A person’s expressive language allows them to communicate their wants, needs, thoughts, and opinions. Some children along with the learning disabled may not be able to articulate their wants and needs, and thereby may face personal challenges. In this scenario, they may need a set of learning sessions and creative strategies to enhance their expression.
The list of activities that we have suggested here can address expressive language shortcomings and easily make children come up with better eloquent skills. Traverse through these options and see if you can employ any of these even with minor changes.
Expressive language skills- Understanding the essence
To effectively communicate with others, we use expressive language abilities. A lack of these skills can make it challenging to share thoughts, ideas, and comments. May it be verbal or nonverbal, one should be able to communicate appropriately to get exposed and build relationships.
Here are some ways how expressive language can be helpful:
- Improves motivation. When individual is able to communicate effectively what they need, they can feel confident about indulging in any task or interaction with people. This mitigates many social issues on the whole
- When the child uses their ability to communicate the language, their fluency increases gradually.
- When the confidence in the individual increases, this gradually decreases the frustration related to shortcomings.
- The child can answer the questions with ease with structured words and sentences.
Activities to brush up expressive language skills
1. Book it up
- To start with, the teacher chooses a story or a verse in a book and narrates it to the children
- Once the session is completed, they list down a set of questions to ask the students. And a couple of chits- VERBAL and NON-VERBAL written on each of them
- One student is called upon, and the instructor asks a query. The learner picks one of these chits.
- The student needs to turn toward other students and answer it
- Non verbally if they pick a non-verbal chit
- Verbally if they pick a verbal chit
- After they give the right answer, another student is called upon and the process is repeated.
This activity is a sort of retelling approach that can create a platform for students to express their views, and answer questions- thereby addressing expressive language.
2. Pretend play
This activity can help children develop better expressive language skills. When your child pretends or constructs a scenario, they are engaging in narrative and sequencing skills which will be good for their expressive language practice.
While engaging in pretend play, always remember to offer your child open-ended questions. Employ detailed questions about the scenario and their journey. Here are a few examples:. “What should happen after that?” or “What should be our destination?”
3. Favorite dish
Talking about favorite dishes is an interesting pastime for children as well as adults. Encouraging the little one to talk about dishes can be a great idea for activities.
- To start with, the teacher creates a set of cards with pictures of various dishes and names written on them. For example cake, Sandwich and Pasta.
- Now, the instructor calls the students and asks them to pick one card among these.
- The child can traverse through all the cards and pick their favorite food from them.
- The little one should start narrating the recipe of the dish, with hand movements and gestures. The motto is not the appropriately narrate the recipe, but to improve the expressive language
- Finally, the instructor evaluates the activeness and expression of the kid and gives feedback for further improvement.
4. Playdough and express
Playdough activity may be used to make sceneries, animals, food, and a variety of other things. This activity can help the child with expressive language. All you have to do is allow your child to communicate their desires for what they want to build or express.
To start with, the mentor teaches a concept to the student. Now, they ask questions regarding the same to which the little one needs to make an answer with the dough. If children are having difficulty using their imagination to build with playdough, then, in that case, cookie cutters, or other molds can be a great help. Now, this is an excellent time for your youngster to request additional or different playdoughs by saying, “I want…” or “I need…”
5. Favorite outfit
Dressing up can be a really fun and exciting activity to carry out. This activity can be incorporated into pretend play as well. You can have your youngster express their preferences for what they want to wear or what they want you to wear in this way they will try their best to communicate. Nonetheless, by any chance, the trick didn’t work. Then pose open-ended or imaginative inquiries to them, such as, “What place should we go now that we’re all suited up?” Alternatively, “Who are we?” would work equally better.
6. Food and Play
Let the child act as if they are cooking or serving you food. There are so many techniques in which you can have them talk. Let them ask what you want to eat, and make playful preparations for the same. While they are cooking, parents may ask them about the ingredients they are using. Say,” Wow, how many spoons of sugar are we using?” Let the little one feel free to answer you. Also, encourage them to show the spoons and utensils they are using.
Later ask them to serve the food they prepared and ask them to narrate about all the items and when to consume them. Giving them the privilege to guide parents can bring out their expressive language with real-life cues.
7. An expression of Toys
Children relish playing with their favorite cars and trucks. Parents can use this face to bring their expressive language out.
- To start, parents recall one of their favorite action scenes from the latest movie with cars.
- Later, they ask the little one to narrate the whole scene appropriately
- Encourage them to use their favorite toys to better explain the scene.
- Parents can give instincts if the child feels stuck somewhere. Gradually, the child feels free to express their views with needed gestures.
8. The Puppet Show
A puppet show is a theatrical art of expressing the views of the performers. This strategy can be used as an engaging activity.
- To start with, the teacher chooses an engaging and simple story and procures a few puppets depicting the characters of the same.
- Before setting the puppet show, the instructor narrates the whole story to the entire class.
- Now, they choose a few students for each character and give them respective puppets. Also, one additional student may be chosen as the narrator.
- These groups of kids are given some time to discuss and practice. Later, they perform the story with minor changes in their style.
Being a group activity, it encourages the students to be collaborative while showing up their expressive skills.
Concluding thoughts
No matter what extent the student lacks expressive language abilities, activities can be assistive in multiple aspects. Parents or mentors can employ these sessions to teach tactics and improve the child’s abilities. Encourage children to mimic your actions in group games. Also, come with new insights and check if the youngster can sequence the actions, for example, wave, then clap. Puppets could be utilized to demonstrate the actions as well. Choose among the above-stated innovative activities for your little one and see what makes them exciting to learn and communicate.
An engineer, Maths expert, Online Tutor and animal rights activist. In more than 5+ years of my online teaching experience, I closely worked with many students struggling with dyscalculia and dyslexia. With the years passing, I learned that not much effort being put into the awareness of this learning disorder. Students with dyscalculia often misunderstood for having just a simple math fear. This is still an underresearched and understudied subject. I am also the founder of Smartynote -‘The notepad app for dyslexia’,