Ask the students to develop their own puppet show with the aid of sock puppets on a specific theme such as a historical event. Keep some simple costumes in the classroom and have different students act out parts of a class text. Both of these activities promote oral language development.
Short in-class writing assignments develop a child's written fluency in a language. Provide an interestingly shaped object and ask the child to describe it in one paragraph. Play word-association games. Write a word on the board and ask a student to come up to the board and write other words that he associates with the first word in a two-minute time frame.
The aim of a debate is to state and defend specific opinions. Choose a variety of topics and ask students to prepare a two-minute speech that either defends or refutes a specific argument. Create two teams with one team for and the other team against the argument. Pick a winning team after each student has presented his case. This develops the student's written and oral communication skills.
Demonstrate various non-verbal ways to communicate concepts. As an example, show a "thumbs up" sign and tell the students what this means. Ask students to use non-verbal methods to communicate in various situations. Show video of different people talking and have students analyze their body language.