I'm often asked by parents of younger children how they can help their language development. While there are many resources for purchase across the internet that focus on specific language skills, the best way to help your child with language development is simply regular communication with them. Adult speech has a huge impact on the development of children's language skills. Even before kids begin to communicate, adults' labeling of objects and use of joint attention demonstrates what objects children should be focused on and provides context and vocabulary for future communication. Tier III vocabulary words, those rare words that are specific to a activity or subject (known as domain-specific vocabulary in the Common Core State Standards), are most commonly learned during shared activities with adults. For example, if your child's bike was broken, you may talking to them as you are working on it. They may learn higher level vocabulary such as "spoke," "pliers," and "gears." Labeling emotional and physiological states also increases the likelihood that a child will be able to communicate how they feel during activities and events as they get older. You can also improve their receptive language skills by verbally providing them with specific tasks to perform during daily activities (e.g. "Please get the large plates and 4 forks and put them on the table for dinner). Make sure to match these directions to your child's age and ability level. Younger children perform best when given one to two steps at a time, while directions for older children can become more complex. Finally, one of the best language activities to target all areas of language development is reading with your child. Stop and discuss events in the story, ask them to make predictions about what may happen next, listen to their thoughts and feelings about the characters, provide definitions of unfamiliar words or see if they can guess the meaning using context clues, ask if they can related to the events in the story and recall a time when something similar has happened to them. You could even connect a story to a family movie night and discuss similarities and differences between a book and the movie. Here is a list of some of my favorite read aloud stories for language activities:
Picture Books:
Miss Nelson is Missing by Harry Allard and James Marshall
I Need My Monster by Amanda Noll
A Bad Case of Stripes by David Shannon
Thank You Mr. Falker by Patricia Polacco
Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes
A Turkey for Thanksgiving by Eve Bunting
The Mitten by Jan Brett
Chapter Books:
The Witches by Roald Dahl
Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo
The Lemonade Wars by Jacqueline Davis
Stuart Little by E.B. White
The Adventures of Frog and Toad by Arnold Lobel
My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett
The Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Thanks for reading!
Ms. Drumm
Picture Books:
Miss Nelson is Missing by Harry Allard and James Marshall
I Need My Monster by Amanda Noll
A Bad Case of Stripes by David Shannon
Thank You Mr. Falker by Patricia Polacco
Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes
A Turkey for Thanksgiving by Eve Bunting
The Mitten by Jan Brett
Chapter Books:
The Witches by Roald Dahl
Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo
The Lemonade Wars by Jacqueline Davis
Stuart Little by E.B. White
The Adventures of Frog and Toad by Arnold Lobel
My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett
The Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Thanks for reading!
Ms. Drumm