Working in a small district, my Speech-Language Pathologist is only in the building a couple days a week. Which makes collaboration with her very hard. I have a couple of students who have significant expressive language delays that make learning and making progress in reading very difficult for them.

I have used some of these activities to build both background knowledge and vocabulary to help with their comprehension of what they are reading. I have found that their first reads or cold reads of an instructional level text are at a frustrational read but by the second read its an instructional level. My SLP believes that this is because of their language delays.

I have decided to make a point at the beginning of each book to focus on their expressive language as part of their pre-reading. My hope is that by the end of the month these students have moved up a reading level.

Strategies to Develop Expressive Language Skills in the Classroom

• Opportunities to speak and time to rehearse before speaking
• Visual clues to help children order ideas effectively before expressing them
• Vocabulary lists to help with word finding difficulties. Use appropriate and consistent vocabulary
• Color coding different groups of words/sets of pictures
• Giving correct models of language structures
• Repetition and reinforcement of correct language structures
• Small group work to give children confidence to express themselves
• Appropriate questioning to give children the opportunity to reply
• Self-questioning and the development of learning scripts (e.g. What do I know already? What do I do next?)
• Rhymes
• Word play
• Restrict your language to short unambiguous language
• Story telling – cutting up picture segments and retelling stories
• Try and keep children ‘on topic’. Be specific, remind children e.g. ‘We are talking about…’
• Discussing what they have seen or done with an adult or more verbally able peer
• Puppet play/drama etc.
• Sharing books
• Revise links and associations between ideas and vocabulary – categorization/function/
• context/similarity/association
• As part of the partnership approach, it is important to detail which of these strategies have been most effective.

Barrier games

• This can be used for both talking and listening. The child or children either side of the barrier have identical sets of equipment.
• One child has a picture or constructs an assembly of objects and then gives instructions to the other to enable him/her to duplicate the picture or assembly.

How do I feel?

• In a small group imagine a situation and talk about how you would each feel and what you might say (speech bubbles resource is good here).

Silly Stories

• Collection of objects/pictures, e.g., horse, lady, man, child, dog, ball, pirate, dinosaur.  Adult starts story “Once upon a time there was a dinosaur”. Next child (house) continues the story “He lived in a house made of chocolate”.  Next child (ball) “One day he found a ball under his bed” …..

Narrative

• Color Coding approach.  Children take one color question ‘Who, What, Where, When’ and sequence a story using their own ideas.
• Mind Map Activities: An excellent way for supporting new vocabulary and talking.

Defining and describing

• Have a range of objects in a bag or a range of pictures. One child takes an object or picture and is allowed to give 3 pieces of information to describe their item. The rest guess.

Question Question

• Barrier game. Once child has an object or picture and the rest ask questions to find out what it is. You cannot say the name of the item.
• A good resource is Clowning Around or Guess Who?

What do you know?

• Use a composite picture and take turns in the group (mini circle time). Each child giving a new piece of information about the picture. Extend by talking about a particular object or event in which everyone has been involved.
• Tell me how to do it
• Use a classroom activity or event which has already been experienced and get a child to re-tell the event in his/her own words.
• Allow a child to explain to the others how to play a particular game.

Conversation

• In a small group it is possible to think about how we behave during a conversation and make explicit the skills we need. There are a couple of good resources for this.