Beginning to use doing words

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 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, we're going to be starting to think about doing words. Together, we're going to think about how learning and understanding doing words will help you, and then we're going to have some doing word games. 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 understanding and use of language. So before we begin, for today's session, you'll need some toys. Adults, you'll 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 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 how we begin to use doing words. As we know, children learn words by hearing them lots of times, and in lots of different contexts. They need adults to model language to develop their understanding of it. Children need to understand words before they can use them. It really helps when adults use multisensory strategies when they're modelling language. So using signs, gestures, pictures, symbols, or objects to really help hook the words into our understanding. As we know, nouns tend to be the early words that children develop, but there are also early verbs that they develop. Verbs are a little bit harder than nouns, because they're not as concrete, but they're very important for language development, because they allow the child to start understanding and forming sentences. Early verbs that the child might begin to use and understand are things like actions related to their everyday activities and play, as well as to their body movements. So before we get going with the rest of the lesson, adults, take a moment to pause the video here and make a list of the verbs that you think your child hears in their everyday activities. When you've had a moment to do this, press Play to continue. As we said in lesson four and lesson five, it's really important to keep a list of early words that the child understands so that we can target and tailor the support to what the child really needs to develop. Children have to understand a word before they can begin using it. So having a list of words that the child hears, understands, and uses is really important. Now that you've got your list of verbs that the child hears in their everyday activities, you can start thinking about working these into activities that the child really likes to do, so that within these activities you can model verbs. It's really important that during everyday activities, you talk about what the child is doing or looking at by labelling the actions. So now it's time for five minutes special time. Children, you need to find something that you really want to play with. The adults are going to follow your lead. Adults, during this special playtime, really concentrate on commenting on the actions that your child is doing with the toys or with their bodies. Just use one or two key words though. When you've had your five minutes play, press Play to continue the rest of the lesson. Verbs are actions and doing words. So we have a fantastic opportunity to show the children the meaning of the words that we're saying. When we're doing an action, we're showing them what the word means and this will help it stick in their understanding, and therefore be better able to use it. Whenever we're doing anything that involves an action, it's important we take the opportunity to label it, even something as simple as walking. It doesn't take very much to just think about labelling the actions that you're doing in your everyday activity and really focusing your voice and emphasising the words that you're modelling. By doing this, it will really help the child to understand and learn new action words. So when we're thinking about targeting specific words that we want to teach the child, we need to start simple. We also need to make sure that everybody who's working with the child knows the words that we're targeting and want to develop, so that they can repeat the words and model them in as many different situations as possible. As we've said, multisensory strategies are really effective in bringing words to life. So you could take pictures of you, other adults, or the child completing these actions, doing these actions, so that you can reinforce what the word means by adding extra symbols or signs and referring to these pictures at other times. So let's have a body action game. Have a go doing different actions with your body parts. This is a great opportunity, adults, for you to label actions and the parts of the body. Make sure that you're repeating key words when the children are doing the body actions throughout the activity. You could also point to the visuals as the child is completing an action with their body part. When you've had five or so minutes, come back to the video and press Play to continue. We want to create a language-rich environment for our children so that they're accessing words in fun-filled, natural ways. Words that are reinforced with as much multisensory information are much more likely to stick. So create as many opportunities talking, naming, and commenting on actions as possible and reinforce this with pictures, symbols, actions, and gestures. It's so important that our children are 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 early verbs that you've been thinking about and using today. If you'd like, you could ask your parent or carer to send a list of the words that you've been working on to your teacher at school, so that they can see the fantastic progress that you're making. You could also ask your parent or carer to send this list to @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.

Beginning to use doing words

Beginning to use doing words

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

Lesson slides

Lesson details

Key learning points

Equipment

Licence

Lesson video

Worksheet