Tes focus on… Following text with your finger

Despite what your parents tell you, pointing is not always rude. In fact, for babies, it plays an important role in the development of language. Studies have shown that babies’ use of the pointing gesture at 12 months is a good predictor of their vocabulary size later on in life (bit.ly/PointingLanguage).

And what about non-verbal communication? Without the use of an extended index finger, communication in many scenarios would be much harder – the phrase ‘over there’ would largely be rendered, erm, pointless.

Then there is that ubiquitous part of every early years foundation stage setting and key stage 1 classroom: following the text with your finger. That must have some strong evidence