Language Support Program

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Module 4.2 Teaching strategies: the Early Years

Teaching approaches for ICPAL–Ideas

Resource 4.3 outlines some examples of teaching procedures for the Ideas of language. It defines the ‘aspects of language’ and recommends appropriate ‘teaching and learning strategies’ for students with language difficulties in the Early Years.

Professional learning activities

  • Locate, gather and interpret resources

Examine ‘Resource 4.3 Examples of teaching procedures: ICPAL–Ideas’. Try to understand its content and its recommended approach. You might like to compare the ‘aspect of language’ with the ICPAL language framework (Appendix 3) to see where each aspect fits.

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Practical classroom-based activity

Print Resource 4.3 and put it in your teaching portfolio. Use it in developing teaching and learning activities that support the development of the ideas of, or meanings in language for a student or students with language difficulties.

 

Activities for ICPAL–Ideas

The following is a collection of teaching activities for teaching ideas of language in the Early Years of Schooling. While activities are arranged under the Ideas component of the ICPAL language framework, all language exchanges involve using skills across the ICPAL areas.

Although some activities are confined to particular levels of skills and interest, the majority of these activities can be adapted for use across Prep to Year 4, and across ability levels.

Professional learning activities

  • Locate, gather and interpret resources

Browse through the following teaching activities for Ideas. With which are you familiar? Have you already used any of these activities in a class? Consider copying, adapting, and adding to these in a teaching portfolio for use in practical teaching activities to develop language and literacy, or in supporting students with language difficulties.

  • Use reflective learning techniques

Individually, or in pairs, attempt to match activities to the ‘Aspects of Examples of teaching procedures: ICPAL–Ideas’.

Ideas

Word banks

  • Thematically-based groups of words that are related to a topic or theme can be brainstormed by the whole class or small groups of students. Cut out pictures from magazines, newspapers, brochures or have students draw or write them.

Semantic webs

  • Start with a central word and draw different web parts coming from it. Brainstorm how the words go together and where they best fit.
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Categorisation

  • Which category do words fit into? For example, if you have the category of ‘animals’, you will have domestic animals/pets; farm animals and zoo animals; and animals that belong in the jungle, forest, snow, etc.  Some more ideas include: school, home/house, animals, sports, occupations, nature, colours, shapes, places, transport, countries, and food.

Description bingo

  • Take a group of pictures that are different and make bingo cards. The students have to listen to attributes of the pictures to guess which picture they have – the types of attributes to be described (without giving the name) would include: what category it belongs to; what it looks like; its shape, size, colour, and number; what it does, and where you find it.

Twenty questions

  • A student must think of something (e.g. person/place/thing) and the other students ask questions about it to work out what it is. They must try to narrow down what it might be by excluding categories.

Celebrity heads

  • Three students are at the front of the class. The rest of the students can see their person/place/thing headband. The students who do not know what their word is must work it out by excluding categories through a process of elimination. By adding places and other objects, you have more of an opportunity to expand the vocabulary range used for students.

Which one doesn’t belong?

  • In this activity, students are presented with four words. You can have pictures accompanying them, or words only, depending on the skill levels of the students involved. The whole class or small group of students must work out what does not belong and give a reason why. Never accept the answer because it’s different – encourage the students to be more specific using who, what, why, colour, shape, etc. cues.

Which ones go together?

  • In this activity, present the students with either three or four words; you can use pictures as a scaffold or use auditory words only. Out of the words, the students must decide which ones go together and why. Ensure the students do not simply answer because they do, but encourage them to provide specific reasons why two things go together (e.g. banana, apple and phone would have banana and apple going together because they are both fruits, etc.).

Description I spy

  • In this game, students play regular I spy, but instead of saying what sound something starts with, they must describe the item they can see by category, shape, size, number, use, etc.
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