72a Marlborough Street,

Henley Beach, SA 5022

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SIMPLE ACTIVITIES
FOR
LANGUAGE
INTERACTION

COMPILED BY JILL BAILES AND CAROL EDWARDS

(COMMUNICATION SUPPORT SERVICE)
2014
Vocabulary Development
Children’s vocabulary increases at an amazing rate – about 3000 words a year. However, in
vocabulary development we need to look at not only the size of a child’s vocabulary but also
the depth and complexity of vocabulary knowledge.

Focus on:
 Saying a new word out loud
 Learning the meaning of the word
 If the word has more than one meaning
 How it links to other words
 Using the word in many contexts

Simple Activities

1. Categories: Children take it in turns to choose a category card, throw a dice and
then think of that number of words in the given category.

2. Sorting: Provide children with a variety of pictures and ask them to sort according
to different criteria.

3. Word of the day: Explicitly teach a new word each day and challenge the children
(and yourself) to include the word in each activity of the day.

4. Parts and wholes: Using an ‘object of the day’ students brainstorm the names of
the individual parts (eg. shoe – lace, tongue, heel etc.)

5. Colourful language: Teach children to use similes and metaphors in relation to

their own personal experience. (eg quiet as a mouse)

6. Brainstorm: Children must think of things that can fit a describing word. (eg.
narrow – road, passage, bridge, foot, escape, mind, margin)

7. Mind maps: Brainstorm words for a topic using classification frameworks. (eg.
trees – types, needs, parts, what they do for us etc.)

8. Build on: Individual children asked to stand up and name 5 things they see in the
room, without hesitation. Once they are confident with this try adding an adjective
and then adjectival phrases. Further complexity can be added by describing things
which cannot be seen.

9. Noun wrapping: Children are asked to wrap a noun by adding an adjective before
or an adverbial phrase after the noun. Eg. “The dog ran. “ becomes “The big black
dog ran quickly towards me with his teeth bared. “

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 10. Tennis Elbow Foot: Children in pairs, one is the server and the other the receiver.
Use a timer or regular beat of 2 wooden blocks. Server says a word, (eg. leaf.)
receiver, in time given must say a word that links with that word, (eg. branch) and
the game continues – tree, bough, twig, trunk, wood, fire, heat, summer . . . .

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Describing
Describing is an important skill because it helps children talk about their experiences
accurately.

Focus on:
 Attributes of an object
 Telling about something

Simple Activities

1. Object of the Day: Have an object of the day and discuss the name of all its different
parts and what they are used for.

2. News Talk: ‘SCUMPS’ Stands for Shape, Colour, Use, Materials, Parts and Size. A
framework to be used for presenting show and tell or guessing the hidden object.

3. Describing a Partner: Children sit opposite each other in pairs and take turns to
describe each other’s appearance in detail. Use a prompt checklist to help (eg. height,
eye colour).

4. Guess Who?: Use this as a ‘departure’ game (eg. to go outside). Tell the group ‘I am
thinking of someone who……’ describe a feature of the person, clothing etc. until the
identity is guessed.

5. What am I?: One child chooses an object and describes it while the class has to guess
what it is. A visual prompt checklist may be useful (eg ‘SCRUMPS’ cards).

6. Feely/Object Bag: One child chooses an object from a bag without the other children
seeing. The child has to describe the object for the others to guess.

7. Measure up!: Select an object in the classroom and demonstrate how to make
comparisons. (eg This book is bigger than the pencil but not as big as me. This book
is as big as Sally’s lunchbox.)

8. Same and Different: In pairs the children are asked to compare items (eg.
lunchboxes, shoes, bags) and report on one thing that is the same and one thing that
is different.

9. I Spy: Describe an object within sight and encourage the children to guess what you
are describing.

10. What could I do with: Children describe what they could do with (eg. a piece of
string, a hammer, a broom, sticky tape, a spade, a ball of wool).

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 Describing Objects
We can talk about

What am I?

What could I do with?

hammer ball of wool spade

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Active Listening and Following Instructions
Active listening involves listening to what is being said and working out the important
information. The information is then used to provide an appropriate response.

Focus on:
 What to listen for
 Using visual scaffolds
 Using terms such as first, next and last
 Encouraging children to create a picture in their head

Simple Activities

1. Barrier Games: In pairs children give each other instructions to complete a task
(eg. drawing a picture, placing objects on a mat)

2. Bug on a Rug: Children listen to instructions about where to put a bug.

3. Key Words Children listen to a story read by the teacher and make a response (eg.
clap, put a dot on a page) when they hear a particular word or name.

4. Maps: Children follow directions on a simple map to discover a secret.

5. Absurd: Children listen to absurd sentences or paragraphs and identify what is

wrong.

6. Listen and draw: Children must draw a picture by following the teacher’s
instructions.

7. Simon says: Give 2 or 3 instructions at a time.

8. Bingo games.

9. Guessing games: Give 3 or more clues about an object or person in the room
for the children to guess. Extension – give clues about an animal in the zoo or
an object connected with the classroom theme.

10. Obstacle course: Prepare a sequence of objects and give directions for each
child to follow (eg sit on the chair, walk around the table, roll over the mat).

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Barrier games

Treasure map

Bug on a rug

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Recounting and Reporting

Recounting and reporting occur naturally in many everyday situations both at home and at
school. Although similar to storytelling, the main purpose of a recount is to talk about past
events in the order in which they occurred.

Focus on:
 Using planners to teach the structure and language features of recounting and
reporting
 Providing opportunities for oral presentations to be rehearsed
 Using pictures to help with sequencing.

Simple Activities

1. Old photographs/memorabilia: Children can use photographs, real objects or

souvenir items to recall past events.

2. Recalling a school experience/excursion: Ask the children to recall a recent school

event or excursion. Use photographs and brainstorm the topic to create a timeline
of events or make a class book. The children can then use this to retell their ideas
to a partner.

3. News Talk: This useful resource provides visual scaffolds for activity based sharing
and event based news.

4. Book talk: Students report to the class about a book they have shared at home.

5. Talking Lists: List items which are needed in a given familiar situation. (eg. what
would you need to pack for a summer holiday, play equipment in your school yard).

6. Just in case: Store a variety of objects in an old suitcase or basket. The objects
could be random or relate to a theme. Change the collection regularly. Select an
object and ask students to answer basic questions or talk about an experience that
included the object.

7. Get it? Got it? Good!: In this activity students listen to short ‘stories’ read by the
teacher and identify the main idea.

8. Prepared reports: Children present a report on a topic of their own choice. When
they are planning the report use planning proformas to help them organize and
sequence ideas.

9. Using newspaper cuttings: Children can prepare an oral report from a newspaper
cutting. The written report can be used in the presentation or children can make up
their own using the photograph and headline.

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 10. Photographs: Children in pairs with a picture from a magazine or your own
photograph. One child studies the picture for a minute and then passes the
picture to his partner before recalling as many of the details as possible.

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Story Telling
Children’s ability to ‘tell a story’ reflects their growing life experiences and developing
communication and thinking skills. Oral story telling is an essential pre-cursor to the ability
to write stories. Children will be more successful if given the opportunity for frequent
practice using story prompts.

Focus on:
 Modelling oral story telling
 Highlighting the structures of stories
 Sharing stories with rich language
 Teaching time concepts and complex sentence structures

Simple Activities

1. Picture books: Encourage the children to invent stories to accompany picture books
without text, using illustrations as a stimulus for ideas.

2. Using a series of pictures: Select some illustrations from stories to use as story
starters (some old readers or shabby library books could be cut up and used for this).
Instruct the children to put the pictures in a sequence. In turn, the children are asked
to say a sentence or paragraph to match each illustration.

3. Puppets: Use puppets to dramatise familiar stories.

4. Theme stories: Invite the children to choose a theme for the story. Maybe all the
characters will be dinosaurs, or perhaps the story involves magic.

5. Descriptive stories: Involve the children in making up stories using plenty of

descriptive words. ‘The lady chased the dog’ becomes ‘The lady in the polka-dot dress
chased the fuzzy yellow dog across the street’. These stories are particularly fun to
illustrate.

6. Retelling a story: After sharing a story with the children try retelling it with visual
prompts (pictures, felt boards, props) or act it out.

7. Changing a story: Children can retell a familiar story, but change one significant
element (eg. setting, characters, problem, and resolution).

8. Story cue cards: Prepare colour coded cards with a variety of story elements –
characters, setting, problem, resolution. Children select cards from each element and
compose a story that includes all the elements.

9. Story alive: Students tell a story from another person or animal’s perspective. A
mouse, snail or other small manageable animal can be introduced into the classroom
as a pet and become the focus for oral story telling.

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 10. Ideas box: Make a collection of unusual objects (eg. pieces of clothing, walking stick
etc) or interesting pictures which the children can use as starters for story ideas. For
older children, have an ideas box with interesting beginnings or story titles they can
choose.

11. Character interviews: After several readings of a story, a student assumes a

character’s role and others in the group ask questions related to the character. Roll a
‘who, what, when, where, why, how’ cube to help formulate a question.

12. Happy hats: Children select a hat and tell “Who might wear it….? When they might
wear it….? Where they might wear it….? etc

8. Story cue cards

10. Ideas box.

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Asking and Answering Questions

Questions are important for learning and to develop thinking strategies, social problem-
solving and planning. Explicit teaching of a broad range of questions and how they are used
is important to develop higher level thinking skills which also facilitate reading
comprehension and maths problem solving.

Focus on:
 Matching questions to the student’s needs and abilities
 Encouraging students to take the role of questioner
 Using questions to help students move from what they know to the next stage of
development
 Waiting longer for an answer to a question to provide more processing time

Simple activities

1. Book based questions: Take time to plan the questions you will ask while sharing a
book. Write the questions on post-it notes and stick them on the relevant page of
the book. Plan questions with a range of complexity (use Levels of Questions by
Blank, Rose and Berlin).

2. Twenty questions: One student thinks of an item or famous person and the rest of
the group must ask questions to determine what it is. The Question Game is a
visually scaffolded version of this activity.

3. Roll a question: Use question cubes to help children formulate questions. Write
who, what, where, when, why and how on each face of the cube. In pairs, children
take turns to roll the cube and then formulate a question that starts with the word
on the top face of the cube.

4. Interviews: In pairs, students ask each other questions to find out about each other.
Brainstorm questions which could be asked (see Roll a question, above).
Variations:
 Getting to know you - In pairs students ask each other questions to get to know
each other. Discuss the types of questions you might ask to gain interesting
information.
 Oral history – interview a staff person at the school about changes in the school
and local community.
 Character interview – One child pretends to be a character from a familiar book
and the other children ask questions about what happens to the character in the
book.

5. Dilemmas: Students examine pictures and use questions to assist their

understanding of the problem and to find a solution. One student takes the role of
the person in the picture and answers the questions.

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 6. Clues: Children prepare a list of clues (between 3and 6) for an object, person or
place. They read them to a partner and ask, ‘Who am I?’, ‘What am I?’ or ‘Where am
I?’ The partner then tries to guess, but can also ask clarifying questions.

7. Ball game: Sit in a circle and introduce a topic for the game – what we eat for
breakfast, things we like to do. Model, “I eat . . . . . for breakfast. What do you eat
(name)?” as you roll the ball to the child you have named. The child then answers,
“I eat . . . . What do you like (name)?” as he rolls the ball to another child.

INTERVIEWS

1. Book
based questions.

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Discussing and Reasoning

The ability to discuss, argue and reason allows children to think divergently, clarify ideas and
revise what they say. Children need to be familiar with describing, reporting and explaining
before engaging in argument.

Focus on:
 Developing group skills
 Modelling and teaching the structural features
1. State the issue
2. Present different points of view
3. Recommend
 Starting with real objects or situations before moving to the abstract
 Using themes to develop deep knowledge of a topic
 Using the Levels of Questions (Blank 1978) to guide discussion.

Simple Activities

1. Association: Each child places a picture card on the pile one at a time and describes
how it goes with the previous picture (eg. socks go with shoes because they are worn
on the feet).

2. Which one doesn’t belong? Set out 3 or 4 objects or large pictures. All but one
should have something in common (eg. all red, all animals). Discuss the names and
the features of each object/picture then decide which one doesn’t belong.

3. What’s the use? Students select an object and discuss its uses. Students can be
creative and try to come up with a number of alternative uses for the object.
Students can also discuss what they could use if they didn’t have the object (eg. if
you didn’t have an umbrella to keep you dry what else could you use?)

4. Riddles: Give three clues describing something and the students have to guess what
it is. If a guess is incorrect, explain why (eg. carrot is not fruit). Students can later
attempt to make up their own riddles.

5. Similarities and differences: Compare two objects or characters and plot the
similarities and differences on a Venn diagram (eg 2 circles that overlap). The
features, which are common to both will be recorded in the overlapping portion.

6. Character analysis: After sharing a book spend time discussing the characters (eg.
what they looked like, what they did, what they said). Help the students to explain
and justify the character’s actions.

7. Sticky situations: Students are asked to explain what they would do if they were in a
difficult situation. (eg. you arrive at the airport without your ticket, you borrow a
friends computer game and it gets damaged).

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 8. Role play arguments: In pairs or small groups have the children role-play situations
(eg: ownership of a pencil, sharing the computer).

9. Brainstorming: Students contribute ideas related to a topic or issue. Encourage

everyone to take turns to contribute. Allow no criticisms of people or ideas. Record
the suggestions and accept all ideas.

10. Ranking items: Students are asked to rank items in order of importance. (eg. 6
animals that make the best pets, 5 favourite sports, 5 best party games)

Venn diagram

http://k-8visual.info/

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Social Interaction
The rules about social interaction are implicit, flexible and arbitrary. Language interaction
and rules for speaking and listening at school will be very different from those at home.

Focus on:
 explicitly teaching rules about social interaction
 providing a range of learning situations for children to learn and practice social skills

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 Barrier Games

Barrier games are simple procedures based on giving and receiving instructions. They
involve 2 students working together. They either have a small screen between them or sit
back to back. One student provides instructions and the other follows the instructions to
draw, create, make or match.

Focus on:
 Working effectively in groups
 Developing listening skills
 Giving explicit information to the listener
 Asking questions to gain more information
 Using a range of descriptive words

Types of Barrier Games

simple sequence or pattern making
matching and ordering
coloring in
assembly
construction
location – placing objects on a picture or map
mapping – describing and drawing a route between two
locations
positioning objects in grids
spotting the difference
dressing dolls and toys

Useful materials to use for barrier games include:

picture outlines
maps
blocks Which Hippo?
beads
construction materials
counters
magazines
masks
toys
wrapping paper

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 SIMPLE ACTIVIES FOR
LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT
RESOURCES

RESOURCES

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