Strategies to develop spoken language in the classroom (KS2)

Extra time

Allow the child extra time to formulate responses and respond.

Slow down

Slow down your own rate of speech to encourage the child to speak more slowly.

Visual support

Ensure visual materials are available to make the context of discussion more concrete.

Here and now

Try to relate things to the ‘here and now’ and the child’s own experiences. Language skills often improve when the child is talking about something that relates to them.

Extension

Extend sentences for example:

• if a child says: “ears hear”, you say: “yes, we hear with our ears”
• if a child says: “heart pumps blood”, you say: “yes, the heart pumps blood around our body”

Re-modelling

Remodel sentences that include errors for example:

If a child says: “yesterday my friends camed over”
You say: “yesterday your friends came over”

Sentence completion

Start the sentence for the child to finish, for example:

“Teeth decay if… old food sticks to them”

Sequencing

Encourage clear sequencing of ideas by repeating back part of the story for example:

“so you went to the beach, but it was raining and then…?”

Reduce sentence length

Use short sentences

Repeat

Repeat both your own sentences and new vocabulary as well as repeating the child’s grammatically correct sentences.

Top tip – writing

Don’t expect a child to write a longer sentence than they would say, for example, if they don’t say “because” when explaining they are unlikely to use it in written work