Understanding key words

Speech and language therapy

﻿Hello, everybody, my name's Emma and welcome to today's lesson. I'm looking forward to today's session and I hope you are too. I can't wait to get started but before we do just a quick reminder, we here at Oak are here to support any approaches you might already be using and any work you might have already been set. We know this lesson is going out to so many different children and families, so if you're not sure or have any questions, please do contact your child's school or usual speech and language therapy team. In today's session, I'm going to be talking about what information words are. Together, we'll do some thinking about how following information words can be helpful for you but also, what we can do, the adults can do, to help you when following information words. We're going to have some activities where we'll be following instructions. And then throughout these activities, I'll be sharing some tips for adults so that they can really help you to develop your understanding of language. So before we begin, all you'll need for today's lesson are some clothes to dress up in, these could be some of mom and dad's clothes or fancy dress clothes, it's up to you. Adults, you'll need some writing equipment and downloadable resources, available on the Oak website with this lesson. So before we begin, find a quiet place where you won't be disturbed. Turn off any distractions or notifications that you might have running on your device and then make sure that both you and your adult are seated comfortably. When you're ready, let's begin. Okay, let's start by doing some talking and thinking about understanding key words. Key words or information words, are words that are used in a sentence that carry the meaning. Many words in a sentence actually don't have any meaning. For example, if a child is in their room and you're helping them to get dressed at their usual time of day and you hold out the jumper and say, put your jumper on, how many information words or keywords do you think are in the instruction, put your jumper on? Pause the video to have a think about that, what word does the child need to understand in that example? When you've finished thinking, come back to the video and press play and we'll continue. As surprising as it might seem, the child actually doesn't need to understand any information words there, that's because there's so many clues in the context and with the object present. When you remove the context clues though and add options, that's when the idea of information words come in. For example, if a child is playing with toy cars of different colours and there's a red, a green and a blue and the adult said, where's the blue car? Or show me the blue car. Pause the video here just to have a quick think about how many words the child needs to understand in that example. When you're ready, press play to continue. One, the child needs to understand the key information word, blue, because there are options. Because there are toy cars of different colours, the word blue carries the most meaning in that sentence. We're going to have a bit of dress up time now, children, you're going to need your dress up clothes. You could do dress up with a hat, scarf, boots and a coat, but you can use anything that you've got or that your child would be really motivated and engaged with. Adults, let's practise just using one information word in our play when we're getting dressed up. Where's the scarf? Or show me the hat. You could create some symbols or a communication board for the objects in your play to really help reinforce all the language that you're using through the play. For example, having a picture or a symbol for hat, when you ask where's the hat or show me the hat, you could point to your picture or symbol to reinforce that one information word. Pause the video here to reflect on the key words that your child was able to follow through that play. When we're thinking about supporting our child's understanding of key words, it's important that we go back to the lists, that we started in lesson five and lesson six, around the early words that the child can understand. Remember, children have to understand words to be able to use them, so it's really important that we keep track of what they are. When we're thinking about targeting new key words, we need to think about what the child likes to do and then model labelling and commenting of nouns and verbs in those activities. We can show the child what a word means in everyday situations and we can make sure that we've got multisensory reinforcement, so an object, a picture, a symbol, a sign of the word to bring it to life. And then, we need to make sure that whatever word we're targeting, we repeat it as often and as consistently as possible throughout the child's everyday. We don't want these kinds of activities to become a test for the child, though. If you've used a key word, you need to give the child time, so make sure you wait to give the child plenty of time to process the information and try and organise a response to your keyword that you've used. If the child isn't able to follow the keyword independently, then you could try giving a choice and holding two of the objects, one that's the hat, one that's not and saying, is this the hat or is this the hat, as a scaffold. As I said, you could also make sure that you're using lots of visuals, as well as your words, when you're using keywords to really reinforce the child's understanding. If a child doesn't understand a key word, then that's okay, we'll get there in the end but you can create errorless learning by commenting on what you see. So if you've asked the child, where's the hat and they've not been able to follow that key word, you could try your other strategies first, the choice, reinforcing with a visual but then you could scaffold in and say, ah, this is the hat and then model following that information word, so it's an errorless learning opportunity. Kay, it's time for a game. I'm going to show you some pictures, on each picture page, I'm going to ask you to show your adult one of the things on the page. Adults take the time to pause on each slide and try some of the strategies that we just talked about. After I've given the key word instruction, wait, give your child time to respond to this information. If they need some help, you could first try adding a sign or a symbol to help them follow the keyword instruction and then you could offer a choice. Is this there? Or is this there? If they need scaffolding, then that's absolutely fine, you can help them by modelling the answer and commenting, ah, this is the, to complete the activity. So when you're ready, let's begin. Apple, show your adult the apple. Show your adult the monkey, monkey. Show your adult cup. Where is the cup? In the downloadable resource, I've included lots of ideas for how you can continue to develop your child's understanding of key words. Similar to the activity that we've just completed, you can gather up objects or pictures of words in key categories, listed here, and then you can create tasks based on matching or picture games and asking your child to show you or pass you key word instructions. Remember, with these kind of language activities, we want to avoid testing the child on words they understand, this creates pressure and can be damaging. We need to be using our scaffolding strategies if a child is struggling to follow a key word, to help create that errorless learning. We want to create a language rich environment where children are accessing words in a fun filled, natural way. Words that are reinforced through multisensory strategies are also much more likely to stick. So remember to use lots of visuals, signs and gestures to bring words to life. Well, that's all for today's lesson but a really big well done on all the fantastic learning and work you've done today on following some keyword instructions. I've just got two things I'd like to ask of you today. The first is for the adults, write down a few things that you've learnt in today's lesson. The second thing, children, if you'd like, you could ask your parent or carer to send a picture of the words that you've been working on to your teacher at school, so that they can see the wonderful progress that you're making with understanding language. You could also ask your parent or carer to share this picture on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter by tagging @OakNational so I can see your fantastic progress too. So all that's left for me to say is thank you but take care and enjoy the rest of your learning, bye-bye.

Understanding key words

Understanding key words

These resources will be removed by the end of the Spring Term 2026.

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