Hi Tania,
Thanks for this great question. This is an area that I’ve found that many teachers haven’t received a lot of direction in, despite increased popularity in the use of mouth pictures and articulatory gestures, encouraging classroom teachers to teach and correct student articulation.
As you know, both speech and language errors are common and can be developmentally appropriate for young children. But we also know that early intervention is imperative for student success and progress when a delay or disorder is present, so it’s important that teachers have guidance on when a referral to a speech-language pathologist would be warranted.
To begin, I want to ensure that it’s clear how I’m distinguishing the terms speech and language. The term language is generally used to describe the words and word combinations used by someone. Language errors at this age might be referring to simplified forms or mistakes in vocabulary or sentence structure, such as calling a wolf a “doggy,” saying “goed” instead of went or using “foots” for feet. The term speech, in this context, refers to how those words are pronounced (often called articulation). Speech errors at this age might be pronouncing the word red as “wed” or have as “hab.”
As a Transitional Kindergarten teacher, you may notice a wide range of communication skills across your students. This is to be expected, as there is natural variation in development across young children. Additionally, because children typically develop communication skills so rapidly during their toddler and preschool years, the difference between a 4-year-old child and one that is 4 years and 6 months old will likely seem much more pronounced than that same 6-month age gap when students are in the upper elementary grades and beyond.
Some sounds develop later than others. For example, phonemes (sounds) such as /r/ and both voiced and voiceless /th/ may not be mastered until the early elementary years, while children under 5 may also still be developing the sounds /v/, /j/, /s/, /z/, and /zh/ (as in beige). During this time, young children’s speech errors often follow predictable patterns as they simplify complex sounds or sound combinations.
While it may be helpful to reference some charts of typical phoneme acquisition, such as this commonly used reference, note that these charts can often vary somewhat in the information they present, based on the research they are meant to represent. Because study designs can differ in how they define phoneme acquisition/mastery (for example, do children need to produce the sounds in conversation, or only in isolated words?), as well as what the graphed ages represent (have 50% of children this age acquired the associated sound? 75%? 90%?), these charts can sometimes be tricky to interpret at a glance and don’t provide a complete picture of how to compare a child’s speech to developmental expectations.
A commonly used rule of thumb is that by age four, unfamiliar listeners should be able to understand most of what a child says, despite the presence of some articulation and language errors. While there might be some times of confusion with isolated words that a child says, especially when you don’t have a lot of context about what they are referring to, you should generally be able to communicate with relative ease and eventually resolve most communication breakdowns. If you have concerns about any of your students’ communication skills, a speech-language pathologist can help determine if these differences are developmentally appropriate, expected language variations secondary to exposure to multiple dialects and/or languages, or those that would benefit from speech-language therapy.
Thank you for being aware and attentive to your students' development and needs!