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https://www.edutopia.org/discussion/12-fun-speaking-games-language-learners
this is a game/activity called who's telling the truth; Have each student write three facts about themselves that nobody in the class knows on a piece of paper. Make sure each student includes their name on the top of the page. Collect the sheets of paper and bring three students to the front of the room. Read aloud one of the facts that is true for one of these three students.

All three claim that the fact is theirs, and the class then proceeds to question them in an attempt to determine who is telling the truth and who is lying. Each student is allowed to ask one question to one of the three students. After a round of questioning, the students guess who is telling the truth.

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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This website provides information on how educators can help their students' language development. It not only talks about how to help but the importance of early language development.

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Ms. Kenzi is reading The Pout-Pout Fish to her class of four-year-olds. They are in the middle of a whole unit on the ocean, and the children are very excited about the book. As she reads, "'Mr. Fish is most astounded,'"she pauses and asks, "Astounded? Does anyone know what that means?" Brian says, "Surprised?" Nikki says, "Shocked?" Ms. Kenzi says, "You're both right! Astounded is another word for feeling really surprised!"

This first strategy is so simple-you're probably already doing it. In many classrooms, reading time plays a central role in the rhythm of our days. A slight shift in focus with this regular classroom feature is all it takes to target language development. Toddlers are rather notorious for their love of repetition-embrace this drive by reading the same book again and again (and encouraging families to do the same). This helps children begin to understand the rhythms of language and absorb the structure of sentences and storytelling. Alongside the regular favorites, introduce new books, taking advantage of current interests as you branch out.

Older preschoolers benefit from hearing and reading books with a wide variety of vocabulary and story-telling styles. When you come across a word children might not be familiar with, take a moment to talk about it. Ask children if they have an idea what it means-you might be surprised by what they know. Children often learn best from each other, so taking time to talk about what you read is an important vocabulary building exercise, and it helps you tune into their interests as you choose your next books.

Be sure that the books that you choose are well written, free from bias, and represent broad diversity of gender, race, abilities, family structures, and so on. Your local children's librarian may be able to help, and there are a wealth of resources online for finding diverse, engaging, and high quality books. Read the books yourself first to be sure they are a good fit for you and your classroom. If you love a book, your enthusiasm will draw children in and connect them to all those new words.
2. Incorporate indirect language stimulation techniques.
Another mindful strategy that teachers can use is indirect language stimulation. Developed by speech and language pathologists, these techniques focus on the language you use as you interact with children, within the context of your relationship. They are excellent ways to help children develop more complex language skills and build larger vocabularies.

The first technique is description. To use this simple strategy, narrate or describe what is going on in the child's world. When you notice an interest, explain to the child what he or she is seeing. This is especially useful with children under three, second language learners, and children with language delays who are working on building their expressive vocabulary.

" Joseph is building a tall tower!"
"That's Marissa's stepmother. She's here to pick Marissa up today." "There is broccoli, pasta, and strawberries on your plate."
The second technique is parallel talk. Parallel talk is "you talk," focusing on what the child is doing, connecting their actions to words in the form of a complete sentence, adding new vocabulary whenever possible. This also helps support your relationship, showing children you value them and are paying attention to what they are doing.
"You have a red shirt and plaid pants on today!" "You are feeding your baby in the high chair." "You are digging a deep hole in the sand!"
Self-talk is the third language technique covered here. Self-talk focuses on your (the teacher's) actions, explaining what you are doing and why-it is "I talk." Self-talk is also good way to help children prepare for transitions, drawing their attention to the important cues you provide them about what will happen next. (For more about managing transitions, see here.)

" I am cleaning the table because it is almost time for snack."
"I am packing up my bag because, in five minutes, it will be time to go inside." "I am writing a note to tell your dad that you rode a tricycle today all by yourself."
One more indirect language stimulation technique is expansion. Expansion is an ideal strategy to use with children who are learning to put words together to express more complex ideas. This strategy takes what a child says and expands it-sometimes adding to it-to make a complete sentence, offer more nuanced vocabulary choices, and make the most of an opportunity to build connection with the child.
Max says, "Milk!" His teacher says, "You'd like some milk to drink! I'll pour some for you." Leila says, "Mama bye-bye." Her teacher says, "Your mom went to work. She'll be back to pick you up after nap time." Amhed says, "Wow, big!" and his teacher says, "I see that truck, too! It's enormous!!"
One key detail about indirect language stimulation techniques is that they require nothing of the child in that moment. Children are not required to repeat you or adjust their own language. Instead, they learn over time from your good example within the context of a warm and supportive relationship.

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Ms. Kenzi is reading The Pout-Pout Fish to her class of four-year-olds. They are in the middle of a whole unit on the ocean, and the children are very excited about the book. As she reads, "'Mr. Fish is most astounded,'"she pauses and asks, "Astounded? Does anyone know what that means?"

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This website offers and provides 8 strategies for students who are in Preschool/Kindergarten which is helpful for myself who is teaching kindergarten which students who are ESL. This website talks about 5 classroom strategies that related to language literacy , and how the classroom atmosphere affects the students ability to learn.This website also provides resources for literacy in which how literacy skills are able to transfered across the board to different languages.

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Early childhood education can play an essential role in preparing young English language learners (ELLs) for later success in school. Children who have an opportunity to develop basic foundational skills in language and literacy in preschool enter kindergarten ready to learn to read and write (Ballantyne, Sanderman, & McLaughlin, 2008).

But how can early childhood educators know if their programs are providing children with the skills they need? This article will describe some of the methods and strategies that research has proven effective in preparing young ELLs for kindergarten.

Language Development for Preschool ELLs

Essential to any preschool program for ELLs is effective instruction in language development. Children need explicit instruction in English vocabulary, as well as opportunities to hear and speak the language throughout the day. Examples of strategies are listed below.

5 Classroom Strategies: Language

Provide explicit, systematic instruction in vocabulary.

Children require multiple exposures to words in order to develop a rich understanding of their meaning and use. Teachers should make a point of introducing interesting new words for children to learn into each classroom activity (Tabors, 2008).

Presenting vocabulary thematically helps children make associations between words and scaffolds students' learning (McGee & Richgels, 2003).

Read-alouds that include explanations of targeted vocabulary can support word learning (Brabham & Lynch-Brown, 2002; Coyne, Simmons, Kame'enui, & Stoolmiller, 2004), as can dramatic play organized around a carefully chosen theme (Barone & Xu, 2008; Tabors, 2008).

Ensure that ELLs have ample opportunities to talk with both adults and peers and provide ongoing feedback and encouragement.

English language learners need lots of opportunities to engage in social interactions with other children, but they also need support from adults as they develop the language skills they need to negotiate those interactions (Ballantyne et al., 2008). You can use the following strategies to foster social interaction:

For group activities, pair English language learners with children who have strong English language skills, and make sure that all the children who speak the same home language (L1) are not grouped together (Barone & Xu, 2008).

Provide opportunities for self-directed activities so that ELLs can choose activities that match both their interests and their language abilities (Bunce & Watkins, 1995).

Encourage child talk by providing prompts when children need help in expressing themselves (e.g., "Tell Bobby, 'May I have the red crayon now?'").

Use open questions, or questions that can have multiple answers, to help ELLs expand their own utterances (e.g., "Why do you like this doll best?" instead of "What is this doll's name?").

Expose ELLs to rich language input.

Exposure to rich language, whether through shared book reading or through teacher talk, has been shown to enhance children's oral language development (Aukrust, 2007; National Early Literacy Panel, 2008). One effective strategy is for the teacher to provide an ongoing commentary on activities that are taking place in the classroom in order to expose children to language associated with the immediate context (Bunce & Watkins, 1995; Tabors, 2008).

Structure the classroom space and routine to provide scaffolding for ELLs' language learning.

Arrange the classroom in a way that supports each type of instructional activity that will take place, and then keep changes to the physical environment to a minimum. Once ELLs learn which activities take place in various parts of the classroom (e.g., centers, circle), the physical environment will cue them as to what they are to do and how they are to behave in that area (Barone & Xu, 2008).

Predictable classroom routines can also provide scaffolding for English language learners by allowing them to anticipate what will happen each day, including the type of language they will need for each activity (Bunce & Watkins, 1995; Tabors, 2008).

Encourage continued L1 language development.

Strong L1 skills support both language and literacy learning in English:

Encourage parents to talk and read to their children in their home language as a way of strengthening children's L1 language skills.

Incorporate children's home language in the classroom when possible. Songs and videos can be used effectively for this purpose if teachers do not speak their students' language (Gillanders, 2007).

Literacy Development for Preschool ELLs

Research has shown that alphabet knowledge, phonological awareness, and print awareness are early literacy skills that contribute significantly to later reading achievement (National Early Literacy Panel, 2008). English language learners can begin to develop these essential foundational skills in preschool, even before they have developed strong English language skills.

Early Literacy Skills

Alphabet knowledge

Skills appropriate to preschool include recognizing and naming upper and lower case letters and beginning to associate letters with the sounds they make.

Phonological awareness

Phonological awareness refers to the ability to manipulate the sounds that make up language, independent of meaning. In preschool, children benefit from:

learning to recognize rhyming words

listening for syllables within words

learning to recognize beginning sounds in words

matching those sounds to letters

Print awareness

Print awareness is an understanding of the features of books and print. Children should:

be taught to recognize the parts of a book (e.g., front and back covers, top and bottom)

learn that printed letters and words run from left to right and from top to bottom

learn that a book has a title, was written by an author, and has illustrations that were drawn by an illustrator

3 Classroom Strategies: Literacy

Design instruction that focuses on all of the foundational literacy skills.

Activities that promote early literacy skills in preschool include:

interactive storybook reading

"pretend" reading and writing

games and other activities to help children identify the letters of the alphabet

interactive experiences with language and print through poems, nursery rhymes and songs

The emphasis should be on code-based instruction, or instruction that helps children understand the relationship between spoken language and print (National Early Literacy Panel, 2008).

Recognize that many literacy skills can transfer across languages.

A child who has developed early literacy skills in his or her first language will find it easier to develop those same skills in English. Parents who are not proficient in English should be encouraged to help prepare their children for learning to read by using the home language to:

teach rhymes and songs

play word games

share storybooks

Teachers can support parent-child reading by sending home books in the child's home language. This makes L1 text available to parents, and it lets them know that the teacher considers reading to children in the home language to be important.

Accelerate English literacy development by helping ELLs make the connection between what they know in their first language and what they need to know in English.

Similarities between English and the child's home language can be used as a foundation for instruction (Helman, 2004). For example, if L1 has some of the same phonemes as English, start with those phonemes for rhyme or beginning sound activities because those are sounds the child is already familiar with.

Children usually have the most difficulty when they encounter sounds that are present in English but do not occur in their home language. For this reason, Spanish L1 speakers often have difficulty with the "short" or lax sounds of a, e, i, and u and with the consonants j, r, v, and z (Bear, Templeton, Helman, & Baren, 2003; Helman, 2004).

Preparing for the Future

Much attention has been given to the persistent achievement gap between English language learners and their English-speaking peers. Unfortunately, by the time children arrive in kindergarten, differences in foundational language and literacy skills have often already set the stage for this disparity in achievement (Miller & Garcia, 2008).

The good news, however, is that recent research has shown that high-quality early childhood education programs can have a significant impact on children's later academic achievement (Barnett, 2008). Programs that provide research-based, age-appropriate instruction in early language and literacy skills can ensure that English language learners enter school equipped with the tools they need to be successful learners in kindergarten and beyond (Ballantyne et al., 2008).

Aukrust, V. G. (2007). Young children acquiring second language vocabulary in preschool group time: Does amount, diversity, and discourse complexity of teacher talk matter? Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 22, 17-38.

Ballantyne, K. G., Sanderman, A. R., & McLaughlin, N. (2008). Dual language learners in the early years: Getting ready to succeed in school. Washington, DC: National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition.

Barnett, W. S. (2008). Preschool education and its lasting effects: Research and policy implications. Retrieved 6/3/2009, from http://nieer.org/resources/research/PreschoolLastingEffects.pdf

Barone, D., & Xu, S. H. (2008). Literacy instruction for English language learners Pre-K-2. New York: The Guilford Press.

Bear, D. R., Templeton, S., Helman, L. A., & Baren, T. (2003). Orthographic development and learning to read in two different languages. In G. G. GarcÃa (Ed.), English learners: Reaching the highest level of English literacy (pp. 71-95). Newark, DE: International Reading Association.

Brabham, E. G., & Lynch-Brown, C. (2002). Effects of teachers' reading-aloud styles on vocabulary acquisition and comprehension of students in the early elementary grades. Journal of Educational Psychology, 94, 465-473.

Bunce, B. H., & Watkins, R. V. (1995). Language intervention in a preschool classroom: Implementing a language-focused curriculum. In M. L. Rice & K. A. Wilcox (Eds.), Building a language-focused curriculum for the preschool classroom: Vol. I. A foundation for lifelong communication (pp. 39-71). Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co.

Coyne, M. D., Simmons, D. C., Kame'enui, E. J., & Stoolmiller, M. (2004). Teaching vocabulary during shared storybook readings: An examination of differential effects. Exceptionality, 12(3), 145-162.

Gillanders, C. (2007). An English-speaking prekindergarten teacher for young Latino children: Implications for the teacher-child relationship on second language learning. Early Childhood Education Journal, 35, 47-54.

Helman, L. A. (2004). Building on the sound system of Spanish: Insights from the alphabetic spellings of English-language learners. The Reading Teacher, 57(5), 452-460.

McGee, L. M., & Richgels, D. J. (2003). Designing early literacy programs: Strategies for at-risk preschool and kindergarten children. New York: The Guilford Press.

Miller, L. S., & Garcia, E. E. (2008). A reading-focused early childhood education research and strategy development agenda for African Americans and Hispanics at all social class levels who are English speakers or English language learners. Phoenix: Arizona State University, Office of the Vice President for Education Partnerships.

National Early Literacy Panel. (2008). Developing early literacy: A scientific synthesis of early literacy development and implications for intervention. Washington, DC: National Institute for Literacy.

Tabors, P. O. (2008). One child, two languages: A guide for early childhood educators of children learning English as a second language (2nd ed.). Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co.

You are welcome to print copies or republish materials for non-commercial use as long as credit is given to Colorín Colorado and the author(s). For commercial use, please contact [email protected] .

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8 Strategies for Preschool ELLs' Language and Literacy Development

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Early childhood education can play an essential role in preparing young English language learners (ELLs) for later success in school. Children who have an opportunity to develop basic foundational skills in language and literacy in preschool enter kindergarten ready to learn to read and write (Ballantyne, Sanderman, & McLaughlin, 2008).

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This article teaches nine different strategies on teaching students with language issues. Mini-lessons, guided or independant practice, reflection, pre writing and reading strategies are all ways to help with language issues. Students are incouraged to choose books they want to read to get them focused and engaged in their reading. Provide instruction in basic reading strategies using reciprocal teaching practice that includes predicting, visualizing, questioning, clarifying, and summarizing stories.

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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This article talks about 12 ways to support English learners in the mainstream classroom. This site gives examples of how to include everyone and how to effectively support your students who may be learning English as their second language.

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Listen to this post as a podcast:
A note on terminology: The acronym ESL is used less often now in schools than it used to be, because we recognize that many students who are learning English already speak several other languages, so English would not be a "second" language. I use it several times in the post because schools sometimes refer to the teachers as ESL teachers, and the term is still widely used as a search term for this topic. My intent in using the acronym is to make this post easier to find online.

You have a new student, and he speaks no English. His family has just moved to your town from Japan, and though he receives English as a Second Language (ESL) support, he will also be sitting in your room every day to give him more exposure to his new language. How can you be a good teacher to someone who barely understands you?

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, an average of 9 percent of students in U.S. public schools are English Language Learners (ELLs); that number is closer to 14 percent in cities. Although many of these students start off in high-intensity, whole-day English programs, most are integrated into mainstream classrooms within a year, well before their English language skills would be considered proficient.

How prepared are you to teach these students? If you're like most classroom teachers, you have little to no training in the most effective methods for working with English language learners (Walker, Shafer, & Iiams, 2004). So that means we have a problem here: Lots of ELL kids in regular classrooms, and no teacher training to ensure the success of that placement.

Below, three ESL teachers tell us what they know about the things regular classroom teachers can do to improve instruction for ELL students. These 12 strategies are simple, they are not very time consuming, and best of all, they will help everyone in your class learn better:

1. Make it Visual

"Avoid giving instructions in the air," says Melissa Eddington, an Ohio-based ESL teacher. "ELL kids have a harder time processing spoken language." So instructions - even basic directions for classroom procedures - should be written on the board whenever possible. Challenging concepts should be diagrammed or supported with pictures. And modeling the steps of a process or showing students what a finished product should look like can go a long way toward helping students understand. "Sometimes showing our students what to do is all they need in order to do it," Eddington says. Not only will this kind of nonlinguistic representation improve comprehension for ELL students, it will help all of your students grasp concepts better.

2. Build in more group work.

"Kids aren't just empty glasses that we pour stuff into and then at the end of the day they dump it back onto a test," says Kim, an ESL teacher who was the subject of my very first podcast interview. "If you really want the kids to learn, they've got to be engaged." That means less teacher-led, whole-class instruction, and more small groups, where students can practice language with their peers in a more personal, lower-risk setting. And if ELL students attend your class with a resource teacher, make use of that person: In most cases the resource teacher doesn't have to work exclusively with the ESL students; they can work with smaller groups that happen to contain these students, helping to improve the teacher-student ratio and give kids more time to practice.

3. Communicate with the ESL teacher.

Mary Yurkosky, a former ESL teacher in Massachusetts, credits much of her students' success to the strong relationship she had with the regular classroom teachers. "The classroom teachers were always talking to me about what they were doing in their classes," she says. "They made it so easy for me to support them: If a teacher was going to be doing a unit on plants, I could make sure we used some of that same vocabulary in the ESL class."

Ideally, this could be systematized, where ESL teachers could regularly get copies of lesson plans or collaborate with regular classroom teachers to build solid back-and-forth support, but "it doesn't have to be that much work," Yurkosky insists. "Just talk to each other. Talk about what's going on in your classrooms, invite each other to special presentations, share what your students are learning, and the words will naturally find their way into the ESL class."

4. Honor the "silent period."

Many new language learners go through a silent period, during which they will speak very little, if at all. "Don't force them to talk if they don't want to," says Eddington, "A lot of students who come from cultures outside of America want to be perfect when they speak, so they will not share until they feel they are at a point where they're perfect." Just knowing that this is a normal stage in second language acquisition should help relieve any pressure you feel to move them toward talking too quickly.

5. Allow some scaffolding with the native language.

Although it has been a hotly debated topic in the language-learning community, allowing students some use of their first language (L1) in second-language (L2) classrooms is gaining acceptance. When a student is still very new to a language, it's okay to pair him with other students who speak his native language. "Some students are afraid to open their mouths at all for fear of sounding stupid or just not knowing the words to use," Yurkosky says. "Letting them explain things or ask questions in their first language gets them to relax and feel like a part of the class."

And this doesn't only apply to spoken language. If you give students a written assignment, but the ELL student doesn't yet have the proficiency to handle writing his response in English, "Don't make them just sit there and do nothing," Eddington says. "Allow them to write in their first language if they're able. This allows them to still participate in journal writing or a math extended response, even if you can't read what they write." There has even been some evidence that allowing second-language learners to pre-write and brainstorm in L1 results in higher-quality writing in L2 in later stages of the writing process (Yigzaw, 2012).

6. Look out for culturally unique vocabulary.

"For most of these kids, their background knowledge is lacking, especially with things that are unique to American or westernized culture," says Eddington. It's important to directly teach certain vocabulary words: "Show them videos of what it looks like to toss pizza dough, show pictures of a juke box or a clothing rack - things that are not common in their own language."

One way to differentiate for ELL students is to consider the whole list of terms you're going to teach for a unit, and if you think an ELL student may be overwhelmed by such a long list, omit those that are not essential to understanding the larger topic at hand.

7. Use sentence frames to give students practice with academic language.

All students, not just English language learners, need practice with academic conversations. Sentence frames - partially completed sentences like "I disagree with what _________ said because..." - show students how to structure language in a formal way. Keep these posted in a highly visible spot in your classroom and require students to refer to them during discussions and while they write.

For this kind of language to really sink in, though, Kim says it has to become a regular part of class. "They won't do it if it's not the norm in the class, because they'll be embarrassed to use it among their peers," she says. "But if they can put it off on the teacher and say, Oh, well, you know, Miss Kim makes me talk like this, then they don't look as hoity-toity as they would otherwise."

8. Pre-teach whenever possible.

If you're going to be reading a certain article next week, give ESL students a copy of it now. If you plan to show a YouTube video tomorrow, send a link to your ESL students today. Any chance you can give these students to preview material will increase the odds that they'll understand it on the day you present it to everyone else. "That kind of thing is wonderful," Yurkosky says. "The kids feel so empowered if they've had a chance to look at the material ahead of time."

9. Learn about the cultural background of your students...

Our second-language populations grow more diverse every year. Taking the time to learn the basics of where a child comes from - exactly, not 'somewhere in the Middle East/South America/Asia/Africa' - tells the student that you respect her enough to bother. Kim remembers one time when she had to set the record straight about the diverse South American population at her school: "I was listening to the teachers talking about the 'Mexican' kids in our building," she says, "and I was like, 'We don't have any Mexicans.'" Not taking the time to at least correctly identify a child's country of origin, much like not bothering to pronounce their name correctly, is a kind of microaggression, a small, subtle insult that communicates hostility toward people of color. Make a commitment to be someone who bothers to get it right.

Once you have the country straight, take things up a notch by learning about students' religious and cultural practices. If he is a practicing Muslim, he should be told if one of the pizzas you ordered for the class party has sausage on it. If she comes from a culture where eye contact with adults is viewed as disrespectful, you'll know not to force her to look you in the eye when she's talking.

10. ...but don't make a child speak for his entire culture.

In her podcast interview, Kim shared a story about watching a teacher ask a new Iraqi student how he felt about the war in his country, right in the middle of class. "That's not cultural inclusiveness," she explains. "I've seen teachers do this and then pat themselves on the back. The students' English is limited so they can't express themselves very well, and they don't want to 'represent'; they just want to be there." If you anticipate a theme coming up in your class that's going to be relevant to one of your students, have a conversation with them in advance, or check with your ESL teacher to see if they think it's appropriate for in-class discussion.

11. Show them how to take themselves less seriously...

By modeling the risk-taking that's required to learn a new language, you help students develop the courage to take their own risks, and to have a sense of humor about it. "I tried to say the word 'paint' ( pinta) in Portuguese and instead I said the word for 'penis' ( pinto). They all roared with laughter while I stood there with a What?? look on my face," Yurkosky says. "When they explained what I'd said, I laughed so hard! I told them that laughing was fine because sometimes mistakes are really funny, but ridicule is never okay."

12. ...but always take them seriously.

One of Kim's pet peeves about how teachers interact with English language learners is the way they often see students' efforts as 'cute,' missing the whole point of what the student is trying to say. "A student will be desperate to communicate, and the teacher will get distracted by the delivery and miss the message," she says. "That's painful for me to watch." It bothers her when teachers mistake a lack of language for a lack of intelligence or maturity. When a child can't express themselves as well as they would in their native language, it's far too easy to assume the concepts just aren't in their heads.

"It breaks my heart when I hear teachers say (ELL kids) don't know anything," says Eddington. "These are brilliant kids and they know a lot. They just can't tell us in English yet." Make a conscious effort to see past the accent and the mispronunciations and treat every interaction - every student - with the respect they deserve.

"They're doing twice the job of everybody else in the class," Kim adds, "even though the result looks like half as much." ♦

Further Reading

The ESL/ELL Teacher's Survival Guide is one of the highest-rated books on teaching English-language learners available. In addition to offering an overview of the research on second-language learners and best practices in teaching ESL, it also includes a whole section on teaching ESL in the content areas and another specifically geared toward teaching ELL students in mainstream classrooms.
References:
Walker, A., Shafer, J., & Iiams, M. (2004). "Not in my classroom": Teacher attitudes towards English language learners in the mainstream classroom. NABE Journal of Research and Practice, 2(1), 130-160.

Yigzaw, A. (2012). Impact of L1 use in L2 English writing classes. Ethiopian Journal of Education and Sciences, 8(1), 11-27.

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12 Ways to Support English Learners in the Mainstream Classroom

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Advice from three ESL teachers on the things regular classroom teachers can do to help English language learners thrive in mainstream classrooms.

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This article provides information educators can use to overcome language barriers with parents. It discusses how it is important to accept student as they are and where they come from.

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When Anabel Gonzalez was a little girl, her mother prepared her a bottle of café con leche (coffee with milk) every morning to take to school. Gonzalez, who is of Cuban descent, didn't think much of it-until one day, her third-grade teacher asked in shock, "How could a parent give a child coffee in the morning?"

Gonzalez remembers feeling embarrassed and singled out. What she considered normal as part of her culture was being questioned by an educator. Years later, when Gonzalez became a teacher in a class for students learning English as a second language, she vowed to provide her students with a level of compassion and understanding for cultural differences that she wished she had growing up.

"It's about accepting students as they are and where they're from," Gonzalez said.

For any educator, being mindful of students' cultural differences, including languages spoken with their families, is an essential part of creating a welcoming space that is optimal for learning. And part of being a mindful educator is figuring out how best to facilitate parental involvement in education when English is not a parent's first language while also respecting the cultures of the students and their families.

Bilingual education expert Jessica Padrón Meehan, Ed.D., points out that for many cultures, an educator's degree earns them a level of respect with parents, who will comply with much of what is asked of them. An educator imposing their views on whether English should be spoken at home, however, can cross a line.
"It's about accepting students as they are and where they're from."
"The power and influence that you have over families and their actions should be thought about carefully as to avoid overstepping your boundaries," said Meehan, who is also a lecturer with Baylor University School of Education's Doctor of Education in Learning and Organizational Change online program. "Partner with the parent and work together to determine the best plan of action as to make sure that the student is successful in school."

By working closely and communicating openly with parents on how to navigate language barriers, educators can make the school experience more accessible and accepting to all students.

How Can Language Barriers Affect Parental Involvement in Education?

Parental involvement in school can improve academic performance and increase the likelihood that students will graduate.

Language can be a barrier to engaging parents in different forms of involvement. Meehan uses homework as an example. While parents may have the abilities or skill sets to complete certain assignments, because they do not understand what is written in the assignment, they may be unable to help as much as they would like to.

"That could unintentionally hurt the student's grade and they could lose out on a homework grade or on the extra practice that the teacher intended," Meehan said.

The effects of language barriers extend beyond classwork and can bleed into participation in other school-related activities. The Parent and Family Involvement in Education: Results from the National Household Education Surveys Program of 2016 (PDF, 1.9 MB) report from the National Center for Education Statistics indicates that, in 2016, the parents of children in kindergarten through grade 12 who did not speak English had lower levels of participation in a range of school-related activities than their English-speaking counterparts. Some of the largest gaps in participation were related to volunteering, participating in school fundraising, and attending a class event.

Source: McQuiggan, M., & Megra, M. (2017). Parent and family involvement in education: Results from the National Household Education Surveys program of 2016. (NCES 2017-102). U.S. Department of Education. Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved from https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2017/2017102.pdf
Go to a tabular version of the data at the bottom of the page for information about parental participation in school activities.
How Can Educators Better Engage Parents with Limited English Proficiency?

The obvious bridge between the teacher and the parent is the child. And being able to translate can be a positive skill for young people to learn.

"I actually think it's a quite complex, cognitive function that they're using and is a gift and an asset to begin with," Meehan said. "But, of course, you don't want to overburden or stress the child."

Sensitive information, academic struggles, and information related to behavior are examples of conversation topics that may be better left to the parent and the teacher.

But without the help of a child, how can teachers overcome communication hurdles? Meehan says educators and school staff need to think creatively.

Expanding the classroom to be more inclusive of parents and students from different cultural backgrounds can be challenging, but Meehan believes it's worth the effort.

"The more diversity you have in your classroom, the more your classroom as a whole is exposed to different ways of doing things," Meehan said. "And when we have that opportunity to understand each other and different cultures, it encourages us to be open-minded."

The following section contains tabular data from the graphic in the post.

Parental Participation in School Activities

Back to graphic.

Citation for this content: Baylor's EdD online in Learning and Organizational Change.

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6 Ways Educators Can Overcome Language Barriers with Parents

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Improving communication between teachers and parents who speak different languages requires thinking outside of the box.

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This article provides various examples and ways to help improve a child's language and their processing skills. some of the tips that they provide are clarify the language, reduce unnecessary distractions, encourage peer support. All of these tips helped me to grasp a better understanding of what teachers grapple with when trying to teach aspects of language to their students on a daily basis.

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10 Effective Strategies for Teaching English Language Learners

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Classrooms in the Middle East are highly diverse, students come from different cultures and not everyone has English as primary language. Educators must

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This article provides various ways to improve a child's language processing skills. The tips that they provide include the following: clarify the language, reduce unnecessary distractions, encourage peer support, offer ample time and space, use mixed media, encourage active reading skills, and focus on small wins.

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How to Improve a Child’s Language Processing Skills

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Get tips for how to improve a child’s language process skills with the right mix of support from parents and education professionals.

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This website gives seven tips for teachers with new ELL students in their class. It emphasizes that making the student feel comfortable in their surroundings before you can successfully lead student centered learning. The 7 tips pair a student with a knowledgeable student, conduct language inventory among the staff, learning and model how to pronounce the student's name, don't wait for the student to ask question, visuals aren't just for lesson, label objects around the room bilingually, and give them a chance to educate others.

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When a New Student Has Language Barriers: 7 Tips for Teachers | Learning Sciences International

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About five million children in the United States—that’s approximately one out of 10 students--are learning how to speak English. This is a huge demographic shift, not only in states like California, Texas, and Florida, but also in Massachusetts, North Dakota,

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https://www.britishcouncil.my/english/courses-children/resources/fun-activities-that-develop-language-learning

This website suggests multiple ways to integrate fun activities when learning language and communication skills. This website talks about fun ways to complete that skill during playtime which is a time the students love and can be very engaging, and useful for there language skills.

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Children can benefit from playtime. Games offer a fun-filled, relaxed environment where they can practise using new words and are free to express themselves. Participating in recreational activities is an effective way to develop language and communication skills. It also helps your children to be more socially confident and may be a way to forge friendships.

Below are some examples of games and playtime activities that integrate language learning with fun:

Word games. Expand your children's vocabulary with word games. It can be as simple as pointing out items at home or during a road trip e.g. "I am now mixing the butter into the batter" or "Tall buildings are also called skyscrapers". You might even give the definition or share background information about these words. Games like Scrabble, Pictionary or a round of Charades also encourage vocabulary development and communication skills.

Jokes. Telling age-appropriate puns will also help foster good humour and creativity in children. This also encourages wordplay and imagination. You can read through kid-friendly joke books and take turns telling witty stories. Avoid being too critical of their gags, speech, or articulation. Instead, model proper pronunciation or grammar by repeating the statement back to them in the correct way e.g. when your child says "I goed so fast!" instead of saying, "That's not how you say it", you can opt to say, "Yes, you went so fast!"

Riddles. Riddles are fun ways to use words and paint pictures of scenes or situations. Read or say riddles aloud to each other and explain to your children the different definitions of a single word e.g. school as in a place of learning or school as in a group of fish to help them understand the riddle better.

Rhymes. The repetitive chanting, reading, writing, or hearing of rhymes promotes good listening skills and memory retention, aside from developing speech. You can also narrate what you do at home with rhyming words or let your children tell you about their favourite toys using rhyming words.

Homonyms. Promote listening and comprehension skills by playing with words that sound the same but have different meanings. Allow your children to think of words that sound alike and let them try to define each one. This is also a good gauge of how much your children's vocabulary has expanded and if their understanding of the words is correct.

Storytelling. While storybooks provide ample entertainment, sharing stories - whether real or make-believe - can provide a good bonding time with your children while helping develop their communication skills. Exchange stories about daily events. Broaden their imagination with fantastical stories and let their creativity grow as you make up stories about anything and everything around them.

Songs. Aside from harnessing their musical abilities, songs also help children learn new words. Lyrics have a sense of rhyme and rhythm so it will be easy and entertaining for them to sing along. In addition, simply putting a tune to an activity can be a fun game that you can play with your children.

Tongue twisters. Tongue twisters are an excellent and fun way to teach children correct pronunciation and enunciation of words. It is a fun way to train their tongue to pronounce words. Start with simple ones and work your way up.

Words can be a lot of fun if we know how to maximise their use. Together, they can be made up into stories, songs, and a whole lot of other things that will help your children be more eloquent. Continue to encourage your children to speak well by constructing a healthy and fun learning environment where they can unleash their creativity and broaden their linguistic skills. Guide them on how to express their thoughts, feelings and actions better through the use of words as this will prepare them to face the world with confidence as they grow.

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Fun activities that help develop language learning in children

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Children can benefit from playtime. Games offer a fun-filled, relaxed environment where they can practise using new words and are free to express themselves.

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https://www.teachstarter.com/us/blog/10-activities-for-speaking-and-listening-us/

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12 Speaking and Listening Activities to Boost Your Students’ Skills

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Try these activities to improve your students’ speaking and listening skills!

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This article gives some strategies you can use to teach academic language to students. These are all things that can be worked into your everyday teaching that will help students expand their academic vocabulary.

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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This site has several different "games" that teachers can use to help promote conversation. These activities vary in the age that can play and they also help promote children when needing assistance when talking to children learning a language. This article from edutopia is very helpful in assisting students to speak and promote conversation it the classroom.

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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https://www.education.udel.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/LanguageDisorders.pdf

This website talks about how teachers can go about helping a child who is experiencing difficulty with language. One of the major takeaways I gained from reading this website is that I can share books with a student and have him/her make predictions based on what the student can understand from it. I also liked how the article mentioned using rhyming songs/poems to tune into the phonetic sounds of different vowels, consonants, and blends. This was a great website and can see myself using these strategies in my classroom to help promote communication amongst peers and outside the classroom.

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This website provides the reader with 21 different strategies to provide support to students who struggle with expressive language skills. A few of the strategies that I found to be the most beneficial include let the learner speak without being rushed or interrupted, provide the learner with a certain topic and have that student finish writing sentences about that particular topic, when the learner is required to recall information, provide them with visual and/or auditory signals to help them remember the information, make groups of cards containing things like subjects, verbs, and adjectives, get the learner to combine the cards in different ways to create completed sentences, and urge oral output- as this boosts the learner's chances to connect orally and allow them to have time to practice oral output appropriately. All of the above will help struggling students enhance their communication/expressive language skills, while giving them time to think and respond to a certain task without rushing.

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21 Strategies to Help Students Who Suffer From Expressive Language Disorder

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Spread the loveAre you looking for strategies to help students who suffer from expressive language disorder? If so, keep reading. 1. Let the learner talk without being interrupted or hurried. 2. Utilize a private signal (e.g., touching earlobe, raising an index finger, etc.) to remind the learner to speak in finished sentences and use specific terminology.

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https://www.speechbuddy.com/blog/speech-therapy-techniques/top-10-online-sites-for-building-language-skills/

This site talks about 10 online resources that build language skills. It offers a wide selection of online sites that offer grammar and vocabulary exercises designed to help students build language skills. These skills include refining language building blocks such as alphabet, phonics, reading, vowels, pronunciation, spelling, word games, comprehension, and punctuation.

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Online games and resources are excellent tools to help children build language and vocabulary skills and prepare them for reading and speaking success for the future. Using the computer to access online resources, children of all speaking abilities can develop vocabulary skills, learn to distinguish certain sounds, begin to recognize letter shapes and their sounds, learn to follow directions and learn basic building blocks in sentence formation. Yes, the games and activities are so fun and you may not think they're actually learning - but with our recommendations, rest assured these sites are teaching children skills for building language skills and future effective communication.

We have outlined a wide selection of online sites that offer grammar and vocabulary exercises designed to help your child or student build language skills. These skills include refining language building blocks such as alphabet, phonics, reading, vowels, pronunciation, spelling, word games, comprehension, and punctuation. Try a few and let us know what you think!

Top 10 Online Game Sites for Building Language Skills:

Starfall A free website designed to teach children how to read with phonics.

Speechtx. This website is a collection of games and activities that encourage language development and early language building skills.

Alphabet Avenue A site dedicated to learning the alphabet backwards and forwards.

Quia.com A complete educational website offering educational tools for students, teachers and parents.

PBSkids This website is in conjunction with PBS television shows and offers a full range of games and activities to stimulate language building and learning. Your child may recognize some of his favorite characters such as Curious George, Arthur and Elmo.

Funbrain A free educational site designed for kids ages preschool through 8 th grade. The site offers educational games, online books and comics designed to develop skills in math, reading and literacy.

ABCya This site is full of educational games designed to build language, math and reading skills. It was created by certified school teachers.

Grammer Gorillas Grammer Gorillas is part of the Funbrain website. This game helps your child identify correct parts of speech. There are two options, one for a beginner and one that is more advanced.

Leapfrog This site is in conjunction with the popular line of educational toys from Leapfrog. The online gaming section of this site is specifically designed for "creative play", learning how words, sentences and stories are formed and built to improve language and comprehension.

Kidspell This is a spelling focused website, designed to teach your child fun ways to learn to spell. It's broken up into age groups so you can easily choose the right level for your child.

Whether or not you choose spelling games, hangman or reading comprehension activities, you are helping children make important connections in the brain to improve and increase language skills. Your child or student will have fun playing these games and you can rest assured you are providing them a positive learning experience. Enjoy!

Do you have some favorite websites for building language skills?

For a few more game choices, try this comprehensive site:
Arcademics

At Home Ideas Language Building Games Language Development Parents' Corner Speech Therapy Techniques

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Top 10 Online Sites for Building Language Skills

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Online games and resources are excellent tools to help children build language and vocabulary skills and prepare them for reading and speaking success for the future. Using the computer to access online resources, children of all speaking abilities can develop vocabulary skills, learn to distinguish certain sounds, begin to recognize letter shapes and their sounds, learn to follow directions and learn basic building blocks in sentence formation.

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Listening and Spoken Language Strategies with Lesson 

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Listening and Spoken Language Strategies with Lesson 

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The website begins by identifying some classroom-specific challenges, describing various Listening and Spoken Language (LSL) techniques, and discussing how auditory opportunities might be incorporated into the classroom. There will be opportunity for questions and discussion near the end.

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This text-based course is a transcript of the live seminar, "LSLS Strategies in the Classroom," presented by Ashley Garber, M.S.CCC-SLP as part of the HOPE series from Cochlear Americas. Please download supplemental course materials.

My name is Ashley Garber. I am a speech language pathologist and a Listening and Spoken Language Specialist (LSLS) certified auditory verbal therapist (AVT) in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I have been working with children and adults with hearing loss for about 15 years in a variety of settings, most recently in private practice where I am pleased to be able to consult frequently with professionals in the public school setting. It is through some of those experiences that I will talk with you today about using LSL strategies in the classroom setting.

We will start by identifying some of the classroom-specific issues, defining some Listening and Spoken Language (LSL) strategies and then talk about infusing auditory opportunities into the classroom. Towards the end we will have time for discussion and questions. To start, think about for a moment some of the challenges that we face in integrating auditory learning into the classroom. The following quotes are things that I have heard as I have talked with teachers about what they face when trying to integrate LSL strategies and auditory strategies into their classroom environment:

"Planning purposeful language ahead of time is difficult."
"All of my kids have different auditory skill levels."
"How do I balance content goals with language skills and auditory skills?"
"It is difficult for me to choose targets when vocabulary needs are so overwhelming."
"There is so much to cover. How do I fit it in?"

These quotes are straight from the mouths of teachers of deaf children in programs designed for grouping children with hearing loss together prior to mainstreaming.

Maximizing Auditory Learning in the Classroom

Optimizing Effectiveness in the Classroom

Examples from Classroom Observations

To start us off on this topic I want to go back in time to a HOPE session that I presented a couple of years ago with Mary Ellen Nevins (2005) called Creating Listeners in the Classroom. Paraphrasing from that program, one of the first steps that we will talk about towards maximizing auditory skill development is conceptualizing a relationship between groupings of children within our classrooms and how we use instructional time. That relationship may prove to overcome some of the barriers that we have towards building auditory skills in the classroom. For example, we might group children based on their auditory ability for at least part of the day. We can meet needs for children at all different levels across the classroom if we group them based on their auditory skill level for part of the day and then maximize opportunities for individualized instruction for children during those times.

If yours is a program where some children leave for special services such as occupational or speech therapy, you can use that time to individualize instruction for the children that are remaining in the classroom. Another step you can take is to look closely at the schedule for each instructional date and see if you find time that has been underutilized for instructional purposes. For example, there may be a few minutes between special activities or leaving the classroom and coming back, lining up time, or time between art and dismissal. Any of those overlooked little chunks of time may be useful for purposeful listening activities.

The third concept we talked about in that program was the idea of using classroom content as a vehicle for auditory work. That might seem like the most obvious place we would look, and it is where we are going to focus today in terms of the strategies for incorporating our listening and spoken language strategies into the classroom. While it is, perhaps, the most accessible place, I think we sometimes underutilize that opportunity. In this age of improved access to sound, the classroom is a wonderful place for differentiating auditory learning purposes for auditory training. We have the ability to focus on the connections between listening and language and cognition right there in the classroom. It is really the optimum place for maximizing auditory learning with the hope of carry over to the other areas of listening and cognition.

From our surveys I know that almost all of you are professionals in deaf education, whether you are teachers or speech language pathologists. As we are talking about classroom strategies, I am assuming that many of you are teachers of deaf children. As such, you bring to the table knowledge of best practices and education and also particular emphasis on teaching children with reduced auditory access, whether you are a LSLS designated by the Alexander Graham Bell Academy or not. The LSLS has an extended knowledge base that focuses on education, guidance, advocacy, family support and the rigorous application of techniques, strategies and procedures that promote optimal acquisition of spoken language through listening by children who are deaf or hard of hearing. My emphasis today is on the application of these techniques as a LSLS who would apply those techniques specifically towards spoken language development through listening.

Ellen Estes (2010) published an article in Volta Review laying out an organizational schema, as she called it, of all the strategies that would be required of an effective listening and spoken language professional. She noted that, in addition to the knowledge that forms the basis for LSL practice, it is the development of skills that create the means for effectively supporting children with a hearing loss in educational settings. She identified three areas of focus. The first was optimizing the effectiveness of each interaction with the child, the second organizing the setting, and the third maximizing listening and spoken language access. She then differentiated specific skills in each of the areas for a LSLS in the educational setting. I will be focusing on the first area, optimizing the effectiveness in the classroom.

Classroom content coupled with listening and spoken language strategies will take us towards optimizing effectiveness of our auditory work in the classroom. We will start by talking about specific LSL strategies. Activating a student's language through brain activity is the first strategy to work towards, as it is paramount. Present spoken information "auditory-first" or with an auditory focus as often as possible. For example, talk about activities before presenting materials or bringing supplies. Give students the spoken language before giving them visual clues as to what they will be doing or what you will be talking about. Describe concepts out loud before reading about them. Present new vocabulary in context before providing a written list that the children will look at. This is going to allow children to make experiential connections auditorily to the greatest degree possible by giving them the auditory information first and then following up with any visual or contextual information with supplies and the work that they do.

Next, sandwich old information with new information. This is the familiar teaching concept of scaffolding. This means that we provide auditory information first, then the visual cues followed again by auditory to sandwich that information so that the child get as much auditory information as possible with visual reinforcement when necessary. That is a way to get at the idea of presenting auditory information first, knowing that you will back it up with visual and contextual information as well.

Next we have promoting thinking skills. That is one way to optimize effectiveness. Make the activities that you present to your classroom as relevant and as challenging as possible. For example, use language like, "What did you think about that?" in relation to information you have just shared. Ask questions to continue the thought process. "How could we make that happen? How will we do it?" Another idea is getting comfortable with wait time. Wait time is a favorite auditory-verbal strategy and has a lot of usefulness in the classroom as a way to encourage students to think first about what they have heard before they have an opportunity to respond to the questions or prompts that you have made. I use the phrase "getting comfortable" because often as teachers and speech language pathologists, we are always ready with the next piece of information to help the child and to scaffold. But adding in a pause or a break will allow the child an opportunity to process spoken information for himself or herself. Sometimes we roll right over that as we work towards helping and building skills. But that wait time is the tool to build the skill.

We can use an expectant look to show the child that we do expect a response or thought from them. These behaviors serve as a model to children with regard to their listening peers as well. It is another way to think about that wait time. We show them how we, as listeners, would process information and put ideas together before we jump back in with a response. That comfort level with waiting is an important strategy to consider as we think about maximizing auditory skills. Another important concept is holding children responsible or accountable for what they hear. This goes in a couple of directions. First of all, they must be made responsible for what they hear from you. For example, after presenting some information you might say, "What do you think I am talking about?" Maybe you have given some clues. Instead of going straight to filling in the answer for them, you ask the children, "What do you think I am talking about? What could that be?" You can involve them in what is said from others, also. "Kayla, do you agree with what Marcus said? Do you think he is right?", or, "What do you think about that?" It is as simple as that.

Show the children that they are responsible for what they hear from both the teacher and other class members. Think ahead of time about some prompts that would help you to fit that concept in to your teaching. By the same token, using others as models is another strategy, so encouraging turn taking so the children do learn from each other. You can really use that to your advantage within a classroom setting. Use a child's appropriate language, whether it is pragmatic language or sentence structure, as a model for another child. Also, mistakes are good. They can be something that other kids can help with or feed into.

Sabotage is another LSL strategy. Saying one thing and doing another is a simple description of sabotage. If I said to a child, "Here is your homework," while handing them a book, we would look for the child to correct us and say, "That's not my homework. It's a book." The hope is that the child will reconcile the difference between what they hear and what they see. Sabotage is the idea of using that in a purposeful way to make those moments happen.

When preparing your classroom, you will want to plan for purposeful language strategies that will facilitate the acquisition of goals. Plan for the different skill levels of the students in the classroom. For experienced teachers, it is not necessarily a matter of changing your lesson plans but instead searching for new places within your existing plan where you can add emphasis on listening and spoken language. You do not have to throw out an entire lesson; look at your lesson activities and think how you can enhance it to provide more emphasis on listening and language development for children with hearing loss.

These examples come from some classroom observations that I have made. Here we can break them down and look at what is going on in the situation and how we might enhance those activities to bring in more opportunities for listening to spoken language. Our first example is with finger painting. This was in a classroom grouping of children with hearing loss ages three to five with hearing loss. The children had limited language skills either because of late identification of hearing loss or recent cochlear implants. The core concepts the teacher was working on in this activity were vocabulary related to the painting activity. First was the concept that mixing red and white colors makes pink. This was around Valentine's Day. Other concepts were printing, (e.g., using a stamp), messy, wash it, Valentine and heart. The teacher brought out the materials and had everything on the table and said, "Okay, it is time to paint now. We're going to use red and white to make pink." She had planned auditory targets in her lesson. She limited calling the children's names only for certain instances. Again, this group was limited in their language skills, so one of the goals was that the children had to respond to their name auditorily, and, in this case, she was going to do that as she offered the smocks and the paper for each child to get a squirt of paint on their table. That was really the only auditory-based target within the activity. It was a very language-rich activity, but after analyzing the activity, we saw many other places where the teacher could focus on using auditory-first and an auditory focus to bring listening into focus and provide even greater language opportunities. The opportunity to make connections was the key here. Some of the potential spoken language opportunities would be describing the materials before they were presented at all. If we think about the scaffolding or sandwiching concept, it would be on the order of keeping all the materials hidden and saying, "Okay, it is time to paint. Let's get out the smocks." Be comfortable with wait time. Wait and see if there are any responses. There might not be. The idea is that the children can use that auditory information and process it before the actual materials were brought out to take away from that opportunity.

Another opportunity would be telling the children that pink paint is needed and then having them realize that no pink paint is available and, therefore, it has to be mixed. If you compare presentations, the first instructed the children that they were going to use red and white to make pink paint versus turning it into a thinking activity: telling them they are going to use pink paint, but "Uh-oh, there is no pink paint!". We have to mix it up. That changes the presentation into more of a thinking activity. This also provides another opportunity of thinking through what colors you could use to make pink.

The following is a possible script you can you use to talk about the key words that we talk about in the vocabulary. You might acoustically highlight the words.

"It is time to paint! Let's get our smocks."

"Yep, it's time to paint. Here's your smock...Juan. Here's your smock...Bella."

That was the teacher's way to call the children auditorily, so they only respond to their own name. The vocabulary paint and smock had already been used, but we have pulled it out auditorily for the child.

"I want to use pink paint today." [get out a box of paint bottles] "Uh oh. There is no pink. Maybe we can mix red [get out the red] and white [get out the white]. "Here is some red. [drip the paint on the table] Here is some white. Let's mix it!" [hold up your finger and start to mix the paint] "Hooray, now it is pink!"

That is a step by step script on how we can bring in the vocabulary and concepts auditory-first and give the child a chance to think about those things before doing the activity or visually reinforcing the connection. With the mixing, for example, talk about mixing it before showing that you will do that with your finger or a spoon.

Another classroom example for children at a higher level would be to write personal narratives. I was in a classroom with children at about the third-grade level. It was a mixed-age class for children that were deaf and hard-of-hearing. They were writing personal narratives. The concept the teacher was targeting with the activity was learning to write about themselves. Integrated into that were writing concepts like paragraph structure, punctuation requirements, text requirements and grammar. The teacher was at the front of the table with chart paper, and she modeled writing her own narrative for the students before she asked them to tackle their own topics. The students did have reference cards in front of them with specific objectives for narrative writing. The teacher jumped in with writing her own narrative, first giving it a title, then starting in with the narrative. She wrote each word and said it at the same time. Then, she had some discussion afterwards with the students about the different elements that she had included.

So again, we were able to break it down after-the-fact and talk about some of the places in which to integrate auditory strategies, auditory-first and auditory focus for a more enriched listening activity. Again, describe the task before presenting any materials. In this case, remember that the students had already started their personal narratives. Try to work on the personal narratives before bringing out the chart paper even. It is that much more of an opportunity for children to process auditorily what is going to happen and what they will be working on. Once the chart paper is up, describe the other steps before handing out the reference cards or indicating that the children should bring those up.

With this age group, use of meta language as part of the teacher-modeled paragraph would be an excellent way to integrate opportunities in for auditory learning. For example, if the teacher added in statements like, "I want to write about the time I went fishing. I need to make sure that I start with that and then write about the exciting things that happened." Talking through how the teacher going to devise the personal narrative is another way to provide language context to what the students know from the other times that they have addressed this activity. Then we talked about how, in this particular example, the teacher wrote each word on paper as she spoke it. Saying a whole phrase or sentence before writing would be a better approach of maximizing auditory learning in this particular situation. Saying the whole sentence and then writing it down gives the child a chance to process that language information. If appropriate and based on the children's stage of learning, the teacher could say, "Here is my first sentence. I like to go fishing with my friends. What do you think? Is that a good opening line?" If one student says, "Yeah I think that works out." Then the next student is asked, "Do you agree?" That is a way to make sure that students are listening to each other and also listening to the teacher. This is all said before writing it down to give the children a chance to listen as part of this writing exercise. Afterwards or along the way, ask for students to comment on each other's comments. This could be a way of checking on their comprehension, both of the overall activity and their attention to the class discourse.

Another example for that same age range would be tangrams for a math activity. Many of these strategies and skills that we talk about are things that teachers do not have a concern integrating into their reading or language arts time, but they are not sure how to work them into science and math activities. Of course it is all based on the same strategies: using auditory-first, individualizing language that you use with different students, and asking them to comment on each other. All of those things fit right into a math activity as they would with any other activity. The core concepts were shapes, and that they can be manipulated to fit together into larger shapes; basically it was early geometry. Shape names were targeted as vocabulary, as well as directional terms and adjectives such as next to, beside and around. Descriptive words were the language overlay that went into this exercise. This was one thing that could be a particular focus as you think about math. The following were "yellow flag" statements or language activity I heard from the teacher: "Let me show you how to do that"; "You could turn this big triangle this way"; "Put that one over there"'; "Use one of these." Even without the context, we know this is great teaching to guide a student through the use of the tangrams by illustrating and demonstrating how he or she might use the shapes together. You see good teaching language there to lead a child through the activity, but they are all very visual or indefinite terms that could be more language rich.

So let me describe to you what you might try instead: "What if you turned the bigger triangle to the right and then slid it next to the square?"; "What if you put it on the left side of the square?"; "Put the smaller rectangle on top of the biggest triangle." The language in that statement is not more difficult than other vocabulary that is being used in that activity, but there are more words. Looking at the actual language that is used showed some good places to add in auditory focus and language focus versus the original language wthat was very visually descriptive. The teacher was relying a lot on visual focus during this activity. To enhance that and make it more of an auditory activity within the actual teaching plan, the teacher could have children verbally describe or plan how they might approach the task and then poll the group: "What do you think?", "Do you think that will work?" Then try the plan. That is a way to turn this into even more of a thinking activity than it already is. The tangram activity is definitely a thinking activity by itself. There is a lot of thinking that has to occur when they are trying to manipulate shapes into larger objects. List things that will help them gain some of that meta language. Add thinking vocabulary like plan, evaluate and decide.

When working as a group, there are always opportunities for social language overlay as well, especially as it relates to solving a problem. For example, "Success!", "You hit a road block.", "You nailed it.", or "That was confusing." These are just some ways to fit in some vocabulary that has nothing to do with the activity but has everything to do with social framework and successful language.

One thing that I did want to talk about is the idea of skill building. As noted by Ellen Estes (2010), the skills and strategies discussed today are best solidified through a mentoring process. It is important for us as professionals to think about how we can solidify the information that we receive, how we can practice it and put it into skill-building action. Knowing that sabotage is a good strategy to use and actually practicing using sabotage and seeing how it works are two different things. That step is an important one for us to make as professionals. It is a challenge for us as professionals to find or become mentors. How can we do that? That kind of relationship is not necessarily built into our professional realm, but we could think of ways to do that for ourselves, and one of the best is videotaping. It is with regret that I present these scenarios to you without videotape because that would be an excellent way for us to dig in and see what happened in the first place and how could we have improved on them. But that is something we can do for ourselves in practice. Videotaping and evaluating our own teaching sessions is a great way to change habits or improve upon what we are doing. You may see that you do use a lot of visual language instead of auditory language. A mentor once told me to tape often, and I realized that I said "look" for more often than "listen to this." Realizing how often you say "look" instead of "listen" helps to know how often you are focusing on visual versus auditory cues for your students. In review, videotape and evaluate your own sessions, look at the language that you use and how often you bring materials forward rather than describing them first. It is quite often a painful process to videotape yourself, but a very useful one.

Another idea would be to arrange for what I call observation swaps as part of your internal professional development offerings. For example, I have the opportunity to meet with teachers, observe them during the day and then discuss activities. In an afternoon or evening professional development session they have independently talked about swapping videotapes of each other or trading times in each other's classroom. They take a planning time and instead go to watch another teacher. That is a learning activity both for the teacher being observed and for the teacher observing. That might be a way to build mentoring relationships into your existing professional environment if a mentor is not already there for you.

I am sure that the strategies I described today are not new strategies, but I hope you have new ways to consider their use. To bring the informational part to a close I would like to summarize. Our thoughts today were towards optimizing the effectiveness of each teaching moment, bringing together the content from the classroom and LSL strategies so each of those content moments is also a time for developing auditory skill and language skill. Embrace auditory learning as the juncture between listening, language and cognition. Follow a comprehensive model for auditory skill development, and create an environment that values and expects listening and speaking by encouraging your students to comment on each other and the things that they hear. Build auditory skills in the context of speech, language and content development.

Before we are finished, I wanted to tell you about a new recent publication of a parent resource through the HOPE program. You can access it at www.cochlearamericas.com/hope and is in the Parent section. This is a booklet of practical ideas on specific topics. There are a couple of booklets out. One is called Fun and Games and it includes articles on choosing toys and games. Resources at Your Fingertips is all about things that are online, but also about apps that are available for phones and tablets. There are more and more apps available every minute. Ling 6 Sounds is about apps and online offerings and materials for listening and language development. There is an article on optimizing participants in summer or after school activities, and then also an article on maximizing auditory skills and outdoor play. Again, this is geared towards parents, but for professionals it would be something that you could copy or print and distribute. Thank you all very much for joining us today.

What recommendations do you have for students mainstreamed into general education in class sizes which may approach 30?

Your listening environment may be challenge and overwhelming. Content is challenging and vocabulary demands may be overwhelming. Someone who is able to make sure that technology is working, like a teacher consultant or itinerant teacher, can be helpful so that recommendations can be made for noise in the classroom if need be. Pick out vocabulary to work on individually or to have the family focus on with the student. As an LSLS auditory-verbal therapist, what I work on directly with parents can sometimes also be applied to working with professionals in mainstream classrooms. Often a student is pulled out of class for their time with the teacher consultant, but think about some of that pull-in time where you can share strategies for doing all the things that we just talked about with the teacher. There are strategies that do not take away from any of the other children where teachers can talk about things before visual information is supplied. Use vocabulary in context and mix vocabulary in different places throughout the day. Share strategies that you are familiar with as a teacher of children with hearing loss with the general education teacher.

What would you consider to be an appropriate amount of "wait time?"

It is very difficult to stop talking! I always start with at least count to three. But really, a few more beats than that would be helpful. The auditory-verbal greats might say a count of eight between presenting a question and then prompting for the answer is ideal. But this is something that is hard for all of us in the beginning, so at least start with three and then go from there. It also depends on how difficult the question is, what you are waiting for and from whom.

Estes, E. (2010). Listening, language and learning: skills of highly qualified listening and spoken language specialists in educational settings. Volta Review, 110(2), 169-178.

Nevins, M.E. (2005, October 27). CLIC IT! Creating listeners in the classroom: ideas for teaching (HOPE). AudioloyOnline, Article 4497. Direct URL: www.audiologyonline.com/ceus/recordedcoursedetails.asp?pid=6&class_id=4497 Retrieved July 18, 2012, from the Articles Archive on www.audiologyonline.com

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Listening and Spoken Language Strategies in the Classroom Ashley Garber

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This text-based course is a transcript of the live seminar, "LSLS Strategies in the Classroom," presented by Ashley Garber, M.S.CCC-SLP as part of the HOPE series from Cochlear Americas. Please download supplemental course materials. My name is Ashley Garber.

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This article gives examples of activities parents and teachers can do to promote language development among children with language issues. It provides activities for children to learn as early as birth up to six years of age. One activity includes saying a new word and telling the child what it means, or using it in a way it helps them understand. For example, the article tells the parents and teachers to use the word "vehicle" instead of "car." You can say, "I think I will drive the vehicle to the store. I am too tired to walk." We talked about this type of activity in class. This helps children communicate by using similar/new words and promote sentence development.

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Activities to Encourage Speech and Language Development

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There are many ways you can help your child learn to understand and use words. See a speech-language pathologist if you have concerns.

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This blog gives quite a few tips on how to get students engaged and interacting with language. These tips include brainstorming or holding group discussions, pair and share activities, "the one minute paper" (this is when the teacher gives every student one minute to write about a particular topic, and then are given the opportunity to share what they wrote with their peers), Q & A sessions, and flipping one's classroom. All of the above tips can help students communicate and form connections with those around them, and overall practice their language skills.

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For students to build fluency in their target language, it is vital that language teachers deploy the right type of pedagogical approach. The use of interactive language teaching strategies is therefore widely recommended as a compelling way to make classes increasingly focused on student participation and strongly oriented towards communication practice.

Of course, the word "interactive" has two distinct, but commonly used meanings. It refers both to communication between people and to the engagement of a user with an online or computer program. This blog post will explore how successful interactive language teaching strategies can be devised using both meanings of the word.

What are interactive language teaching strategies?

As every teacher knows, learning and teaching are not spectator sports. Students simply do not learn very much by just sitting in class listening to teachers and regurgitating information. Teachers create environments that encourage students to participate actively in their learning through verbal interaction in the teaching process.

Shariq (2017) identifies the following five core characteristics of classrooms where such active learning is being successfully deployed.

1. The teacher acts as the facilitator, guiding the learners to become autonomous.

2. Teaching focuses not only on correct grammatical structures but also on situations where to use them.

3. Educators prepare authentic materials that address the learning needs of the students.

4. Learning focuses on language functions and the ability to use them.

5. Lessons use specifically designed tasks that help learners become fluent and efficient users of the target language.

So how can you use interactive language teaching strategies in your classroom?

There's an innumerable number of ways in which educators can deploy these interactive teaching strategies in their language learning programs. We've highlighted five common and highly effective strategies below that maximize opportunities for communication between students. In all cases, the objective here is to encourage students to repeatedly practice key skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) in their target language.
1. Brainstorming or group sessions
These can be powerful techniques to get students talking about their opinions on a particular topic or issue. Using a series of educator-provided prompts, students ask and answer key questions and identify, discuss and debate the respective advantages and disadvantages of any topic. This approach also requires students to acknowledge and understand different points of view and can therefore be powerful in helping to develop their listening skills too.
2. Pair and share activities
This approach helps to extend student communication beyond simple conversation practice. Educators could give each pair a topic, a problem, or a question to work on or resolve. Students are given time to form their own conclusion which they then discuss with their pair in their own voice. Students are encouraged to question each other and argue their case before presenting their individual responses back to the whole class.
3. The one minute paper
This is a great way to bring together both speaking and writing skills. The teacher simply asks all students to spend one minute writing about a particular topic. This might be, to sum up, a topic that has been taught or just a general point of discussion.

Having written for a minute, students then share what they have written in pairs, groups, or with the whole class. It, therefore, provides an opportunity for all students to have their voice heard and not just those who are usually vocal in classroom discussions. It also facilitates discussion and debate in their target language between students.
4. Q&A sessions

This can be a great way of checking students' understanding at the end of a unit of study and gets students to solve their peers' questions.

Simply ask your students to anonymously jot down their questions on an index card and put them into a fishbowl. Mix them up and then read them out. See if members of the class are then able to answer the question or if they can work together to find the solution.
5. Flip your classroom with the flipped classroom method!
As outlined in this on the topic, flipping your classroom could be a great interactive language teaching strategy. This approach reverses the traditional model of teaching and sees students using their own study time to review recommended resources or to do research around a particular topic or grammatical construct. As the preparation has been completed before class (online or face-to-face), the educator can then make the most of the invaluable time with their class to participate in a conversation and to complete supported activities.

The flipped classroom can be particularly powerful where educators and students have easy access to an online language learning environment. Such systems enable educators to deploy the other main type of interactive language teaching strategies - those delivered through interaction with online learning resources.

Sanako Connect is a leading online language lab and easily allows students to interact with the teaching resources prepared and uploaded by their educators. Connect has plenty of storage space for them to attach PDFs, presentations, videos, web pages, or sound files as required. As everything is stored in the cloud, students can easily access these resources, wherever and whenever they need them.

Educators can also easily transform these simple resources into interactive language teaching activities. Connect provides educators with easily adaptable templates to collect students' answers online. These templates apply across common language teaching strategies including multiple choice quizzes, simple Q&A text entry forms, or gap-fill exercises. They can be readily deployed to test students' core skills, particularly listening, reading, and writing.

Sanako Connect also enables educators to quickly set up a variety of speaking tasks for students. They can either be tasked to record themselves reading aloud or responding to a pre-prepared piece of content. Alternatively, educators can create an original soundtrack, which the student then attempts to emulate using Sanako Connect's advanced, two-track recording functionality.

Sanako's products are specifically designed to increase the time each student spends actively practicing their core language skills during online or in-person classes. They are therefore the perfect partner for educators looking to build their students' fluency and/or to introduce interactive language teaching strategies in every sense of the word!

If you would like to find out more about how Sanako can enable your educators to deliver more impactful, interactive language teaching strategies, then contact us now to book a FREE remote demo.

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How to implement interactive language teaching strategies in your classroom

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For students to build fluency in their target language, it is vital that language teachers deploy the right type of pedagogical approach. The use of interactive language teaching strategies is therefore widely recommended as a compelling way to make classes increasingly focused on student participation and strongly oriented towards communication practice.

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This article gives great activies to do with the different ages. For 2-4 year olds, it shows great examples to each activity and what you could do to improve it. For 4-6 year olds, showing them what they're gonna say will help them visually learn it and be able to say it properly.

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Activities to Encourage Speech and Language Development

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The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association offers these age-appropriate ways that parents can engage their young children to help develop speech and language abilities.

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Taylor Glass - Strategies to Build Language 

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Taylor Glass - Strategies to Build Language 

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https://blog.sanako.com/interactive-language-teaching-strategies
One way we can support students in our classroom with language is pair and share activities. We can give students a choice of what topic to talk about. Students can form their own opinions about the topic and share it in small groups.

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For students to build fluency in their target language, it is vital that language teachers deploy the right type of pedagogical approach. The use of interactive language teaching strategies is therefore widely recommended as a compelling way to make classes increasingly focused on student participation and strongly oriented towards communication practice.

Of course, the word "interactive" has two distinct, but commonly used meanings. It refers both to communication between people and to the engagement of a user with an online or computer program. This blog post will explore how successful interactive language teaching strategies can be devised using both meanings of the word.

What are interactive language teaching strategies?

As every teacher knows, learning and teaching are not spectator sports. Students simply do not learn very much by just sitting in class listening to teachers and regurgitating information. Teachers create environments that encourage students to participate actively in their learning through verbal interaction in the teaching process.

Shariq (2017) identifies the following five core characteristics of classrooms where such active learning is being successfully deployed.

1. The teacher acts as the facilitator, guiding the learners to become autonomous.

2. Teaching focuses not only on correct grammatical structures but also on situations where to use them.

3. Educators prepare authentic materials that address the learning needs of the students.

4. Learning focuses on language functions and the ability to use them.

5. Lessons use specifically designed tasks that help learners become fluent and efficient users of the target language.

So how can you use interactive language teaching strategies in your classroom?

There's an innumerable number of ways in which educators can deploy these interactive teaching strategies in their language learning programs. We've highlighted five common and highly effective strategies below that maximize opportunities for communication between students. In all cases, the objective here is to encourage students to repeatedly practice key skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) in their target language.
1. Brainstorming or group sessions
These can be powerful techniques to get students talking about their opinions on a particular topic or issue. Using a series of educator-provided prompts, students ask and answer key questions and identify, discuss and debate the respective advantages and disadvantages of any topic. This approach also requires students to acknowledge and understand different points of view and can therefore be powerful in helping to develop their listening skills too.
2. Pair and share activities
This approach helps to extend student communication beyond simple conversation practice. Educators could give each pair a topic, a problem, or a question to work on or resolve. Students are given time to form their own conclusion which they then discuss with their pair in their own voice. Students are encouraged to question each other and argue their case before presenting their individual responses back to the whole class.
3. The one minute paper
This is a great way to bring together both speaking and writing skills. The teacher simply asks all students to spend one minute writing about a particular topic. This might be, to sum up, a topic that has been taught or just a general point of discussion.

Having written for a minute, students then share what they have written in pairs, groups, or with the whole class. It, therefore, provides an opportunity for all students to have their voice heard and not just those who are usually vocal in classroom discussions. It also facilitates discussion and debate in their target language between students.
4. Q&A sessions

This can be a great way of checking students' understanding at the end of a unit of study and gets students to solve their peers' questions.

Simply ask your students to anonymously jot down their questions on an index card and put them into a fishbowl. Mix them up and then read them out. See if members of the class are then able to answer the question or if they can work together to find the solution.
5. Flip your classroom with the flipped classroom method!
As outlined in this on the topic, flipping your classroom could be a great interactive language teaching strategy. This approach reverses the traditional model of teaching and sees students using their own study time to review recommended resources or to do research around a particular topic or grammatical construct. As the preparation has been completed before class (online or face-to-face), the educator can then make the most of the invaluable time with their class to participate in a conversation and to complete supported activities.

The flipped classroom can be particularly powerful where educators and students have easy access to an online language learning environment. Such systems enable educators to deploy the other main type of interactive language teaching strategies - those delivered through interaction with online learning resources.

Sanako Connect is a leading online language lab and easily allows students to interact with the teaching resources prepared and uploaded by their educators. Connect has plenty of storage space for them to attach PDFs, presentations, videos, web pages, or sound files as required. As everything is stored in the cloud, students can easily access these resources, wherever and whenever they need them.

Educators can also easily transform these simple resources into interactive language teaching activities. Connect provides educators with easily adaptable templates to collect students' answers online. These templates apply across common language teaching strategies including multiple choice quizzes, simple Q&A text entry forms, or gap-fill exercises. They can be readily deployed to test students' core skills, particularly listening, reading, and writing.

Sanako Connect also enables educators to quickly set up a variety of speaking tasks for students. They can either be tasked to record themselves reading aloud or responding to a pre-prepared piece of content. Alternatively, educators can create an original soundtrack, which the student then attempts to emulate using Sanako Connect's advanced, two-track recording functionality.

Sanako's products are specifically designed to increase the time each student spends actively practicing their core language skills during online or in-person classes. They are therefore the perfect partner for educators looking to build their students' fluency and/or to introduce interactive language teaching strategies in every sense of the word!

If you would like to find out more about how Sanako can enable your educators to deliver more impactful, interactive language teaching strategies, then contact us now to book a FREE remote demo.

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How to implement interactive language teaching strategies in your classroom

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
For students to build fluency in their target language, it is vital that language teachers deploy the right type of pedagogical approach. The use of interactive language teaching strategies is therefore widely recommended as a compelling way to make classes increasingly focused on student participation and strongly oriented towards communication practice.

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These activities can be used in the classroom to help develop language and communication skills. The games and activities on this website are playtime activities that can integrated into the everyday classroom to improve language development.

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Children can benefit from playtime. Games offer a fun-filled, relaxed environment where they can practise using new words and are free to express themselves. Participating in recreational activities is an effective way to develop language and communication skills. It also helps your children to be more socially confident and may be a way to forge friendships.

Below are some examples of games and playtime activities that integrate language learning with fun:

Word games. Expand your children's vocabulary with word games. It can be as simple as pointing out items at home or during a road trip e.g. "I am now mixing the butter into the batter" or "Tall buildings are also called skyscrapers". You might even give the definition or share background information about these words. Games like Scrabble, Pictionary or a round of Charades also encourage vocabulary development and communication skills.

Jokes. Telling age-appropriate puns will also help foster good humour and creativity in children. This also encourages wordplay and imagination. You can read through kid-friendly joke books and take turns telling witty stories. Avoid being too critical of their gags, speech, or articulation. Instead, model proper pronunciation or grammar by repeating the statement back to them in the correct way e.g. when your child says "I goed so fast!" instead of saying, "That's not how you say it", you can opt to say, "Yes, you went so fast!"

Riddles. Riddles are fun ways to use words and paint pictures of scenes or situations. Read or say riddles aloud to each other and explain to your children the different definitions of a single word e.g. school as in a place of learning or school as in a group of fish to help them understand the riddle better.

Rhymes. The repetitive chanting, reading, writing, or hearing of rhymes promotes good listening skills and memory retention, aside from developing speech. You can also narrate what you do at home with rhyming words or let your children tell you about their favourite toys using rhyming words.

Homonyms. Promote listening and comprehension skills by playing with words that sound the same but have different meanings. Allow your children to think of words that sound alike and let them try to define each one. This is also a good gauge of how much your children's vocabulary has expanded and if their understanding of the words is correct.

Storytelling. While storybooks provide ample entertainment, sharing stories - whether real or make-believe - can provide a good bonding time with your children while helping develop their communication skills. Exchange stories about daily events. Broaden their imagination with fantastical stories and let their creativity grow as you make up stories about anything and everything around them.

Songs. Aside from harnessing their musical abilities, songs also help children learn new words. Lyrics have a sense of rhyme and rhythm so it will be easy and entertaining for them to sing along. In addition, simply putting a tune to an activity can be a fun game that you can play with your children.

Tongue twisters. Tongue twisters are an excellent and fun way to teach children correct pronunciation and enunciation of words. It is a fun way to train their tongue to pronounce words. Start with simple ones and work your way up.

Words can be a lot of fun if we know how to maximise their use. Together, they can be made up into stories, songs, and a whole lot of other things that will help your children be more eloquent. Continue to encourage your children to speak well by constructing a healthy and fun learning environment where they can unleash their creativity and broaden their linguistic skills. Guide them on how to express their thoughts, feelings and actions better through the use of words as this will prepare them to face the world with confidence as they grow.

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Fun activities that help develop language learning in children

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Children can benefit from playtime. Games offer a fun-filled, relaxed environment where they can practise using new words and are free to express themselves.

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Some ways to help student's if they have language issues include focusing on interactive communication, use active listening, incorporating the student's interest into speech, work at the student's pace. There are many ways to help a student who may have trouble with language and it is important to accommodate for them.

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There are many options to try in order to help those children with speech and language issues. Thanks to Do2Learn for their great list of ideas and options. Below are some of their options for four different categories, you can find the full list at the following URL:
http://www.do2learn.com/disabilities/CharacteristicsAndStrategies/SpeechLanguageImpairment_Strategies.html
Language: Academics and Behavior: Physical:

Be aware that because of the way thebrain develops, it is easier to acquire language and communicationskills before the age of five.

Be aware that if children have muscular disorders, hearing problems, or developmental delays, their acquisition of speech, language, and related skills may be affected.

Use augmentative communication systems to ensure that nonverbal students and students with severe physical disabilities have effective ways to communicate.

Ensure that the student has access to their (portable) communication system across all contexts, all of the time.

Reduce unnecessary classroom noise as much as possible.

Be near the student when giving instructions and ask the student to repeat the instructions and prompt when necessary.

Provide verbal clues often.

Provide a quiet spot for the student to work if possible.

Speak clearly and deliberately.

Provide visual cues - on the board or chart paper.

Redirect the student frequently and provide step by step directions - repeating when necessary.

Allow students to tape lectures.

Allow more time for the student to complete activities.

Modify classroom activities so they may be less difficult, but have the same learning objectives.

Allow more time for the student to complete assignments and tests.

Design tests and presentations that are appropriate for the student (written instead of oral).

Have the student sit in an accessible location to frequently monitor their understanding.

Allow extra time to complete work because of distractions, slow handwriting, or problems in decoding text.

Have routines that students can follow..

Focus on interactive communication.

Use active listening.

Incorporate the student's interests into speech.

Ensure that the student has a way to appropriately express their wants and needs.

Reinforce communication attempts (e.g. their gestures, partial verbalizations) when the student is non-verbal or emerging verbal.

Paraphrase back what the student has said or indicated.

Use linguistic scaffolding techniques that involve a series of questions.

Use language for social interaction and to resolve conflicts.

Emphasize goals and tasks that are easy for the student to accomplish.

Work at the student's pace.

Present only one concept at a time.

Have speech therapist present language units to the entire class.

Use computers in the classroom for language enhancement.

Encourage reading and writing daily.

Use tactile and visual cues (e.g., pictures, 3-D objects).

Speech:

Develop a procedure for the student to ask for help.

Speak directly to the student.

Be a good speech model.

Have easy and good interactive communication in classroom.

Encourage participation in classroom activities and discussions.

Anticipate areas of difficulty and involve the student in problem-solving.

Use a peer-buddy system when appropriate.

Use gestures that support understanding.

Model correct speech patterns and avoid correcting speech difficulties.

Be patient when student is speaking, since rushing may result in frustration.

These are a few "Do's and Dont's of Accommodations" given by the Kansas Department of Education on their 2014-15 Accommodations Manual. http://www.ksde.org/Portals/0/CSAS/CSAS%20Home/Assessments/KSDE%20Accommodations%20Manual.pdf

Do...make accommodations decisions based on individualized needs.

Don't...make accommodations decisions based on what is "easiest" to do (e.g., preferential seating).

Do...select accommodations that mediate the effect of the disability to access instruction and demonstrate learning.

Don't...select accommodations that are unrelated to documented student learning needs or are intended to give
students an unfair advantage.

Do...make sure to document instructional and assessment accommodations on the IEP, 504 Plans or Student Improvement Team (SIT) Plans.

Don't...assume all instructional accommodations are appropriate for use on assessments.

Do...be familiar with the types of accommodations that can be used as both instructional and assessment accommodations.

Don't...just indicate an accommodation will be provided "as appropriate" or "as necessary."

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There are many options to try in order to help those children with speech and language issues. Thanks to Do2Learn for their great list of ideas and options.