Adding in adjectives

Speech and language therapy

﻿Hello everyone. 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 that you might already be using, and any work you might have already been sent. 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, we're going to be focusing on describing words. I'm going to be sharing some ideas for how we can help you to develop your use of adjectives, or describing words, and then we're going to complete some describing activities. Throughout all of the activities today, I'm going to be sharing some tips for adults so that they can help you to develop your use of language. So for today's session, we're going to need some pictures, some toys, some everyday objects, and a bag. Adults will also need some writing equipment and the downloadable resource that's available on the Oak website with this lesson. So before we begin, find a quiet place where you won't be disturbed for the lesson. Turn off any distractions or notifications that you might have running on your device, and then make sure that 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 adjectives, or describing words. Children learn words by hearing adults model them lots of times, and in lots of different places. We know that children need to understand words before they can use them. And it's important that when adults are modelling words, they reinforce them with things like pictures, symbols, and gestures to help that word stick. Adjectives are describing words. Describing words tell us about things like colour, size, sound, shape, and taste. In order to be able to use adjectives, We have to have an understanding of concepts. Concepts was covered in module three. If you didn't complete this module, you might want to go back to it to make sure that you've worked through some of the suggested activities to help children understand concepts before working on using adjectives. In order to be able to use adjectives, we have to rely on our senses. Our senses are things like our eyes. What do our eyes help us do? Choose on here. That's right, our eyes are for looking. What are our ears for, I wonder. Can you show your adult what are our ears for? Well done, we use our ears for hearing. Our nose, what's our nose for? yeah, smelling, well done. And our tongue and our mouth are for tasting. We also have the sense with our hands and our bodies, which is to feel or touch. So just to recap, these are what our senses for. When we use our senses, it can tell us what something looks like, or maybe how it's moving, what it smells like, tastes like, sounds like, or feels like. All of these senses help us to use our adjectives. Let's have our first activity. It's called adding in some describing words. I'm going to show you some pictures, and you and your adult are going to use your eyes to find adjectives. You can pick a word to describe the picture if you need to. Adult, support your child by modelling the adjectives, if they need it. Well done, it's a green apple. Shall we move on to the next one? Well done, it's a big tree. Well done, the drums sound loud. Pause the video here to gather up some more pictures at home for you to look at. These could be on your phone, from a photo album, or even a magazine. Let's try and find some really interesting pictures to look at and describe. It's really important that adults provide good language models for children throughout their play and everyday activities. Adults can add adjectives in to describe objects or items that the children are interested in and playing with. And this will really help to expand the child's understanding and therefore use of language. So let's have a go using our senses to describe the pictures that you've gathered up. Children, we're going to look at your pictures. Adults, use this time to observe your child and listen to any adjectives that they might be using independently. You can label and comment on what they're looking at to model language, if you need to. And if they are using language, maybe you can add one or two adjectives to expand what they're describing. If you need to, you could also create some symbols to reinforce this activity and make it more accessible for your child. When we're looking at expanding our child's use of adjectives, it's important that we identify the describing words that the child knows and then highlight the ones that they don't. A child might hear lots of describing words and concepts used throughout their day-to-day. So if they're experiencing difficulty, it can be helpful to focus on just one or two concepts or describing words at a time, so that they're really consolidating that understanding. These categories have been taken from Ann Locke's "Living Language" programme, and you can type this into Google for more information. When you're deciding what adjectives to work on with your child, take one or two from the following categories, and then plan some activities around them. When you've decided what adjectives are appropriate to work on with your child, then you can use everyday situations to reinforce those words that you've chosen. You can create as many different multi-sensory activities to bring those adjectives to life, and do this in fun and motivating ways. There are lots of ideas in the downloadable resource to give you some clues on how you can do this. Ensure that the child is able to use the adjectives that you're working on in different situations too. Something that I found that works really well for children is to create adjective diaries. So when you choose a word, go on a bit of an adjective walk and take as many pictures of that adjective in different situations as possible. You've not only got this as a resource that you can refer back to, but it will really help children to understand that adjectives can apply in different contexts. I've had experiences where children have learned adjectives only in one place and not realised that they apply in other situations. So if we can capture pictures and examples of adjectives in as many situations as possible, it will really help children to generalise their understanding and therefore be able to use the adjective more accurately. We're going to play a game called Feely Bag now. This is where you're going to need your toys and other everyday objects. Gather them up and then talk about each one, one by one. Name it, what does it do, what is it used for, and then describe it by using your senses. Once you've talked about each item, take it in turns to put one of them in the bag, without the other person seeing. You then have to describe this object, but not name it. Can the other person name the object from your description? Adults, you might want to reinforce this activity with some pictures or symbols to support your child in using descriptive words. But when you finish the activity, come back and press play to continue. So remember, we want to create a language rich environment, where children are always accessing words in fun-filled, natural ways. We, the adults need to provide strong and positive language models and support language learning by using multi-sensory approaches to help make the word stick. We can create opportunities for talking and describing throughout the child's everyday to make sure that they're really having fun with words. Well, that brings us to the end of today's lesson. But a really big well done on all the fantastic learning about adjectives you've done today, and all of the adjectives you've used. If you'd like you could ask your parent or carer to send a picture of the adjectives list that you've been working on to your teacher at school, so that they can see the progress that you're making. And if you'd like, you could also ask your parent or carer to share this list with @OakNational on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, so I can see the fantastic progress that you're making too. Well, all that's left for me to say is thank you, but take care and enjoy the rest of your learning. Bye-bye.

Adding in adjectives

Adding in adjectives

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