Verbal skills are fundamental to a child’s overall academic success and personal development. By focusing on listening, vocabulary building, talking activities, and structured speaking exercises, educators can create a classroom environment that nurtures language development.
This article explores a variety of strategies and activities designed to enhance verbal skills in the classroom. If you'd like to see more about how to improve verbal skills through one on one intervention you can click here.
Listening to Books and Stories
Encouraging children to listen to books and stories is an excellent way to enrich their vocabulary and improve their language skills. Listening to well-read stories exposes students to new words, complex sentence structures, and diverse language patterns in an engaging and enjoyable manner.
How this helps
Listening to books and stories helps children internalise language patterns, understand the rhythm and flow of sentences, and acquire new vocabulary in context. This passive exposure to language is particularly beneficial for students who may struggle with reading but can still benefit from hearing rich language.
Tips for the classroom
Daily Listening Sessions
Incorporate daily listening sessions where students listen to audiobooks or read-alouds. Choose books that are slightly above the students’ reading levels to introduce more advanced vocabulary.
Interactive Storytelling
Engage students by pausing during the story to ask questions, predict outcomes, or discuss characters. This interaction helps deepen their understanding and keeps them engaged.
Encourage At-Home Listening
Suggest that parents play audiobooks or tell stories at home, further reinforcing language exposure outside the classroom.
Practice in Pairs:
Pair students up and give them speaking frames to practice with each other. This peer interaction helps reinforce the use of structured language in a supportive setting.
Discussion Frames:
Use frames to guide group discussions, ensuring that all students can participate and contribute in an organised manner. For example, "I agree with [name] because [reason]," or "I have a different opinion because [reason]."
Question Frames:
Provide students with a question frame that they can use to respond to prompts in class. For example, "I think that [idea] because [reason]." This helps them practice forming complete and structured responses.
Vocabulary Support
Vocabulary programs, such as Word Aware, focus on teaching vocabulary through investigative and interactive methods rather than rote memorisation. Activities include comparing words, finding similarities in sound or structure, and exploring word parts (prefixes, roots, and suffixes).
How this helps
These programs help students develop a deeper understanding of vocabulary by encouraging them to think critically about words and their meanings. This investigative approach makes vocabulary learning more engaging and effective, as students explore how words are constructed and related to one another.
Tips for the classroom
Word Exploration Activities
Use activities that encourage students to break down words into their components, compare them with other words, and explore their meanings through context.
Interactive Word Walls
Create a word wall in the classroom where new vocabulary is displayed. Encourage students to interact with the wall by adding synonyms, antonyms, or related words.
Regular Vocabulary Sessions
Implement regular vocabulary sessions where students engage in activities that reinforce their understanding of new words, such as word games, discussions, or creative writing tasks.
Talking Activities
Talking activities are designed to support learning by encouraging verbal expression and language use. These activities include playing vocabulary games, practising sentence structures, and engaging in imaginative discussions through "what if" or "would you rather" games.
How this helps
Talking activities help students develop their verbal skills by providing opportunities to use language in a fun and relaxed setting. These activities promote confidence in speaking, improve sentence construction, and enhance the ability to articulate thoughts clearly.
Tips for the classroom
Vocabulary Games:
Play games like "Word Association" or "20 Questions" that require students to think on their feet and use language creatively.
Sentence Structure Practice:
Provide sentence starters and have students complete them in different ways. This exercise helps them experiment with sentence construction and expand their verbal expression.
Imaginative Discussions:
Engage students in "what if" or "would you rather" discussions that encourage them to think creatively and express their ideas verbally. These discussions can be linked to current topics of study or used as a warm-up activity.
Speaking frames
Use speaking frames to scaffold and structure learners' talk. These can take any format but are simply prompts or questions for students to ask each other. This works by scaffolding their language and supporting them in using language structures which can then be used in independent speech and writing.
Learning Stories and Texts
Using methods like Pie Corbett’s Talk for Writing, children learn stories and texts off by heart using actions and pictures. This method involves internalizing language patterns through repetition and physical actions, which can then be used to improve both verbal and written skills.
How this helps
Learning stories and texts through Talk for Writing helps students embed language structures in their memory, making it easier for them to use these patterns in their own speech and writing. The use of actions and pictures adds a kinesthetic and visual element to learning, which enhances retention and understanding.
Tips for the classroom
Story Mapping
Create a visual map of the story with pictures and key phrases. Use this map as a reference while students learn the story through repetition and actions.
Action-Based Learning
Assign specific actions to different parts of the story or text. Have students practice these actions while reciting the text, which helps reinforce memory through physical movement.
Group Performances
Encourage students to perform the story or text as a group, using the actions and pictures they’ve learned. This not only reinforces their learning but also builds confidence in public speaking.
Memorising simple stories and texts
Use action and picture to support memorising some key texts. This helps to embed language structures and vocabulary.