Developing description

Over this age range the level of description might increase. For example, "The boy climbed a tree" may change to "The young boy climbed a tree" to being even more informative "The young boy climbed a tall tree with strong branches". The increasing ability to be descriptive allows children to improve their story telling. Stories become longer and more detailed. The stories might be made-up, or about things that have actually happened. They might have a theme, specific characters or a plot and contain actions and events in a logical sequence. For example, "The boat sank, so everybody had to swim quickly to the beach". The child can start to put too much information into the story so that the story can become difficult to understand. The essential information is lost within lots of unnecessary details. As the child moves into adolescence, the ability to prioritise the information increases.