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scaffolded learning
Author: Karen Wilson, SEND Specialist
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Approximate reading time: 1 minute

Progressing from single words to full sentences is essential for learners’ confidence and access to the curriculum. The first goal is to build vocabulary and meaning. Start with key vocabulary using visuals, repetition, and word banks. Next, support learners with sentence stems and substitution tables to build phrases and gradually progress to expanding sentences with adjectives and conjunctions. You can also help to reduce cognitive load by using consistent, visual supports, limiting choices, and repeating model sentences so learners can focus on meaning rather than decoding complex language.

Tip or Idea: To build confidence for SEND and early EAL learners, encourage them to ‘say it first, write it after’. This might be through role play, talk partners, listen and repeat activities, or recording their own speech on a device. 

Learning Village resource: Use our Scaffolding a Literacy Lesson resource to support learners from word to sentence level. Why not ask your learners to role play the conversations shown in Step 5 for a fun spoken activity?

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