
	Recognising all letter names and letter sounds for consonants.
	Recognising numbers up to 20.
	Knowing the sounds for vowels.
	Matching letters to sounds (grapheme-phoneme correspondence).
	Decoding by identifying sounds for printed letters and synthesising sounds across letters to form words.
	Recognising words by sight.
	Tracking print when listening to a familiar story.
	Reading a few short, regularly spelled words (e.g. their names or their classmate's names).
	Writing basic words that are recognisable.
	Putting sentences together.
	Writing regular words, by listening for the sounds, using the 42 letter sounds.
6-7 years	Knowing all of the letter names and letter sounds for consonants.
	Recognising all of the numbers up to 100.
	Knowing the sounds for vowels (long and short).
	Matching letters to sounds (grapheme-phoneme correspondence).
	Decoding by identifying sounds for printed letters and synthesising sounds across letters to form words.
	Recognising words by sight.
	Using onventions for punctuation, capitalisation and other conventions of print.
	Writing omplete sentences, with punctuation and conjunctions.
	Using alternative spellings in writing (e.g. rain vs rein vs reign).
7-8 years	Knowing the conventions for punctuation, capitalisation and other conventions of print.
	Writing at least 2 sentences consecutively with appropriate grammar and punctuation.
	Recognising words by sight.
	Recognising phonic patterns to increase automaticity of decoding (e.g. silent 'e' rule).
	Comprehending what they are reading.
	Reading fluently.
	Using alternative spellings in writing (e.g. rain vs rein vs reign).

This checklist was designed to serve as a functional screening of developmental skills per age group. It does not constitute an assessment nor reflect strictly standardised research.

The information in this checklist was compiled over many years from a variety of sources. This information was then further shaped by years of clinical practice as well as therapeutic consultation with child care, kindergarten and school teachers in South Australia about the developmental skills necessary for children to meet the demands of these educational environments. In more recent years, it has been further modified by the need for children and their teachers to meet the functional Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) requirements that are not always congruent with standardised research.