| Areas of development | These are the five major areas in which children make progress as they develop or grow. They are Fine Motor skills, Communication, Receptive Language, Personal and Social skills, and Gross Motor skills. You will find these terms explained below |
| Assessment | In general usage this means . 'testing'. In Small Steps we use it to refer to the process of finding out exactly what a child can do, through planned observation of his performance of particular activities. Assessment is used to tell us what the child is ready to learn next |
| Chronological age | A child's actual age, that is, the years and months that have passed since his birthdate |
| Communication | The ability to make wants, needs and feelings known to others, through the use of gestures, sounds, words and sentences, and also to respond to the communications of others |
| Concept; conceptual | A concept is an idea. Conceptual skills are those which require the formation of an idea, or acting on the basis of an idea |
| Developmental age | The level of development that a child has reached. This will not necessarily be the same as his chronological age. The developmental age is determined by assessing the child on a specially designed test, and comparing what he can do with the age at which the average child attains those skills |
| Developmental milestone | A skill which the majority of children attain at a particular age. It is widely used to indicate that a child has reached a particular level of development |
| Early intervention | The process or helping young handicapped children, or children at risk of delay, to make the most of their potential, by teaching the right skills at the right time |
| Expressive language | See Communication |
| Fine Motor skills | Fine Motor is the area of development concerned with the small muscles or the body, usually those of the hand and eye. Fine Motor skills include reaching and grasping, put- ting, drawing, turning pages and so on. This area of development also includes conceptual skills such as recognising that an object still exists when it is out of sight (object permanence), problem solving, the ability to match and sort, and pre-academic skills |
| Goals | These are long-term aims. They differ from objectives, which are short-term aims |
| Gross Motor skills | Gross Motor is the area of development concerned with the large muscles of the body. Gross Motor skills include all the skills which contribute to head control, sitting, crawl- ing, standing, walking, balancing, climbing and so on. Hand-eye co-ordination. The ability to bring the hand to, and manipulate, objects that are seen |
| Milestone | See Developmental milestone |
| Non-verbal | This means 'not speaking' or 'not spoken' |
| Object permanence | The concept that objects and people continue to exist, even when they are out of sight |
| Objectives | These are our short-term goals for the child. They describe the skills he is learning at any given time. Objectives are worded so that they show what the child will be doing when he has mastered a particular skill |
| Personal and Social skills | The Personal and Social area of development is concerned with the ability to socialise with others, the ability to play, both alone and in groups, and self-care skills such as eating and drinking, toileting, dressing, washing and grooming |
| Preacademic skills | These are skills which lead on to the 'academic' skills taught at school, particularly reading, number work and abstract concepts such as colour, size and shape. Pre-academic skills are presented in Small Steps as a subgroup of Fine Motor skills |
| Preverbal | We use this term to refer to the child who is not yet talking, and to communication skills which use gestures or sounds rather than words. The term preverbal implies that a verbal stage will come later, but preverbal skills are also essential for the child who will communicate through signs |
| Receptive Language skills | This area of development is concerned with the child's ability to respond to, and understand, the language of others |
| Reinforcement | The process or providing a consequence to an action, such that the doer will be encouraged to perform that action again |
| Rotation | This term is used in the Gross Motor program to describe a twist of the body, such that the shoulder moves towards the opposite hip. Rotation is particularly important for balancing |
| Sequence | A sequence is a group of closely related skills, arranged in the order in which they are normally acquired, so that one skill builds on another - like a set of steps. Each of the areas of development in Small Steps is divided into sequences. Children will generally be working on two or more sequences from each area of development at anyone time |
| Verbal | This means 'spoken' in phrases such as 'verbal directions'. The verbal child is a child who can speak, that is, the child who can communicate using words and/or phrases. Verbal skills are communication skills in which words or phrases are used |
