One of the most accessible ways to increase expressive language is through responding to classroom reading. This can take many forms. Read part of a story aloud, pausing to ask your students to reflect and respond to open-ended questions, starting with who, what, where, why or how. Encourage them to form opinions. Have them retell a story, focusing on components such as plot, characters and setting. Younger children enjoy retelling a story with puppets or as a short skit.
Throughout the day, strengthen students' expressive language skills with two simple techniques called “expansion” and “elaboration.” Expansion is the practice of taking a child’s partially or incorrectly formed sentence and mirroring it back as a properly formed sentence. For example, when a child says, “I ain’t going to finish that now,” you respond with, “Oh, you are not going to finish that?” Elaboration asks you to mirror back a properly formed sentence, padded with additional information. In this situation, you might reply, “Oh, you are not going to finish that? That seems like a good plan; you will have time to work on it later.”
Giving directions is another speaking opportunity that builds expressive language skills. Call on students to provide directions for playing a game at recess, solving a math problem or performing a common classroom routine such as lining up for lunch. Your goal is to get students comfortable with verbal expression. For a humorous approach, set out a loaf of unsliced bread, a knife and a jar of peanut butter. Ask students to provide directions on making a peanut-butter sandwich, and do exactly as they say. If they direct you to cut the bread in half, do it.
Make time for imaginative storytelling. The open-ended nature of this activity takes the pressure off students to provide a correct answer, invites their expression of humor and provides time for every child to speak. One approach is to provide each student with small objects or pictures (animals, people and natural objects) and use them in a round-robin story. You start the story, with something like, “Last night I had a strange dream about a dinosaur," and ask each student in turn to add to it with a sentence that contains her object.