Language Skills Part 2 - Upper Elementary & Older Students
***Home suggestions for upper elementary and older students
VIDEOS/MOVIES: Watch short videos (such as Simon’s Cat on YouTube) together. Have your child identify the different characters, and retell what happened, using whole sentences (which can target summarizing, main idea, past tense verbs, and sequencing). You can also do this for longer shows or movies!
WEATHER: Talk about what the weather is like today, and think about keeping a chart for the week or month. For younger students, you might use more simple terms like rainy or sunny, and compare/contrast the different types of weather with a Venn diagram. For older students, you can look together at the probability of precipitation (ex” “Is it more likely to be cloudy or sunny at 4:00 pm today?”) and look up more complex weather terms (humidity and what it means, cloud types, etc.)
READING: Choose a book to read together; consider reading one chapter or section at a time. As you read, or after you finish a section, talk about things like: • Who is the main character? How would you describe him/her (appearance, personality, etc.)? Do you have anything in common? • What problems do the characters face? How did they (or how could you) solve them? How are they feeling? • What is the setting? (where the story takes place) • Were there any words you didn’t recognize in this part? Let’s go back and see if we can figure out what it means using the words around it (or the context). • Did you notice any multiple meaning words? What do they mean? (Examples: trunk, club, fly, last, check, handle) • What do you think will happen in the next chapter or section?
GAMES: Many board and card games work on valuable language skills like turn taking, using complete sentences, describing, comparing/contrasting, perspective taking, & more. Games such as Scattergories, Apples to Apples, Bubble Talk, Guess Who, Clue, Uno, Catch Phrase, & Catan Junior are all good choices!